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4 days ago
1
I’ve been a Proton subscriber for around 2 years now. I won’t be renewing my subscription for several reasons.
Overall, I just don’t think Proton is focused as a company and their core offerings are lacking even after years of customers providing feedback. I mainly subscribed for Proton Mail to be able to use a custom domain. I’m also trying really hard to de-Google my life. Proton seemed like the obvious choice to introduce more privacy in my life.
Over the years Proton Mail has not improved very much. It’s still very slow and has UI bugs.
A common UI bug I run into is that emails don’t render properly in dark mode. The text in my emails will be white along with the background, making the emails unreadable. Here is a Reddit post where a user runs into this very issue.
In regards to speed, I don’t expect Proton Mail to be blazing fast since there is end-to-end encryption, but I thought I would see a few speed improvements after a few years. That has not been the case.
Proton also released a Proton Mail desktop app that is as slow and buggy as the website. This is because it’s an Electron app. When it was released I installed it, used it for around 10 minutes, then deleted it. It offers no benefit over the Proton site itself.
Instead of focusing on optimizations and bug fixes, Proton rolled out Scribe. It’s basically an AI assistant for emails. This is the wrong area to focus in, in my opinion. Also, it feels like Proton is just following the current trend of tacking on LLMs into every product.
Aside from mail, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive, and Proton VPN were also services I was interested in. With the exception of Proton Drive, I found these services to also be lacking. Proton Calendar was barebones for a calendar and I don’t trust it to use professionally. I still use Google Calendar for scheduling important meetings. Proton VPN gets the job done, but it is not as customizable as Mullvad VPN. In my case, I like being able to choose the protocol and port to use when connecting to a VPN. Mullvad VPN lets me do that. Proton VPN does not.
Finally, Proton released Proton Wallet. This came out of the blue. I do not understand why they would work on this service when their other offerings need more work. There was a lot of community backlash on Reddit when they announced it. Here’s some more feedback that overall represents my sentiments.
This post is meant as honest feedback. Proton has a respectable mission that resonates with me. I wish Proton well and I hope I can return some day. I sincerely mean that.
2025-01-15: I was recently made aware about Proton CEO Andy Yen’s comments regarding the incoming USA administration. Do with this information what you will.
- https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
- https://archive.ph/txuJ2
- https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/
- https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
