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New ProtonMail
- teekert 5y agoIt's amazing what they offer for free. But it is just a bit too amazing what it will cost to move my wife and 2 kids and our domains over. It's a shame, I do really want to pay them but I find it difficult to justify. Or wait, now that I check again, it changed... I see that now I can have "1 - 5000 users *" for 6.25 eur/month? Is that real? A real inbox per user? Why is it only 6 users when I go to 24 eur/month? Do they mean aliases? I think they used to mean aliases... I'm confused now. * Customizable features (:S)
- 9dev 5y agoYou could also consider buying a cheap, low-tier VPS somewhere and install Mailcow (https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized https://github.com/mailcow/mailcow-dockerized). Takes around half an hour to set up, flawless, worry-free, fully-featured email stack on your own infrastructure. Comes in cheaper than ProtonMail, too.
- avinassh 5y agoDoes it filter spam well? One of the main reason I don't want to host my own email server is efficient spam filtering
- Avamander 5y agoUnlikely. The threats vary tremendously and spam advances constantly. Nothing short of ML can filter "well", "good enough" maybe.
- monkin 5y agoEven if the VPS is $5 a month it’s way more than using Migadu[1] which has a $19 plan with “unlimited” domains and aliases. Not even mentioning the burden of configuring, upgrading, and maintaining mailcow. https://migadu.com https://migadu.com
- gruez 5y agobut is it end to end encrypted?
- jackson1442 5y agoEnd to end encryption in email is a myth (unless you actually go through the process of encrypting your messages with a PGP key—that can be done with any provider), all ProtonMail does is encrypt your email on receipt.
- gruez 5y agoSorry, that's what I meant. With a VPS you're in control of the retention policy. With a managed provider you basically have no idea. Encrypting on receipt mitigates this.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoThe Professional level is per user pricing and yes they are real user's. The Visionary plan is basically a discounted plan ($30/6 = $5/user vs $8/user) that has shared storage. At 4 people, the visionary plan sounds like the way to go. Prices I see are a little bit different from what you are seeing but the pricing structure should be the same.
- teekert 5y agoOh yes so it’s 6.25 x the amount of users indeed. So that’s 25 a month for the family. It’s just a bit too much. I pays this per year now roughly with unlimited mailboxen. Sure, I’d pay more for ProtonMail, but not this much.
- jb1991 5y agoOne thing I’ve heard in the past but I am not educated enough on the subject to understand, is that proton mail‘s privacy features only work if both sides of an email are encrypted, and since most people are not using proton mail, there isn’t a lot of value in it most of the time. Is this true? Is this a service mainly for people who are emailing other people on similar services?
- teekert 5y agoSure, if the person you send your message to receives his email on "leaky outdated OS with leaky outdated software" and refuses to use TLS. The chain is as strong as the weakest link in this case.
- BitwiseFool 5y agoI don't use ProtonMail because I expect a secure chain of communication for all my correspondence. I use it because I want to avoid having my inbox in the hands of Google/Microsoft. But I'm only a casual user and maybe one day I'll be more serious about ProtonMail's privacy features.
- jb1991 5y agoWhat about the other alternatives, like fastmail? I mean what made you choose proton mail specifically?
- BitwiseFool 5y ago
- c7DJTLrn 5y agoBeen a ProtonMail customer for years, still pretty dissatisfied. They've been promising U2F (a pretty standard security feature) for years, yet there is still no sign of it in this release. They've spent years obsessing over calendars for some reason instead of their core product. They also took a very long time to open source their IMAP bridge which caused me to further lose love for them. PM also blatantly lie in their advertising. They cannot provide end-to-end encrypted mail because limitations in existing email protocols prevent it. All they can do is quickly wrap the contents of your mail in encryption once it has arrived. With Apple now starting to offer unlimited email aliases to their premium users, I think ProtonMail will fall behind by only offering a handful.
- beermonster 5y agoThis [1] seems pretty clear to me in how they provide e2ee email. [1] https://protonmail.com/security-details https://protonmail.com/security-details
- nix23 5y ago>They cannot provide end-to-end encrypted mail because limitations in existing email protocols prevent it You misunderstood something, end-to-end encrypted mail just works from a proton to a proton address. >Messages between ProtonMail users are also transmitted in encrypted form within our secure server network. https://protonmail.com/security-details https://protonmail.com/security-details But yeah, the free storage is a joke and the complicated add-on pricing too. Calendar and imap on the other-hand is pretty important for me. BTW: When did Apple open-sourced their email server?
- c7DJTLrn 5y ago>You misunderstood something, end-to-end encrypted mail just works from a proton to a proton address. No, I am aware of this, but PM's advertising lies by omission. >When did Apple open-sourced their email server? I'll counter this by asking when ProtonMail open sourced theirs.
- 5y ago
- pembrook 5y agoTried ProtonMail a few years ago but couldn't find a reason to switch from Fastmail (which has been excellent IMO). The number one Fastmail feature for me their excellent support for Aliases, so I can run 5 different domains and multiple email addresses for each domain from a single interface. It didn't seem like Protonmail could do this as elegantly. Anything I'm missing by not being on Protonmail?
- beermonster 5y agoDo Fastmail have the ability to read your email?
- rascul 5y agoYes. And ProtonMail could also, if they desire it (if that functionality isn't there already). Email is plaintext, if you don't want something to be read you need to encrypt it before it goes out the wire.
- beermonster 5y agoThat's not true see their zero access encryption[1] https://protonmail.com/blog/zero-access-encryption/ https://protonmail.com/blog/zero-access-encryption/ If you're saying they could change the functionality to reverse this or backdoor it then erm.. yes.. maybe. I guess if you're not going to trust anyone (and personally I'd trust ProtonMail based on their honest blog posts, security responses and response to security blog posts criticising their work) then you'd want to self-host. But I'd argue at that point email isn't the solution you're looking for.
- rascul 5y agoThis from the link you shared: > Someone using a Gmail account sends an email to a ProtonMail account. When it arrives at ProtonMail, our servers can read that email because Gmail does not support end-to-end encryption. However, after receiving the email, we encrypt it immediately using the ProtonMail account owner’s public encryption key. Afterwards, we are no longer able to decrypt the message. It's noted that they can potentially read it but they encrypt it right away. I'm not saying that they have the functionality to read it in that step, I'm saying they could add it if they chose to. It's their code, after all. > I guess if you're not going to trust anyone (and personally I'd trust ProtonMail based on their honest blog posts, security responses and response to security blog posts criticising their work) then you'd want to self-host. But I'd argue at that point email isn't the solution you're looking for. I think you're reading too much into my post. I'm saying that the potential exists for the provider to read the messages, simply because email is a plaintext protocol (outside of things like GPG and S/MIME which I insinuated but didn't actually mention). I do, however, agree with you that if you don't want to trust anyone than other solutions would be more beneficial.
- memco 5y agoThe post is a little light on details: is this just a UI refresh? If so, it would be nice to hear what specifically was wrong with the old UI or in what ways the UI tangibly improves the process of writing, reading or managing emails.
- bartbutler 5y agoUI refresh, SSO/persistent sessions, and because this crowd might care, the whole app was rewritten from scratch to transition from Angular v1 to React, which simply had to be done and retired an enormous amount of technical debt.
- roberto8647 5y agoI've been a ProtonMail, and Beta ProtonMail user, for some time now. I do feel the Beta brought a lot of improvements, but for some reason they removed the VIM bindings halfway through the Beta and never reintroduced them. It's something that seems small, but really interrupts your flow when you can't use the j/k keys to scroll through your email on the web.
- sequoia 5y agooh no... I've been holding off on the beta for precisely this reason. I'm a paid Protonmail user and I accept a lot of the tradeoffs of using it (no pop/imap, kind of a clunky client etc.), but this will definitely be the last straw. If I can't use another client & they break theirs, that will make me sad.
- yewenjie 5y agoIs there a secure mail server that I can self-host without reading a lot about how email works? And, if I do really want to understand how email works and how to get the perfect setup for me, what's a good introduction to read?
- hoppyhoppy2 5y ago>if I do really want to understand how email works https://explained-from-first-principles.com/email/ https://explained-from-first-principles.com/email/
- yewenjie 5y agoWow. This is of unusually high-quality.
- Avamander 5y ago> Is there a secure mail server that I can self-host without reading a lot about how email works? E-mail is generally very shitty to set-up, quite often because the software is just incredibly shit. It's easy to footgun in subtle ways. Spam filters and spam filtering add an another layer of complexity that requires a reasonable amount of effort, building up reputation, flawless sending. Good luck if you ever end up on a blacklist. I'm not saying it's impossible, some all-in-one product _might_ work and _might_ not be high-maintenance. Things like maddy sound very promising. But I'd be wary, especially when you don't know much about e-mail it's difficult to detect potential issues as well.
- moogly 5y agoI got a ProtonMail account just weeks before the infamous hacking/ransom. The fact that they _paid the ransom_ made them a no-go for me, and I never started using the account. Also, AIUI, the fact that their accounts are free makes the service attractive for spammers, so email sent via their mail servers tend to get marked as spam. I have since moved from Gmail to Fastmail and like it quite a lot. Any reasons for why I should reevaluate? Fastmail costs money, yes, but there are other free alternatives now like Tutanota, which I surmise has the same issue in regards to spam.
- Avamander 5y ago> infamous hacking/ransom. That was DDoS extortion, wasn't it? Probably cheaper and much faster than buying mitigation, I'd suspect they've improved in that aspect by now. > Also, AIUI, the fact that their accounts are free makes the service attractive for spammers, so email sent via their mail servers tend to get marked as spam. Not by any normal service provider.
- moogly 5y agoYeah, it was DDoS. Attacks continued after they paid up, to no one's surprise. When researching what email provider to choose a few years ago, I found a lot of tales about it being a haven for spammers and with the baggage all that entails, but maybe that was pure FUD? Difficult to tell in my position.
- Avamander 5y ago> I found a lot of tales about it being a haven for spammers and with the baggage all that entails, but maybe that was pure FUD? There's simply so much more lower-hanging fruit for spamming. Why deal with the mess that is signing up and all that jazz? I'd say it's definitely a risk, like with all other providers, but not more so than with others.
- willis936 5y ago>Any reasons for why I should reevaluate? That depends: are you cool with google reading your emails and selling the content to advertisers?
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI am a long time customer, but there are things that keep me from much using ProtonMail. My major pain point is lack of semantic understanding of e-mail content / calendar integration. When I get an email with a hotel or airline reservation, in my world, I want an automatically generated calendar entry. I try to limit my use of tech and devices to about four hours a day, but I want that time to be hyper productive. I like ProtonVPN, no complaints about that. I like their web interface in general, but having a combined email and calendar app for both iOS and iPadOS, with email/calendar auto calendar entries would be fantastic.
- GuB-42 5y agoIsn't it impossible? I mean, to provide semantic understanding of content, they need to read content, and the value proposition of ProtonMail is that it is E2E encrypted, i.e. they can't read your mail.
- greenshackle2 5y agoCould it not be done entirely client-side?
- mark_l_watson 5y agoI think it could absolutely be done client side.
- tristan957 5y agoI don't need my email provider reading my emails. This is a feature.
- beermonster 5y agoAnd unless I've misunderstood Fastmail's service, on a cursory glance of the service they offer, isn't something they offer.
- protonmail 5y ago
- theschmed 5y agoI’ve been a Protonmail user for about a year. Previous to that I used GMail and Outlook.com. My favorite thing about the new v4 interface is that it makes the settings mobile-friendly. My Filters (eg send all emails from x to Archive) can be easily updated from my phone. I couldn’t do that from Outlook or GMail. PS to those holding off on Protonmail due to lack of support for catchall on your custom domains on the Pro plan, I recommend ForwardEmail.net. It’s free, privacy-focused and has worked perfectly for me.
- recursivedoubts 5y agoIf you are reading this protonmail, I would very much like to be able to have the emails within a thread sorted with the latest one on top, so that when I get many emails from a given emailer with the same subject, I do not end up at the bottom of the screen. I can't find this option if it already exists.
- protonmail 5y agoThanks for the feedback. At the moment, emails in a thread are sorted with the latest one at the bottom. However, we'll share your feedback with the team to be considered.
- recursivedoubts 5y agoThank you. I know it is a little top-posty, but older email clients worked this way, and outlook.com still does. It makes more sense to me, for the same reason newer emails in the first column are at the top. Obviously this would need to be an option, as I'm sure there are people who prefer the current behavior. Also, and I understand this is a reach, but if you could please ask you engineering team to rewrite the whole front end in htmx, that would be great. :)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 71a54xd 5y agoFor those who don't know, if you plan to use a security model analogous to "one protonmail per account" please don't do this. I made maybe 1-3 new accounts every other week for 2-3 months and at random, Protonmail disabled all my accounts. This was not me making 2 accounts daily, there was no warning or really any indication that I was supposedly breaching their moronic "anti fraud" system. I had to complain on their subreddit AND twitter for them to do anything about it and to this day I still receive notifications to backup emails that "I've received a new message in my protonmail account" but cannot actually access said protonmail account. For now, I've just resorted to hosting email on namecheap and AWS, DO NOT consider protonmail as a "secure" stand in for gmail - it's flat out not worth it and their support is basically non-existent.
- tompazourek 5y agoI think the same concern exists with Gmail as well... It would be good if there was a better alternative than self hosting.
- tristan957 5y agoThis is clearly laid out in the ProtonMail TOS. You are allowed one personal account. Any other accounts are at risk for removal.