Mostly out of curiosity, but also somewhat related to Proton’s recent political involvement, I’m curious about alternatives to using their services, open to suggestions for:
- Proton Mail: anything that can support custom domain, email aliases, and email scheduling?
- Proton Drive: not the most important, but interested in privacy first, encrypted hosting services
- Proton Pass: anything I should take a look at besides Bitwarden and Keepass?
- Proton VPN: that one’s the hardest, it was really good, I think Mullvlad is the one most often recommended?
- Proton Calendar: didn’t really care about that one, but it was nice that it connected to Mail
My Unlimited plan renewed in December so I’ll probably keep it for a year, it was nice having only one subsctiption to keep in mind, but I’m thinking of exploring other options
Lucky me I didn’t use any of their services, good luck to you for finding alternatives tho
Lots of Mullvan ppl in here, I thought Private Internet Access was supposed to be the king? What happened?
I don’t use any VPN, FWIW.
VPS with nextcloud et al
There was a recent post on [email protected]
Tuta is an excellent alternative.
Fastmail is what I use for my day to day mail. If you’re concerned about it being subject to Australian privacy laws, check out Startmail.
Mailbox.org is very good but some may find it overly complex.
I was already considering tuta as my “main” email for degoogling purposes, I’ll consider their options for the paid plan, it looks like the strongest competitor to Proton
Migadu is also a very good option, have been using it for the past 2 years after leaving Proton. Very cheap compared to other plans.
I didn’t know about them. Their about us page is interesting. If I understand correctly you must provide your own domain, is that correct?
Edit: yes, no other choice
I was thinking about subbing to Proton and researched a few other alternatives but ended up coming to the conclusion that it is kinda useless for me and most people. Unless the other person(s) you email are also using Proton or a similar service then you’re still compromised. I guess it makes sense for some people like journalists or politicians, but only if you know your peers are also using it. I ended up moving everything to iCloud which does most of what you’re looking for.
Personally I switched to a private email just so it would be one less avenue to harvest my data and habits for advertisers.
Mullvad is great. Also for drive, if you just need e2ee photo storage, check out ente.
ente
Thanks, first time hearing about them. I’ll check them out.
They have a great authenticator app too.
Do you know if it has easy backup and restore features for switching to a new phone?
It does. I’d like to send a screenshot of them but I can’t for sECuriTy PoLiCy reasons, so the skinny is encrypted, plain text and plain HTML.
He made one tweet
Then the company issues a statement
No more tweets or support
I mean, come on … it’s blown way out of water
If we did this when Google of Facebook started with shitty things now even the megacorp hellscape would be just that tiny bit better & even capital would have to work/give more for the people.
So when a Proton does a weird (which it def was, super weird, even in case of a Democrat win in USA the twaat would have been inappropriate since neither campaign ran on a pro privacy and free internet principles), this should be the reaction of its userbase.
It’s exemplary is what it is, not overblown, it is how humans shape society, how they “vote” for direction and for the people.
I agree.
They stumbled into a political mess, it was naive and foolish but it doesn’t mean the whole of proton should be written off.
I’m not looking for an alternative. Although it is also good that people have other options to share and the freedom to move providers should they wish. I will still recommend Proton to people.
Everyone has a different level of tolerance. Personally, Andy can belch all the political crap he wants since Proton is a completely separate entity. But, when the official Proton account doubles-down on views I disagree with (which they’ve since deleted), that’s what crossed my threshold. I’ve since moved to another service.
People have the right to chose their merchant in the same manner they chose their life partner… anything goes, it is personal preference.
Andy fucked up by not reading the room and now he is suffering the consequences for his brave leadership.
I am wondering who he thought his user base was now… is his this out of touch?!
He also misunderstood that while boycott google does not work because normie aint got nothing to hide and it is convenience! A gal or guy who switched to proton did so for a very specific reason and they ARE WILLING TO SUFFER for that extra inch of “freedom”
I aint switching yet but I am monitoring Proton. i expect improvements such as no ADS to paying customers.
As I mentioned in the post, this is mostly out of curiosity
He made one tweet
A tweet and then several posts form the official Proton account. Furthermore his comments were so obviously badly informed both about the US government and the nature of his userbase that he clearly lacks the critical thinking to run the company.
Also because no one mentioned them yet, Filen is great as a Drive replacement, and unlike Proton they have a Linux app.
I was pretty unhappy with his leadership of Proton since its inception. Barely any work on basic features like email or calendar, constant need to rewrite the whole thing because they had some horrible backend architecture, then prioritizing crypto wallets nobody asked for and shoving more AI into places we don’t care about.
I already canceled my paid plan and switched, and it honestly feels like a breath of fresh air. Things fucking work beautifully well compared to Proton’s garbage UX.
Maybe it is an overreaction. With copious alternatives and the footprint i had its relatively painless to move. I don’t need to stay with a service that even slightly supports things that I don’t agree with. Its my money, ill spend it how I like.
deleted by creator
Thank you for the detailed response!! I’ll study all the options ❤️
Generally, I’d recommend having different services for everything anyway just for situations like this where if one’s bad, you don’t have to change everything else. Pick what services you really need the premium for and find free tiers that match your needs on others. For VPN, I still use PIA since their reputation is still holding up. I know you said you don’t want to hear it but Bitwarden for password manager and for the rare time I need cloud storage, I use Mega since they offer 20GB on their free tier. Oh, and Disroot for email bit that doesn’t have everything you’re looking for so I can’t recommend it even if it’s been great for my use case.
Yeah that’s something that hovered in my mind for a time, not putting all my eggs in the same basket
related to Proton’s recent political involvement
You should probably check the political leanings of the directors of each of the alternatives you are considering as well.
Yeah, don’t just drop whoever opens their mouth to speak…
There is absolutely a point to shaming and boycotting everyone who acts negatively in public. Of course beeing a secret scumbag is also bad but it doesn’t promote scumbaggery to other. A quiet ass does less damage than a loud one.
The Proton CEO explicitly used Proton’s official accounts and declared them as the company’s official stance.
I don’t mind people having political views I disagree with. The lines were crossed when his absurd personal views were published :
- using company accounts
- as official statements
edit: I was asked to provide sources so please find them here: https://feddit.uk/post/23386970/14888441
May I trouble you to kindly provide sources for your statements? Your use of plurals indicates that there’s more than one tweet, and I am fascinated to learn more.
That’s such a strange way to phrase it but I’m going to opt to believe you’re human and asking in good faith.
This is what the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team stated in a response on r/ProtonMail:
Here is our official response, also available on the Mastodon post in the screenshot:
Corporate capture of Dems is real. In 2022, we campaigned extensively in the US for anti-trust legislation.
Two bills were ready, with bipartisan support. Chuck Schumer (who coincidently has two daughters working as big tech lobbyists) refused to bring the bills for a vote.
At a 2024 event covering antitrust remedies, out of all the invited senators, just a single one showed up - JD Vance.
By working on the front lines of many policy issues, we have seen the shift between Dems and Republicans over the past decade first hand.
Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
Source: https://archive.ph/quYyb
To call out the import bits:
- He refers to it as the “official response”
- Indicates that JD Vance is on their side just because he attended an event that other invited senators didn’t
- Rattles on about “corporate Dems” with incredible bias
- States “Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses” which is immediately refuted.
That was posted in ther/ProtonMail sub where the majority of the event took place: https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/
However be aware that the CEO posting as u/Proton_Team kept editing his comments so I wouldn’t trust the current state of it. Plus the proton team/subreddit mods deleted a ton of discussion they didn’t like. Therefore this archive link captured the day after might show more but not all: https://web.archive.org/web/20250116060727/https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i1zjgn/so_that_happened/m7ahrlm/
Some statements were made on Mastodon but these are subsequently deleted, but they’re capture by an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115165213/https://mastodon.social/@protonprivacy/113833073219145503
I learned about it from an r/privacy thread but true to their reputation the mods there also went on a deletion spree and removed the entire post: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
This archive link might show more but I’ve not checked: https://web.archive.org/web/20250115193443/https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1i210jg/protonmail_supporting_the_party_that_killed/
There’s also this lemmy discussion from the day after but by that point the Proton team had fully kicked in their censorship so I don’t know how much people were aware of (apologies I don’t know how to make a generic lemmy link) https://feddit.uk/post/22741653
I know its a strange way to phrase the request, but I wanted to make it explicit that it wasn’t an attack but a good faith request, as you correctly and kindly assumed.
Online discourse is a minefield these days, it’s nice when someone notices the effort you put in to not start a fight!
This is interesting stuff. When I get back to my computer I will do more research; I believe there are sites that show removed/revised reddit posts
I will, but that’s not the most important point of this post
deleted by creator
Why alternative for proton ? Once proton referred as alternative for big tech. Now alternative for proton ? What the hell ! What’s happening ?
Tutanota, infomaniak, onion mail, forward email, i2p mail
set up your own hosting solution. it is not hard, i did it too. if you need a preset one, nextcloud, filen, cryptpad, cozy, puter, internxt, cloudreve, denet
not really, Bitwarden and KeepassXC are the most established ones. for the best security and privacy, i recommend (selhosted) Bitwarden, since if your computer with KeepassXC, or even just the drive you installed it on stops working, you lose all your passwords, which really sucks. This is not an issue with Bitwarden, the passwords are stored with zero knowledge encryption, you will have all your passwords until you know the master password, and can log into the same vault from almost any device (windows, mac, linux, android, ios, bsd)
Mullvad, yes. But there are some others like Riseup, Calyx, nym vpn
For calendars, there are a shit ton of them: My favorite is Foossify Calendar, but there are some others like: Tuta calendar, etar, kalendar, calindori
- Mail and calendar: Tuta seems the only alternative for mail and calendar if you want custom domain support and encryption by default that Tuta (probably) can’t access even if legally compelled to. Doesn’t have a desktop bridge like Proton does, rather it has a full Linux app for both email and calendar. Which will be a pro for some people and a con for others. And I’m struggling to run it on my nixOS system, for the three people on earth that would matter for.
- Drive: I have a Synology NAS which handles this need very well for me, especially with my own managed wireguard VPN for access away from home
- Pass: Bitwarden
- VPN: Mullvad
I just moved to Proton before this while debacle and it definitely put me properly back on edge about who to trust in tech!
I’ll probably stick with their email and calendar for now. (Though I’m curious what hosted calendars might be out there I could use alternatives for arranging events with friends.)
I had started on Keepass before, briefly tried Proton Pass, and now have completed moving to Keepass. I keep my database in my syncthing folder and have it on all my devices. With browser plug-ins and the KeepassDX app on Android, the experience is basically identical, except entirely private and self-hosted. A win all around, I’m real happy with this.
For VPN I’m using surfshark right now and haven’t had any real issues. Not sure what the prevailing sentiment about them is though. I do sometimes find their endpoints blocked by various sites (catbox.moe is oddly very picky about this).
For drive, I’ll probably end up getting a seedbox and a lot more hardrives in the near future anyway, so that’ll be a problem/solution for me then.
For password management I moved to bitwarden as proton pass was not there yet. I like bitwardens’s zero knowledge emergency access. I can have emergency contacts access my account in the event I am no longer able to.
how does this work?
Emergency access uses public key exchange and encryption/decryption to allow users to give a trusted emergency contact permission to access vault data in a zero knowledge encryption environment:
See documentation here: https://bitwarden.com/help/emergency-access/#:~:text=Emergency access uses public key,emergency contact (the grantee).
