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.
I wish I had know both how painless it was AND how happy (even proud) I’d be about it!
Honestly the 1 thing that matters is : having your data backed-up. Everything else is secondary. Sure, you will have some UX hiccups, the UI will be new, some tools won’t behave exactly like you are used to, so what? Live and learn the same way you did with Google products. We have been absolutely brainwashed (and I do mean “we”, I don’t mean “you”) to believe that whenever there is a big bright BigTech logo, it’s safe and easy. It’s not! We are just used to it and when we genuinely think back, we did learn where everything is. When things change we assume we’re at fault.
Anyway… if you are genuinely nervous, just try for a month and rollback or, IMHO better, switch to another provider. I’ve been a paying Proton customer for years (all services) and I like it but it’s not perfect either. If Proton goes to shit, I’ll switch.
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…
Existing aliases continue to work on Simplelogin. And I wish I would have known that beforehand.
Duckduckgo has 1 alias for each device
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!
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.
Not sure about the Mail app, but the Calendar app was definitely slow, though I believe that’s because it didn’t have offline caching and just fetched from the site every time you opened it up. Terrible, lazy design IMO.
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?
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 need to log into 3 different mail accounts, at least. If you have different important mail accounts per provider… I personally find this a mess.
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“
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?
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.
It costs money to be worth a darn.
Anything Proton costs money to be worth a darn.
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Having to manually share ICS was a bridge too far for me. Especially if event details get updated.
I use Proton mail for a mailing list that’s hosted and managed by a local linux users group. The messages from the mailing list arrive as .eml files, with each message as an attachment. the native web browser cannot read the attachments. I have to download each message, either individually or all of them as a single zipped file. It might be the fault of the admin of the mailing list and not Proton’s fault. I’m not sure. It’s not very active so I never bothered to look into the issue. it’s a hassle but not a problem. I thought .eml was a standard email format so it seemed odd that the web client could not read it.
i also occasionally use proton drive to back up my plaintext journal every 3-6 months. i backup to mega as well. proton drive has 2 gb of storage on the free plan. mega has 20gb. my journal is 6.9 MiB across 166 files. i have plenty of storage for my use case. i do not store anything sensitive. so that’s not a concern.
I use posteo.de/en for email and we use the calender as a shared family calender with my wife.
Works fine for me, but we don’t really use the calender to share events with others, so I am not sure how well that works.
Dont delete the gmail. As much as I want to move on…i still remember the occassional account tied to my gmail, and Im so, so thankful I can still get whatever notification, reset password, etc. I dont know when I’ll feel comfortable deleting it. As long as Im getting emails, I can at least use it to reference what accounts still need to be moved over.
So despite “moving” emails I kind of just added one. But not a big deal, and the safety net is nice.
Mail search is SO BAD - on EVERY DEVICE I make a database on.
I really wish I’d known that before I moved like 15 years of Gmail (and other accounts) over!
SO BAD. smh.
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.
That’s correct. You get better export tools with Google compared to Proton. Because of this alone I’d recommend not storing your important data with Proton
Get a custom domain so that your new email address isn’t tied to Proton. If Proton goes to shit it will be much easier to just take [email protected] with you to your new email provider. I wish I had done this with Gmail so that it would’ve been easier to move to Proton.
Mail@name is so much better than mine first@fullname.
100% this! Proton pass is convenient, but their email forwarding locks you into their ecosystem, and they limit your aliasing for your own custom domain. I started using it, and its nice, but I wish I knew about annonaddy before. I’d prefer making aliases using a custom domain so if i have to respond with a forwarded alias I can manage a way to reply from it, plus if I ever decide to leave proton, its not a road block. Sure you can usually change email addresses on sites, but may end up being a ton of work depending how many aliases you have, and how annoying the site makes it.
Apparently proton pass has a custom domain function I was unaware of until now. Looks like you have to go into settings > aliases. There is an ‘add custom domain’ button, assuming you need the domain added to your proton account with a catchall address maybe?
Oof. Didn’t know that was the case. That’s rough.
