I’m getting ready to move off of Google (and Private Internet Access), and Proton is looking like the best option. But I’m nervous. Some of the things I worry about:
- Calendar support: I rely really heavily on Google Calendar. How will I share events with others? And what will I do without Google Tasks?
- VPN App Quality: Seeing some mixed reviews on Proton VPN Android app.
- Proton ethics & politics: Look, I really don’t want to open up the holy war here. My big stipulation is: I don’t want my money to go to a company that will donate its money or services to fascists. To my knowledge, Proton does not do that. I know they made a post that seemed to praise GOP antitrust efforts. I do not believe that that is the same thing as lending material support for fascists. (And, as someone who is very well read-in on antitrust issues, I’ll say that – for a lot of complicated reasons – there is some truth to Proton’s post, but I wish they had framed it as a critique of the corporate wing of the Democratic party and not praise of the GOP.)
- Anything else I haven’t thought to ask.
So, folks who have made the switch: What do you wish you had known? What do you wish you had done to make the move easier?
Thank you for your advice.
deleted by creator
On desktop skip the ProtonVPN app and just use the official WireGuard app with the ProtonVPN config files which you can easily download from proton’s website. If your on Linux with gnome you don’t even need the wireguard app. You can just use the GUI network manager app to connect with the config files.
Especially skip the ProtonVPN app if you’re on Linux.
To steal a line from LGR’s video on Redguard, it’s just so B A L L S.
For me its not realizing that my email aliases will stop working if I stop paying. Wish I would have just went with simplelogin
Just pay for SimpleLogin no? Proton owns SimpleLogin now.
I purchased SimpleLogin before Proton purchased them. I have my own domain configured with all my aliases which all point to a proton email address which I do not give to anyone.
I purposely created my own domain just so I could be flexible in the future and move to another provider if needed.
To add on, if you have Proton Unlimited, then SimpleLogin is free
If you can only get Service B by paying for Service A, then Service B isn’t really free; it’s just added value.
A nitpick, yes, but I feel it’s an important one.
I guess you’re right. I should’ve said that SimpleLogin Premium is included.
No worries. Like I said, I recognize it’s a nitpick so not a huge deal. I just thought I’d mention it. It doesn’t invalidate your original comment or anything. :)
It kind of makes sense that a paid service stops working when you stop paying though…
I feel like the Android client for ProtonMail is really slow. Switching folders is painful.
I also tried sharing calendars with my wife who is still on Gmail and didn’t have great luck there. I decided I’ll just forward invites to events to her, though I haven’t had a chance to test that.
I wanted to test sharing my calendar with my wife (we use Google which is currently how we share) but you have to have a paid account to share your proton calendar. I’m happy to pay but want to make sure it works before I do!
It does. I use Proton (paid) and she uses Google. Guide here
Thanks for the confirmation! I did a search after posting and found that article.
Do you have any downsides to Proton Calendar? So for your wife’s calendar have you added that into Proton and you can add/modify events?
That I don’t know.
I subscribe to hers and she to mine, but we just made them the same color so the one who ads stuff first is the one that stays, if that makes sense.
No downsides for me, really. It does what it’s supposed to do and it’s not Google.
If your still on the fence, then I can test editing both ways tomorow. Just let me know. Had a busy day today.
We have different colours to help differentiate. For example if I have a dentist appointment I know it’s mine as it’s in my colour.
In regards to modifying each other’s calendar. If she has a car service booked in but then needs me to move it, I have the ability to modify her calendar to move it to another date.
I’d like to retain the same ability.
I’m in the process of switching to Proton too. I just opened the account; haven’t taken additional steps of switching login emails associated with all of my other accounts, yet. I’ll probably start with giving the new account to local grassroots organizations, first.
I’d like to learn more about what people have to say too!
Proton works fine for me. Email client works as you’d expect in iOS and the webmail is the same as any other. I don’t use the calendar though so can’t comment there. I DO use the vpn heavily. I don’t understand the issues people have with it because it’s always been good for me. I use it on my phone and multiple computers - even Linux (the unofficial flatpak also works well).
The thing I wish I realized earlier (keep in mind that I started using it like 10 years ago) is that it’s impossible to degoogle your life. Yay I use proton - but everyone else still uses Gmail so google gets it all anyway. Not everything, but you get the idea.
Tbh i just don’t send email. All i use it for is accounts that don’t let you use a username, receiving shipping information, and sales ads for things I’m actually interested in.
Only time I might actually need to send and reapond to emails is if I’m job hunting.
Wow really? I’m fascinated :)
Generational thing maybe? I still communicate with doctors, family members, and like support for orders/inquiries via email. Not all the time, a lot with text too. But it’s still like 50/50 email / text.
Texting and chats are my preferred form of contact i guess; haven’t really been to a doctor in stares into the distance
Aaaanyway, yeah i suppose I do use it for support. I use my work email plenty, its just for personal email i dont really “use” like that.
Id say I’m amongst the oldest gen-Z or youngest millennials?
I went from Google to Proton and then switched out for another provider. No offline mode/IMAP support allowing me to use an email client on my phone was bothersome as I need to monitor multiple inboxes. Email was fine but sluggish (in part due to decryption so partially understandable I guess). Still use the VPN which I think is their most mature product. Drive is basic but I didn’t need much more.
I was willing to put up with the annoyances when I really believed in what they were doing. But after the GOP comments, the crypto/AI stuff, and leaving Mastodon it just all became a bit much. I like that they are nonprofit, FOSS, and independently audited of course, but their messaging/priorities have been mixed to say the least. Wouldn’t blame someone for staying, wouldn’t blame them for leaving at this point.
Yeah. Tried ProtonVPN before it was blocked, and hoped I’d also have another email address. But no, being unable to use it in my email client with all the other accounts made it unusable for me.
What do you mean by saying that ProtonVPN was blocked?
Blocked by the government I mean. Inaccessible. Somene I know tried Stealth and it doesn’t seem to work either, at least on the free tier.
which government? is it not usable anymore?
I mean of course you can use mail and other services - but you’d need another VPN/proxy, which is what we’re used to. But I only wanted the VPN, and that is indeed unusable
thanks for the info. I wanted to purchase it. I guess I’ll go with Mullvad then
I mean depends on your location. Chances are it is fine for you.
Not sure sure if you know about this but they reason they don’t allow it in other clients is the encrypted portion. However, they built a bridge recently that allows you to use it within other clients on Linux (not sure what other OS but looks like windows too) and I’ve been running it on the Evolution client since.
Yeah, I am very much aware of this. However, I prefer not to trust the encryption that happens on their servers instead of my client, so I’d consider the non-e2e mail as fully open. As for bridge - indeed it solves the problem, but it’s exclusive to paid plans, which is not what I had experience with.
Went from Google to Proton and have since moved on from Proton. If there’s one thing I wish I would’ve thought of before switching it would’ve been not using a single provider for everything.
At the end of the day it got me off Google, but with more or less the same situation I started with. Everything I was using was housed by one company. If they go under or turn evil you’re scrambling to replace all your online services at once all over again. That isn’t something I’m comfortable with so I split my service selection up and moved to multiple companies for the services I actually use.
Having everything in one place is super convenient until something happens that makes you want or need to move again. I’m happier now and ended up paying a bit less overall which is cool.
This is good advice. Don’t use a single provider for everything. I use Tuta for mail, bitwarden for pw management, selfhosted WebDAV for calendar + contacts, and nextcloud for the rest for exactly this reason. It’s much easier to migrate one service at a time than everything at once.
Who are you with now?
You can just pay for and use single services with proton though so I don’t see this as an „I wish I knew this about Proton before“
I don’t know if that makes much sense. If you lose, for example, assuming you spread it over three providers, 1/3 of your accounts, wouldn’t this already be bad enough? I think, the overhead of using so many different services simultaneously is way bigger and more real, than something bad happening to the single service I settled with. Am also with Proton for many many years (back then, it was only “ProtonMail”…) and nothing bad happened. It only got better & better over the years. It’s amazing.
I’m not sure what you mean. The “overhead” is putting your different logins into a password manager, no?
You can always manually share .ics files in emails to share calendar events. I’ve never used Proton, but I’d be shocked if their calendar can’t ics export. I think that’s literally how Outlook actually implements that, so it should “just work.”
Having to manually share ICS was a bridge too far for me. Especially if event details get updated.
I looked to see if I could get by replacing Photos with Drive in Proton. Whilst I can upload stuff. Videos greater than 100mb need to be downloaded to be watched. I guess because Google process videos to allow them to be streamed. Sadly a deal breaker for me :(
Might want to look into Immich or PeerTube.
I’ve looked at Immich a few times. I don’t really like self hosting important data as I don’t trust myself to not lose anything!
I can’t remember the video info for ente, but you might check that out for photo and video backup.
Yeah. I have a free account I used for testing. I need to give it another go really. I liked it but it is still not a patch on Google Photos in terms of usability for viewing or finding photos.
Proton bridge is scam - it only pretends that it works. I have been trying to get a support that it doesn’t sync & delete e-mails correctly for 2 years and the only “help” was to clean the cache and wait 2 hours for resyncing…
It’s not a scam. It worked perfectly first try for me back when I tried it out like a year ago.
I used it for 2 years…
Okay. I don’t understand your point. It may be broken. It may even suck ass. But it’s certainly not a scam.
- The Android widget (not app just the widget) does not have a monthly view.
- There is no office suite (I don’t know why this surprised me but it did).
Generally it’s been an overall positive experience.
ProtonMail works great, and ProtonDrive functions well on both the web and Android. However, keep in mind that upload speeds are slow, at around 4 MB/s, and there is no ‘export all’ function. The photo backup feature in the Android app works fine for me. As far as I know, the non-profit that owns the majority of the company has three owners. One of them is Andy the CEO. I don’t know the political views of the others. The ProtonDrive UI feels sluggish because the decryption process. But all in all, I am satisfied.
The one thibg I’d wish I’d known when moving from google that self-hosting is bliss. For everything else there is tuta and nextcloud.
For me it is nothing. I don’t use the VPN and I own my domain, so I keep that if I ever change providers. The calendar works fine.
Ethically I have accepted that a comment was made by someone that should not have been shared, but I also accept that there is not a single company in the world where there are zero people with whom I agree 100%. The only difference is they don’t tweet about it. I am only fooling myself if I think changing providers will make any difference. Maybe the CEO of the next provider is a racist wifebeater…
Their service has been excellent, it’s European which I aim to support and their security is heavily scriutinzed as it’s open source. I sleep well giving them money for an great service.
it’s European which I aim to support
Indeed, to be clear it’s in Europe but not in a EU country “Proton services are operated by Proton AG, a Swiss corporation whose primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland.” but they are still GDPR (data protection law from the EU) compliant, cf https://proton.me/support/is-proton-mail-gdpr-compliant
Yeah I’m Norwegian so only an EEA member as well. I consider Europe as one, regardless of EU membership.
We’re still brothers even though we haven’t joined yet.
Let us keep some control over our coastline to avoid over fishing and I would strugle to find good arguments not to join in the future. We already follow most directives anyways.
