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Proton launches its own version of Google Docs

361 points by prng2021 2y ago

ej814170 2y ago
[flagged]
zeusly 2y ago
How good is the proton ecosystem if I have multiple mail addresses and calendars? Say I have hello@example.com and hello@example.net, can I use one unified inbox, and can I use both addresses to send and receive calendar invites? Moreover, how easy is it to combine my calendars with my work calendar? I heard it's also not possible to sync contacts with iOS, is that true?
- pshirshov 2y ago
  fastmail would be lot better. I migrated from paid proton to fastmail years ago and still happy.
  - jddj 2y ago
    Any specific improvements?
  - fullspectrumdev 2y ago
    I ended up switching to Fastmail after it being recommended here ages back, and it’s been fantastic. I’ve also used Google Workspace, O365 or whatever MS calls it this week, and Proton as well as self hosting mail in the past.
    - input_sh 2y ago
      I'm honestly shocked by how long I've been using Fastmail without having a single complaint to talk about. Usually after using a tool for an extended period of time, there's gonna be some annoyance that you just have to learn to deal with. After five or so years of me using Fastmail, I can't think of a single thing that actually bothers me.
  - buzzy_hacker 2y ago
    I pay for both, use them for different things, but to be clear, fastmail does not have the encryption features that ProtonMail does. Not a direct replacement if you’re interested in the privacy aspects.
    - input_sh 2y ago
      What encryption features? GPG works with any email provider.
- barron35 2y ago
  It's great for multiple mail addresses. I get mail from multiple domains all in my ProtonMail inbox. Very easy to send from multiple addresses as well. You can also turn on catch all addresses where you'll get all mail sent to anything @yourdomain.com. Very handy to create unique emails for sites I don't want to have my emails I actually use with contacts. I can't really comment on multiple calendars. I haven't experimented much with that and get all my invites sent to one address.
- ajb 2y ago
  Don't know about calendars. They are one of the better ones for multiple address - there's a limit on the number of a) domains) and b) email addresses you can reply from (but no limit on the number you receive from, with a catch-all). I think their different plans allow different numbers. The one what doesn't have any limits other than bandwidth is migadu. But they don't support second fact properly, last I looked.
  - ajb 2y ago
    "second factor" (can't edit the above any more)
genpfault 2y ago
No not that[1] Proton. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)
- coldpie 2y ago
  Sorry. I intentionally chose an internal codename that was ambiguous, generic, and hard to Google, just in case the name leaked before we were ready to go public. It was never supposed to be the public name, it was just another part of the Steam Play umbrella. But, in the end I guess it stuck. Oh well!
  - pmarreck 2y ago
    I just want to thank you for this awesome project you started that has largely enabled me to use Linux as a main desktop. I've long felt that gaming's "home OS" should be Linux (or at least an open-source OS... in my case, big fan of NixOS, even with its new-user warts). Especially when you look at the long term (running older games to show your kids, etc). I'm glad Gabe felt this way too (for a long time now, it seems). Microsoft is too capricious an overlord for what is essentially almost all of gaming, I think. Now if only there was something like proton for macOS that enabled windows API gaming on M1/2/3/4 Macs... (I know Apple has some sort of half-baked-seeming "game porting toolkit" that I believe might make use of it, but just something native to Steam on Mac would be sweeeeet)
    - cyberpunk 2y ago
      Do you mean… codeweavers crossover?
      - pmarreck 2y ago
        That's fair. LOL. It did begin there. Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants.
  - thelopa 2y ago
    I’ve been running Linux for ~20 years. Proton is, without a doubt, a huge leap forward for the ecosystem. I stopped dual booting Windows for games ~5 years ago and haven’t looked back. It’s positively wild to me that native Linux builds for games are often harder to get working than just using proton and the game’s windows build.
meibo 2y ago
They are falling into the hole of adding products on top of products, while their core apps are decaying. Please. Fix. The. Android app! It's unusable. I feel like I beg for them to do this in every yearly survey, and then they change the design a little bit, it loses a few features and gets some new ones, while missing basic stuff like unmarking an email as spam. This wouldn't be a problem if it was possible to use K9 or AquaMail with Proton, but that's obviously not an option.
- shinryuu 2y ago
  Are you running the latest version? They archived their old version of the android app 14th of May this year. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android
- FredPret 2y ago
  I first thought you might be able to get Proton Bridge installed on Android and then link that to the mail app you like, but turns out that's desktop-only. There is a ridiculous workaround involving a home server with Bridge and Wireguard on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/15nj8f7/comment/jvmj34i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/15nj8f7/comment...
- sofixa 2y ago
  > They are falling into the hole of adding products on top of products, while their core apps are decaying. It's not a hole, it's only natural. It's easier to add new products than it is to improve existing ones (tech debt), and new products can bring in new customers, make existing customers happier, etc. which is easier to see and justify. That being said, the Android app has some weird gaps (like can't snooze an email) that probably won't take long to fix.
  - meibo 2y ago
    > that probably won't take long to fix. That's what I told myself about the spam thing I mentioned when they released the redesign, and it's still not possible, at least on the version I'm using at the moment. I'm sure there's a lot of background here and corporate dynamics we're not aware of, it just doesn't feel great as a paying customer. The apps have never really been fully adequate.
mark_l_watson 2y ago
I am a long paid user of ProtonMail so I am glad to see more services. I am trying it now using Safari on iPadOS and it is functional except for one thing: the page layout is very narrow, just 50 columns, and I don’t see how to change that.
benreesman 2y ago
I’ve been a paid Proton user for about a year now and I can’t recommend it highly enough. They’re seriously hard core about security and privacy and the usability is easily a match for any comparable offering. When Google CAPTCHAs me on every single query from a known reputable exit node, yeah, I want that security.
- sambazi 2y ago
  [flagged]
- tylervigen 2y ago
  Interesting take. I was a paying personal customer who switched away from ProtonMail. I appreciate it for what it is, but ultimately for me it was just way too slow. The website is incredibly sluggish, and the mobile app is worse. I spent a good 5-10 seconds waiting on a loading screen everything I wanted to check my email.
  - Night_Thastus 2y ago
    Very strange. I use Protonmail with Thunderbird on desktop, and the Protonmail app on my phone. I've never once seen any slowdown. That's part of why I switched to it, it was so much faster than my prior mail. I don't interact with the website, so I can't comment on that.
notresidenter 2y ago
(Paying customer) I wish they would focus more on their existing product(s). There's a huge synergy between Calendar and Mail, but Drive, Pass, VPN, are useless (but the VPN is well-done). There's still no Caldav support or scheduling, and a lot of things are annoying in Mail, of course some of these are hard to solve with E2E, but at this point, their E2E claim is also half-baked and mostly for marketing, why not fix all of things? What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product?
- mrmetanoia 2y ago
  Agreed, happy paying customer but would rather see them investing in improving Drive. Seems like they're trying to get more enterprise-y which sucks.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  PMs get promoted when doing the shiny new thing instead of improving the dull old thing.
  - lagniappe 2y ago
    What a world we live in when even the agencies have to deal with PMs
- webkike 2y ago
  The connection is encryption, and having all of these services paid for and therefore have better support. I really like protonpass so I was happy to see that I already pay for it
  - efitz 2y ago
    Paying customer for many years. I like Proton Pass and switched to it about a month ago from 1Password. It's not quite there yet; I'm thinking of switching back. There are still some sharp edges like lack of support for credit cards, addresses, etc.
    - 2y ago
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
[dupe] Announcement post: https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40864549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40864549)
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
Does Proton support calendar delegation yet? (Same for Fastmail. Supporting assistants would open up their market.)
tech_ken 2y ago
Google docs’ value is the network effects. Everyone has a Google account, so GDocs is like a universal collaboration tool. Does not seem like there’s a huge space for something like this, it’s going to be a huge pain every time I want to share a doc with someone. Seems like it would be way better to try and distinguish their already successful products by continuing to improve their feature set. For example: their email search bar is hot garbage. Give me the perfect email and calendar client and I’ll be subscriber forever, but I definitely don’t want to pay for an ecosystem of half-finished Google knockoffs
- jlarocco 2y ago
  Not everybody has a Google account.
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nusl 2y ago
I've evaluated Proton multiple times over the years as a replacement for my existing solution, though each time it feels a bit off. I don't quite know why, but there's too much going on and, from what I understand, much of it is still half-baked or too inconvenient to use.
- pixxel 2y ago
  > it feels a bit off. I don't quite know why Maybe, subconsciously, you’ve learnt not to put all your eggs in one corporate basket.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  "much of it is still half-baked" Imo, it's not. It's more like 80% baked. More than good enough for daily use, but not on the level of polish or quality of any of the market leaders. Proton Drive is not as nice and convenient as Dropbox, Proton Mail is not as nice and convenient Gmail, Proton Pass is not as nice and convenient as 1Password, and so on. But each of their offerings are good enough to get the job done, the price is fair, and you get the added privacy.
  - poetril 2y ago
    This is exactly why I like it. I understand it won't be for everyone, but it does everything I need for daily use. Mainly mail + calendar, plus drive for some occasional file sharing/upload. The VPN works fine for what I need, and I still use a separate password manager.
- Vaslo 2y ago
  It’s years and billions behind Google. It’s a lot of work to catch up. I’ve been really happy with them and it’s great having my email domains through them
FredPret 2y ago
Meanwhile, the iPhone app is still so unreliable, I wouldn't sign up for Protonmail again today if I wasn't already in it. Pity, because on desktop - and, when it works, on mobile, it works great. I really like the company. Switching email addresses has so much friction - maybe I should keep a notebook of everyone who has my address so I can let them know of my new address.
- lucasyvas 2y ago
  Which app? They all work fine for what I expect them to do.
- yett 2y ago
  Why not buy a custom domain? You could then easily switch between providers.
  - tr3ntg 2y ago
    Adding this to "simple solutions I've never considered but wow, I should" Seriously, I've had this same thought after switching to HEY getting pretty frustrated with it. Considered other options, but worried that I'd just repeat the process. However, if I use a custom domain next time around, this whole problem goes away. Yay
    - packetlost 2y ago
      People actually paid for HEY? I tried out the closed beta for a bit and once they started asking for $100/year I very quickly decided it wasn't worth that.
    - piva00 2y ago
      I switched to using my own domain for important emails some 10 years ago, after a friend got his Google Account taken over while on a month long hike without internet. When he got back his account had been banned because they used it for click fraud, no way to contact Google to get it reinstated, he lost access to his GMail, with it all email history since 2004, logins to accounts tied to it, etc. I don't want ever to go through this nightmare.
dmw_ng 2y ago
Seems like a massive distraction from their offering for a small company, wonder why they didn't consider something like tight integration with OnlyOffice or similar. Setting out to build a new office suite feels about as sensible as building a new web browser from scratch. Except at least with a browser, you have open specs helping you through most of the endless supply of compatibility problems.
- jacooper 2y ago
  They can't, all proton products are end to end encrypted, typical solutions like onlyoffice won't work.
  - Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    For anyone: E2e does not mean 'private'.
    - jacooper 2y ago
      How?
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  I don't think they built this from scratch, they acquired a company that did something similar (Standard Notes) and are using their technology to build this.
ajb 2y ago
I always feel conflicted by these kind of announcements, because for me there is significant value in spreading my dependencies across different companies, to reduce risk. I think Proton are great, I would like them to succeed - but I'm not sure I want to put all my eggs in their basket.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  This specific case seems reasonable. Mail implies Drive (you want to keep large attachments somewhere), both imply Docs (you want to preview those docs somewhere and maybe add some edits). If you want to diversify, Pass may be a good candidate for not using it.
  - michaelmior 2y ago
    > both imply Docs You can certainly implement an attachment viewer without having a full fledged document editor.
    - ivan_gammel 2y ago
      Opening documents in read-only mode is MVP, but users often want feature parity. This topic is popular on Proton’s uservoice.
- iamkonstantin 2y ago
  Then you should welcome the announcement as it offers yet another alternative for hosting docs. I don't think Proton implies that you must use the entire bundle of services — you could always mix and match them with other providers (or self-host, for the ultimate freedom).
ognarb 2y ago
Proton does a lot of open source washing. Their public communication often mention that they are open source, while in reality only some of their clients are open source and the uploaded source code[1] often lags behind by months (currently 3 months). [1]: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients
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FlamingMoe 2y ago
There are many Google Docs alternatives, including some great open source options such as HedgeDoc and Outline. What is missing a great Excel or Sheets alternative. I wanted to break my business out of the Google Workspace ecosystem earlier this year, but the lack of a good spreadsheets alternative was one of the main things holding me back.
- jMyles 2y ago
  cryptpad?
  - jszymborski 2y ago
    Honestly, I wish Proton would have just funded cryptpad and hosted a paid instance instead.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    Hard to call it “great”. To me it feels awkward to use.
- Brechreiz 2y ago
  >great Excel or Sheets alternative cryptpad.fr
clapsclaps 2y ago
This is good news considering that it's amazing that in 2024 we still don't have any decent alternative to the Google Docs suite that is not Microsoft. In our small company we tried a self hosted Nextcloud instance and we ended up moving away from that after years of pain. Now we are in HedgeDoc, that is neither ideal because of its lack of central way to manage files collectively, etc. So, I guess good news.
- sundarurfriend 2y ago
  Is Zoho another decent alternative? I hear a good amount of praise for it here, but don't know which product(s) people are referring to and what they're good at.
  - solardev 2y ago
    I used Zoho when I was younger and trying out new technologies was still fun. Their mail, docs, CRM, contacts programs were all pretty good, and honestly technologically pretty impressive as far as user-friendly SaaSes go. It's too bad they never got popular in the West (it's an Indian company). In everyday life as an adult, they just don't have the mindshare that the big clouds have. I default to Google Workspace for everything (or whatever it's called now) because that's what everyone else in my social circle use and what most employers use, and being able to seamlessly share stuff with other Google users is much lower friction than trying to get them to sign up (much less pay for) yet another similar service. The network effect is more important than any minor difference in technical merit...
    - brightball 2y ago
      Yea, I tried going all in on Proton with my consulting work. A client who was using Google scheduled a meeting that I was invited too and I put it on my calendar. Then somebody had to move the meeting but didn’t click the option to send an update when they did. Everyone’s Google calendars updated. My Proton didn’t because they didn’t send the update. Everybody else was on time and I wasn’t, making a terrible impression. In investigating, I found that my Google calendar that had been setup prior to the Proton move also had the update even though it wasn’t on their domain. That is the network effect in action.
Pete-Codes 2y ago
Does the other person need a proton account to use it as well?
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Yes, but a free account will work.
- protonmail 2y ago
  Recipients who do not have a Proton account need to create a free or paid Proton account to access the shared content. The email invitation includes a link to the Proton sign-up page. Once account creation is successful, they will receive another email with the link that allows them to access the file.
efitz 2y ago
Did Engadget jump the gun on this one? I don't see a link, blog post or press release on any of Proton's sites, and I don't see a link in the article.
- wiether 2y ago
  Posted in another comment : https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive
bulbosaur123 2y ago
Daily reminder Proton snitched their users: https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/ https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-le...
- mindracer 2y ago
  They’re not outside the law, if the police come knocking with a legal request they have to provide data\details they have. What would you have them do?
  - fulafel 2y ago
    In this specific case of a recovery email address, maybe there is something that could be done so that they wouldn't hold the email address itself. At least 2 options come to mind.
- demosthanos 2y ago
  Daily reminder that Proton is a company that operates legally in jurisdictions that have police forces and laws. If you're a dissident in one of those countries you'll definitely need something else (or a few layers on top of Proton to protect your real IP), but it's weird to see people turning this into a moral problem with Proton.
  - rty32 2y ago
    Sure, but maybe don't advertise "protecting free speech" as part of their "impact", because it only goes so far. https://proton.me/about/impact https://proton.me/about/impact And you don't even need to be a dissident in "one of those countries". As long as Europol's arm (or some other organization that Swiss is part of) can reach you, you are not covered, as in https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/ https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/ I don't have an opinion on whether this is ok or not (protecting dissidents and protecting "real" criminals), I am just sick of false advertising. It is because of these reasons I chose Fastmail over Proton when I was looking for an alternative. The E2EE itself is almost bogus, and I would rather look for othet features that I need.
prophesi 2y ago
I see that they claim all of their apps and libraries are open source[0]. But they only link to the OpenPGP libraries they're using. Is this actually open source? Following the "Open Source" footer link[1], here they only link to the ProtonMail Github account with nothing mentioning ProtonDrive. And if it is actually open source, I'd love to see a comparison to CryptPad[2] > which is why we’ve made all our apps and encryption libraries open source [0] https://proton.me/drive/security https://proton.me/drive/security [1] https://proton.me/community/open-source https://proton.me/community/open-source [2] https://cryptpad.org/ https://cryptpad.org/
- chrisco255 2y ago
  This is their monorepo for their clients, including Proton Drive: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients
  - winter_blue 2y ago
    Oh wow. Wouldn't this make it easy for someone to just use/fork the code here to create a competitor?
    - lazyc97 2y ago
      Only the clients source code are available, so we know what data is encrypted before sending to server. The server side is closed source.
    - maronato 2y ago
      Yeah, but why would anyone use the competitor? Proton’s biggest advantages are its security and privacy. It’s hard to back that up with code and even more with plain words. Having their code be open source is a very important step in maintaining that image, and that image is not something a competitor can just plagiarize.
    - thebytefairy 2y ago
      In addition to what others have said, the license is GPL3, so a competitor would legally need to open source their app too.
lopkeny12ko 2y ago
This title is beyond confusing, and the article doesn't even attempt to make it clearer. What does "own version of Google Docs" even mean? I took two reads of the article to understand that Proton's "flavor of Google Docs" actually has nothing to do with Google and is just a collaborative document product that intends to compete with Google Docs. The title makes it sound like Proton is offering a reskinned-Google-Docs-in-an-iframe which is incredibly odd.
- protonmail 2y ago
  For a full account of the new service we're offering check this blog article: https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive
unplgtc 2y ago
Has anyone (Proton included) talked about their E2EE encryption claims for this web-based document editor? My understanding of E2EE on the web is that it's as much marketing hype as it is true security, given that they can freely break it at any time they please. Have they actually attempted to solve any problems associated with this space or are they just claiming it and getting the marketing points?
- chadsix 2y ago
  We've been addressing this by taking all of this 'trust' out of the equation at IPv6.rs which is all in the open [1] </shameless> [1] https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/ https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I’m so happy to see this. I’m not sure why people are complaining here. Maybe you just aren’t their target audience. But many of us want a privacy focused alternative to big tech.
ThinkBeat 2y ago
(Paying customer) I wish they concentrated more on their core offerings and making them as solid as possible. If they developed an entire (web) wordprocessor from scratch that seems like an enormous effort and cost quite outside of the core offerings. If they have (or will) open source it that would be grand.
attendant3446 2y ago
I just noticed this: "You can upload .docx documents, edit them". Only docx is supported?
- protonmail 2y ago
  You can upload .docx and .txt and you can export documents in those two formats, as well as in .pdf, .txt, .md, and HTML.
  - attendant3446 2y ago
    Is support for uploading/editing other formats planned? I'd like to see .odt and .md added to the list of editable formats.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
crazygringo 2y ago
Proton seems to be suggesting that this is somehow more secure than Google Docs [1]. But Google Docs/Workspace already supports what they call "client-side encryption" [2] if you want to pay for it and enable it. Docs never sees your actual data. How is this any different? Trying to go up against MS Office and Google Docs/Workspace sounds like an unbelievably difficult, huge, and therefore risky proposition -- akin to writing your own browser from scratch and trying to compete with Chrome, Edge, and Safari. Not really sure this is a wise business move for Proton. [1] https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive [2] https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897?hl=en
- MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
  > Trying to go up against MS Office and Google Docs/Workspace sounds like an unbelievably difficult, huge, and therefore risky proposition My guess is that Proton sees that it appeals to individuals wanting an alternative to Google and Microsoft's online services. Email alone is not enough to cut the umbilical, so Proton is adding more and more coverage.
  - crazygringo 2y ago
    Ah got it -- if this is aimed at individuals not businesses then it makes more sense. Also because individuals tend to mostly use only Google Docs, much less Sheets and almost no Slides -- so the Docs clone by itself would be sufficient.
    - brnt 2y ago
      Ever since Google Docs launched, it has been the most valuable thing about having an account. Document sharing and central management are a hard thing that Google Docs solves realy well. I'll be very glad to try this out.
tamimio 2y ago
Emails, password manager, VPN, and now documents—absolutely not a wise thing to do. Never put all your eggs in one basket; your whole personal and even professional life shouldn't be entrusted to a single company.
- RDaneel0livaw 2y ago
  Completely agree. I love Proton, been a paying customer for many years now. I do use the Proton Drive app all the time, and occasionally the vpn when I'm at an airport or hotel. But I refuse to use their Pass app, and I similarly will refuse to use this new docs app. I use Standard Notes for all my notes (funny enough they joined with Proton this year lol) and Bitwarden for passwords. And then I just let Apple sync all my contacts, and for calendar it's kind of required that I use the ios calendars for family member sharing reasons.
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  There's benefit to doing so, though - and that's integration. It's part of why Apple is so successful. It offers real convenience that users are genuinely willing to pair a premium for. If you want to be more cautious, sure. But the likelyhood that they're going to collapse so hard and quickly that you lose anything significant is pretty slim.
- mark_l_watson 2y ago
  Not quite right: never be in a position where there is no easy migration off any platform you use. Use a custom domain with ProtonMail or any other provider. Frequently download email, calendar, etc. from Proton, Google, etc. There are a lot of good comments in this whole conversation about nice to have Proton improvements, but I suggest we not lose sight of the benefits of not having personal and company data in the hands of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. Companies and individuals who aren’t worried about the costs and risks of the lack of privacy should not use Proton.
zurfyx 2y ago
Lexical contributor here. I love what you've build here! A full-fledged collaborative rich text editor. I'm glad that Lexical worked well for you, we'd be happy to take your feedback throughout the development process, you can reach out to me over Discord by the same username or on our server.
amatecha 2y ago
Proton's offical page about it, in case you want to head directly to the source: https://proton.me/drive/docs https://proton.me/drive/docs
Night_Thastus 2y ago
One of these days I might finally move off of just the Mail (~3$ per month) and onto a bigger plan. VPN might be nice so my ISP doesn't yell at me for torrenting if I screw it up, and my copy of VueMinder is getting pretty ancient at this point. I could stand to get a newer calendar app.
steakscience 2y ago
Seems like Proton is chasing the mythical customer that wants to run their company on the Proton suite (mail, calendar, drive, docs), because for some reason being super private is very important to the company. I don't think this segment exists. Most companies' top priority is a no hassle and reliable stack (Google or Microsoft) and not one that is trying to catch up from a feature standpoint. They should just focus on their main customer segment: individual users.
- seec 2y ago
  I agree but I also think that individuals can benefit from this new offering. They don't have to get a Google/Microsoft account for basic office needs. But I do agree that there are probably some better things to be done, I don't think they can be competitive long term, someone who needs just a little bit of collaboration or more advanced tools will run back to Google/Microsoft very fast. In a way it reminds me of the Apple Office suite: kinda cool but also very limited in many ways and a nightmare to collaborate with a wide range of people. The things you might want to use it for are pretty niche...
- pl4nty 2y ago
  and the niche customers that do need Proton's level of privacy are often more comfortable with a selfhosted product
- Sammi 2y ago
  You cannot know whether a customer exists for your product until you make it and publish it. Proton has been doing this for a while, and they still exist. This means they have validated that some users exist for their product.
- sdrinf 2y ago
  Alternative hypothesis on "job to be done": individuals attempting to de-google themselves, at least on the productivity suite. This does involve the rest of the suite as well, as individual users do, actually, have docs on google drive.
pharos29 2y ago
[dead]

361 points by prng2021 2y ago

[flagged]

How good is the proton ecosystem if I have multiple mail addresses and calendars? Say I have hello@example.com and hello@example.net, can I use one unified inbox, and can I use both addresses to send and receive calendar invites? Moreover, how easy is it to combine my calendars with my work calendar? I heard it's also not possible to sync contacts with iOS, is that true?

pshirshov 2y ago
fastmail would be lot better. I migrated from paid proton to fastmail years ago and still happy.
- jddj 2y ago
  Any specific improvements?
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  I ended up switching to Fastmail after it being recommended here ages back, and it’s been fantastic. I’ve also used Google Workspace, O365 or whatever MS calls it this week, and Proton as well as self hosting mail in the past.
  - input_sh 2y ago
    I'm honestly shocked by how long I've been using Fastmail without having a single complaint to talk about. Usually after using a tool for an extended period of time, there's gonna be some annoyance that you just have to learn to deal with. After five or so years of me using Fastmail, I can't think of a single thing that actually bothers me.
- buzzy_hacker 2y ago
  I pay for both, use them for different things, but to be clear, fastmail does not have the encryption features that ProtonMail does. Not a direct replacement if you’re interested in the privacy aspects.
  - input_sh 2y ago
    What encryption features? GPG works with any email provider.
barron35 2y ago
It's great for multiple mail addresses. I get mail from multiple domains all in my ProtonMail inbox. Very easy to send from multiple addresses as well. You can also turn on catch all addresses where you'll get all mail sent to anything @yourdomain.com. Very handy to create unique emails for sites I don't want to have my emails I actually use with contacts. I can't really comment on multiple calendars. I haven't experimented much with that and get all my invites sent to one address.
ajb 2y ago
Don't know about calendars. They are one of the better ones for multiple address - there's a limit on the number of a) domains) and b) email addresses you can reply from (but no limit on the number you receive from, with a catch-all). I think their different plans allow different numbers. The one what doesn't have any limits other than bandwidth is migadu. But they don't support second fact properly, last I looked.
- ajb 2y ago
  "second factor" (can't edit the above any more)

genpfault 2y ago

No not that[1] Proton. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software)

coldpie 2y ago
Sorry. I intentionally chose an internal codename that was ambiguous, generic, and hard to Google, just in case the name leaked before we were ready to go public. It was never supposed to be the public name, it was just another part of the Steam Play umbrella. But, in the end I guess it stuck. Oh well!
- pmarreck 2y ago
  I just want to thank you for this awesome project you started that has largely enabled me to use Linux as a main desktop. I've long felt that gaming's "home OS" should be Linux (or at least an open-source OS... in my case, big fan of NixOS, even with its new-user warts). Especially when you look at the long term (running older games to show your kids, etc). I'm glad Gabe felt this way too (for a long time now, it seems). Microsoft is too capricious an overlord for what is essentially almost all of gaming, I think. Now if only there was something like proton for macOS that enabled windows API gaming on M1/2/3/4 Macs... (I know Apple has some sort of half-baked-seeming "game porting toolkit" that I believe might make use of it, but just something native to Steam on Mac would be sweeeeet)
  - cyberpunk 2y ago
    Do you mean… codeweavers crossover?
    - pmarreck 2y ago
      That's fair. LOL. It did begin there. Everyone stands on the shoulders of giants.
- thelopa 2y ago
  I’ve been running Linux for ~20 years. Proton is, without a doubt, a huge leap forward for the ecosystem. I stopped dual booting Windows for games ~5 years ago and haven’t looked back. It’s positively wild to me that native Linux builds for games are often harder to get working than just using proton and the game’s windows build.

meibo 2y ago

They are falling into the hole of adding products on top of products, while their core apps are decaying. Please. Fix. The. Android app! It's unusable. I feel like I beg for them to do this in every yearly survey, and then they change the design a little bit, it loses a few features and gets some new ones, while missing basic stuff like unmarking an email as spam. This wouldn't be a problem if it was possible to use K9 or AquaMail with Proton, but that's obviously not an option.

shinryuu 2y ago
Are you running the latest version? They archived their old version of the android app 14th of May this year. https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-mail-android
FredPret 2y ago
I first thought you might be able to get Proton Bridge installed on Android and then link that to the mail app you like, but turns out that's desktop-only. There is a ridiculous workaround involving a home server with Bridge and Wireguard on it: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/15nj8f7/comment/jvmj34i/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/15nj8f7/comment...
sofixa 2y ago
> They are falling into the hole of adding products on top of products, while their core apps are decaying. It's not a hole, it's only natural. It's easier to add new products than it is to improve existing ones (tech debt), and new products can bring in new customers, make existing customers happier, etc. which is easier to see and justify. That being said, the Android app has some weird gaps (like can't snooze an email) that probably won't take long to fix.
- meibo 2y ago
  > that probably won't take long to fix. That's what I told myself about the spam thing I mentioned when they released the redesign, and it's still not possible, at least on the version I'm using at the moment. I'm sure there's a lot of background here and corporate dynamics we're not aware of, it just doesn't feel great as a paying customer. The apps have never really been fully adequate.

mark_l_watson 2y ago

I am a long paid user of ProtonMail so I am glad to see more services. I am trying it now using Safari on iPadOS and it is functional except for one thing: the page layout is very narrow, just 50 columns, and I don’t see how to change that.

benreesman 2y ago

I’ve been a paid Proton user for about a year now and I can’t recommend it highly enough. They’re seriously hard core about security and privacy and the usability is easily a match for any comparable offering. When Google CAPTCHAs me on every single query from a known reputable exit node, yeah, I want that security.

sambazi 2y ago
[flagged]
tylervigen 2y ago
Interesting take. I was a paying personal customer who switched away from ProtonMail. I appreciate it for what it is, but ultimately for me it was just way too slow. The website is incredibly sluggish, and the mobile app is worse. I spent a good 5-10 seconds waiting on a loading screen everything I wanted to check my email.
- Night_Thastus 2y ago
  Very strange. I use Protonmail with Thunderbird on desktop, and the Protonmail app on my phone. I've never once seen any slowdown. That's part of why I switched to it, it was so much faster than my prior mail. I don't interact with the website, so I can't comment on that.

notresidenter 2y ago

(Paying customer) I wish they would focus more on their existing product(s). There's a huge synergy between Calendar and Mail, but Drive, Pass, VPN, are useless (but the VPN is well-done). There's still no Caldav support or scheduling, and a lot of things are annoying in Mail, of course some of these are hard to solve with E2E, but at this point, their E2E claim is also half-baked and mostly for marketing, why not fix all of things? What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product?

mrmetanoia 2y ago
Agreed, happy paying customer but would rather see them investing in improving Drive. Seems like they're trying to get more enterprise-y which sucks.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
PMs get promoted when doing the shiny new thing instead of improving the dull old thing.
- lagniappe 2y ago
  What a world we live in when even the agencies have to deal with PMs
webkike 2y ago
The connection is encryption, and having all of these services paid for and therefore have better support. I really like protonpass so I was happy to see that I already pay for it
- efitz 2y ago
  Paying customer for many years. I like Proton Pass and switched to it about a month ago from 1Password. It's not quite there yet; I'm thinking of switching back. There are still some sharp edges like lack of support for credit cards, addresses, etc.
  - 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

[dupe] Announcement post: https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40864549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40864549)

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

Does Proton support calendar delegation yet? (Same for Fastmail. Supporting assistants would open up their market.)

tech_ken 2y ago

Google docs’ value is the network effects. Everyone has a Google account, so GDocs is like a universal collaboration tool. Does not seem like there’s a huge space for something like this, it’s going to be a huge pain every time I want to share a doc with someone. Seems like it would be way better to try and distinguish their already successful products by continuing to improve their feature set. For example: their email search bar is hot garbage. Give me the perfect email and calendar client and I’ll be subscriber forever, but I definitely don’t want to pay for an ecosystem of half-finished Google knockoffs

jlarocco 2y ago
Not everybody has a Google account.
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nusl 2y ago

I've evaluated Proton multiple times over the years as a replacement for my existing solution, though each time it feels a bit off. I don't quite know why, but there's too much going on and, from what I understand, much of it is still half-baked or too inconvenient to use.

pixxel 2y ago
> it feels a bit off. I don't quite know why Maybe, subconsciously, you’ve learnt not to put all your eggs in one corporate basket.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
"much of it is still half-baked" Imo, it's not. It's more like 80% baked. More than good enough for daily use, but not on the level of polish or quality of any of the market leaders. Proton Drive is not as nice and convenient as Dropbox, Proton Mail is not as nice and convenient Gmail, Proton Pass is not as nice and convenient as 1Password, and so on. But each of their offerings are good enough to get the job done, the price is fair, and you get the added privacy.
- poetril 2y ago
  This is exactly why I like it. I understand it won't be for everyone, but it does everything I need for daily use. Mainly mail + calendar, plus drive for some occasional file sharing/upload. The VPN works fine for what I need, and I still use a separate password manager.
Vaslo 2y ago
It’s years and billions behind Google. It’s a lot of work to catch up. I’ve been really happy with them and it’s great having my email domains through them

FredPret 2y ago

Meanwhile, the iPhone app is still so unreliable, I wouldn't sign up for Protonmail again today if I wasn't already in it. Pity, because on desktop - and, when it works, on mobile, it works great. I really like the company. Switching email addresses has so much friction - maybe I should keep a notebook of everyone who has my address so I can let them know of my new address.

lucasyvas 2y ago
Which app? They all work fine for what I expect them to do.
yett 2y ago
Why not buy a custom domain? You could then easily switch between providers.
- tr3ntg 2y ago
  Adding this to "simple solutions I've never considered but wow, I should" Seriously, I've had this same thought after switching to HEY getting pretty frustrated with it. Considered other options, but worried that I'd just repeat the process. However, if I use a custom domain next time around, this whole problem goes away. Yay
  - packetlost 2y ago
    People actually paid for HEY? I tried out the closed beta for a bit and once they started asking for $100/year I very quickly decided it wasn't worth that.
  - piva00 2y ago
    I switched to using my own domain for important emails some 10 years ago, after a friend got his Google Account taken over while on a month long hike without internet. When he got back his account had been banned because they used it for click fraud, no way to contact Google to get it reinstated, he lost access to his GMail, with it all email history since 2004, logins to accounts tied to it, etc. I don't want ever to go through this nightmare.

dmw_ng 2y ago

Seems like a massive distraction from their offering for a small company, wonder why they didn't consider something like tight integration with OnlyOffice or similar. Setting out to build a new office suite feels about as sensible as building a new web browser from scratch. Except at least with a browser, you have open specs helping you through most of the endless supply of compatibility problems.

jacooper 2y ago
They can't, all proton products are end to end encrypted, typical solutions like onlyoffice won't work.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  For anyone: E2e does not mean 'private'.
  - jacooper 2y ago
    How?
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
I don't think they built this from scratch, they acquired a company that did something similar (Standard Notes) and are using their technology to build this.

ajb 2y ago

I always feel conflicted by these kind of announcements, because for me there is significant value in spreading my dependencies across different companies, to reduce risk. I think Proton are great, I would like them to succeed - but I'm not sure I want to put all my eggs in their basket.

ivan_gammel 2y ago
This specific case seems reasonable. Mail implies Drive (you want to keep large attachments somewhere), both imply Docs (you want to preview those docs somewhere and maybe add some edits). If you want to diversify, Pass may be a good candidate for not using it.
- michaelmior 2y ago
  > both imply Docs You can certainly implement an attachment viewer without having a full fledged document editor.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    Opening documents in read-only mode is MVP, but users often want feature parity. This topic is popular on Proton’s uservoice.
iamkonstantin 2y ago
Then you should welcome the announcement as it offers yet another alternative for hosting docs. I don't think Proton implies that you must use the entire bundle of services — you could always mix and match them with other providers (or self-host, for the ultimate freedom).

ognarb 2y ago

Proton does a lot of open source washing. Their public communication often mention that they are open source, while in reality only some of their clients are open source and the uploaded source code[1] often lags behind by months (currently 3 months). [1]: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients

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FlamingMoe 2y ago

There are many Google Docs alternatives, including some great open source options such as HedgeDoc and Outline. What is missing a great Excel or Sheets alternative. I wanted to break my business out of the Google Workspace ecosystem earlier this year, but the lack of a good spreadsheets alternative was one of the main things holding me back.

jMyles 2y ago
cryptpad?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Honestly, I wish Proton would have just funded cryptpad and hosted a paid instance instead.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Hard to call it “great”. To me it feels awkward to use.
Brechreiz 2y ago
>great Excel or Sheets alternative cryptpad.fr

clapsclaps 2y ago

This is good news considering that it's amazing that in 2024 we still don't have any decent alternative to the Google Docs suite that is not Microsoft. In our small company we tried a self hosted Nextcloud instance and we ended up moving away from that after years of pain. Now we are in HedgeDoc, that is neither ideal because of its lack of central way to manage files collectively, etc. So, I guess good news.

sundarurfriend 2y ago
Is Zoho another decent alternative? I hear a good amount of praise for it here, but don't know which product(s) people are referring to and what they're good at.
- solardev 2y ago
  I used Zoho when I was younger and trying out new technologies was still fun. Their mail, docs, CRM, contacts programs were all pretty good, and honestly technologically pretty impressive as far as user-friendly SaaSes go. It's too bad they never got popular in the West (it's an Indian company). In everyday life as an adult, they just don't have the mindshare that the big clouds have. I default to Google Workspace for everything (or whatever it's called now) because that's what everyone else in my social circle use and what most employers use, and being able to seamlessly share stuff with other Google users is much lower friction than trying to get them to sign up (much less pay for) yet another similar service. The network effect is more important than any minor difference in technical merit...
  - brightball 2y ago
    Yea, I tried going all in on Proton with my consulting work. A client who was using Google scheduled a meeting that I was invited too and I put it on my calendar. Then somebody had to move the meeting but didn’t click the option to send an update when they did. Everyone’s Google calendars updated. My Proton didn’t because they didn’t send the update. Everybody else was on time and I wasn’t, making a terrible impression. In investigating, I found that my Google calendar that had been setup prior to the Proton move also had the update even though it wasn’t on their domain. That is the network effect in action.

Pete-Codes 2y ago

Does the other person need a proton account to use it as well?

InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Yes, but a free account will work.
protonmail 2y ago
Recipients who do not have a Proton account need to create a free or paid Proton account to access the shared content. The email invitation includes a link to the Proton sign-up page. Once account creation is successful, they will receive another email with the link that allows them to access the file.

efitz 2y ago

Did Engadget jump the gun on this one? I don't see a link, blog post or press release on any of Proton's sites, and I don't see a link in the article.

wiether 2y ago
Posted in another comment : https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive

bulbosaur123 2y ago

Daily reminder Proton snitched their users: https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-leading-to-arrest-in-spain/ https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-discloses-user-data-le...

mindracer 2y ago
They’re not outside the law, if the police come knocking with a legal request they have to provide data\details they have. What would you have them do?
- fulafel 2y ago
  In this specific case of a recovery email address, maybe there is something that could be done so that they wouldn't hold the email address itself. At least 2 options come to mind.
demosthanos 2y ago
Daily reminder that Proton is a company that operates legally in jurisdictions that have police forces and laws. If you're a dissident in one of those countries you'll definitely need something else (or a few layers on top of Proton to protect your real IP), but it's weird to see people turning this into a moral problem with Proton.
- rty32 2y ago
  Sure, but maybe don't advertise "protecting free speech" as part of their "impact", because it only goes so far. https://proton.me/about/impact https://proton.me/about/impact And you don't even need to be a dissident in "one of those countries". As long as Europol's arm (or some other organization that Swiss is part of) can reach you, you are not covered, as in https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/ https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/ I don't have an opinion on whether this is ok or not (protecting dissidents and protecting "real" criminals), I am just sick of false advertising. It is because of these reasons I chose Fastmail over Proton when I was looking for an alternative. The E2EE itself is almost bogus, and I would rather look for othet features that I need.

prophesi 2y ago

I see that they claim all of their apps and libraries are open source[0]. But they only link to the OpenPGP libraries they're using. Is this actually open source? Following the "Open Source" footer link[1], here they only link to the ProtonMail Github account with nothing mentioning ProtonDrive. And if it is actually open source, I'd love to see a comparison to CryptPad[2] > which is why we’ve made all our apps and encryption libraries open source [0] https://proton.me/drive/security https://proton.me/drive/security [1] https://proton.me/community/open-source https://proton.me/community/open-source [2] https://cryptpad.org/ https://cryptpad.org/

chrisco255 2y ago
This is their monorepo for their clients, including Proton Drive: https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients https://github.com/ProtonMail/WebClients
- winter_blue 2y ago
  Oh wow. Wouldn't this make it easy for someone to just use/fork the code here to create a competitor?
  - lazyc97 2y ago
    Only the clients source code are available, so we know what data is encrypted before sending to server. The server side is closed source.
  - maronato 2y ago
    Yeah, but why would anyone use the competitor? Proton’s biggest advantages are its security and privacy. It’s hard to back that up with code and even more with plain words. Having their code be open source is a very important step in maintaining that image, and that image is not something a competitor can just plagiarize.
  - thebytefairy 2y ago
    In addition to what others have said, the license is GPL3, so a competitor would legally need to open source their app too.

lopkeny12ko 2y ago

This title is beyond confusing, and the article doesn't even attempt to make it clearer. What does "own version of Google Docs" even mean? I took two reads of the article to understand that Proton's "flavor of Google Docs" actually has nothing to do with Google and is just a collaborative document product that intends to compete with Google Docs. The title makes it sound like Proton is offering a reskinned-Google-Docs-in-an-iframe which is incredibly odd.

protonmail 2y ago
For a full account of the new service we're offering check this blog article: https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive

unplgtc 2y ago

Has anyone (Proton included) talked about their E2EE encryption claims for this web-based document editor? My understanding of E2EE on the web is that it's as much marketing hype as it is true security, given that they can freely break it at any time they please. Have they actually attempted to solve any problems associated with this space or are they just claiming it and getting the marketing points?

chadsix 2y ago
We've been addressing this by taking all of this 'trust' out of the equation at IPv6.rs which is all in the open [1] </shameless> [1] https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/ https://github.com/ipv6rslimited/

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

I’m so happy to see this. I’m not sure why people are complaining here. Maybe you just aren’t their target audience. But many of us want a privacy focused alternative to big tech.

ThinkBeat 2y ago

(Paying customer) I wish they concentrated more on their core offerings and making them as solid as possible. If they developed an entire (web) wordprocessor from scratch that seems like an enormous effort and cost quite outside of the core offerings. If they have (or will) open source it that would be grand.

attendant3446 2y ago

I just noticed this: "You can upload .docx documents, edit them". Only docx is supported?

protonmail 2y ago
You can upload .docx and .txt and you can export documents in those two formats, as well as in .pdf, .txt, .md, and HTML.
- attendant3446 2y ago
  Is support for uploading/editing other formats planned? I'd like to see .odt and .md added to the list of editable formats.

deleted 2y ago

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crazygringo 2y ago

Proton seems to be suggesting that this is somehow more secure than Google Docs [1]. But Google Docs/Workspace already supports what they call "client-side encryption" [2] if you want to pay for it and enable it. Docs never sees your actual data. How is this any different? Trying to go up against MS Office and Google Docs/Workspace sounds like an unbelievably difficult, huge, and therefore risky proposition -- akin to writing your own browser from scratch and trying to compete with Chrome, Edge, and Safari. Not really sure this is a wise business move for Proton. [1] https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive https://proton.me/blog/docs-proton-drive [2] https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/10741897?hl=en

MetaWhirledPeas 2y ago
> Trying to go up against MS Office and Google Docs/Workspace sounds like an unbelievably difficult, huge, and therefore risky proposition My guess is that Proton sees that it appeals to individuals wanting an alternative to Google and Microsoft's online services. Email alone is not enough to cut the umbilical, so Proton is adding more and more coverage.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Ah got it -- if this is aimed at individuals not businesses then it makes more sense. Also because individuals tend to mostly use only Google Docs, much less Sheets and almost no Slides -- so the Docs clone by itself would be sufficient.
  - brnt 2y ago
    Ever since Google Docs launched, it has been the most valuable thing about having an account. Document sharing and central management are a hard thing that Google Docs solves realy well. I'll be very glad to try this out.

tamimio 2y ago

Emails, password manager, VPN, and now documents—absolutely not a wise thing to do. Never put all your eggs in one basket; your whole personal and even professional life shouldn't be entrusted to a single company.

RDaneel0livaw 2y ago
Completely agree. I love Proton, been a paying customer for many years now. I do use the Proton Drive app all the time, and occasionally the vpn when I'm at an airport or hotel. But I refuse to use their Pass app, and I similarly will refuse to use this new docs app. I use Standard Notes for all my notes (funny enough they joined with Proton this year lol) and Bitwarden for passwords. And then I just let Apple sync all my contacts, and for calendar it's kind of required that I use the ios calendars for family member sharing reasons.
Night_Thastus 2y ago
There's benefit to doing so, though - and that's integration. It's part of why Apple is so successful. It offers real convenience that users are genuinely willing to pair a premium for. If you want to be more cautious, sure. But the likelyhood that they're going to collapse so hard and quickly that you lose anything significant is pretty slim.
mark_l_watson 2y ago
Not quite right: never be in a position where there is no easy migration off any platform you use. Use a custom domain with ProtonMail or any other provider. Frequently download email, calendar, etc. from Proton, Google, etc. There are a lot of good comments in this whole conversation about nice to have Proton improvements, but I suggest we not lose sight of the benefits of not having personal and company data in the hands of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc. Companies and individuals who aren’t worried about the costs and risks of the lack of privacy should not use Proton.

zurfyx 2y ago

Lexical contributor here. I love what you've build here! A full-fledged collaborative rich text editor. I'm glad that Lexical worked well for you, we'd be happy to take your feedback throughout the development process, you can reach out to me over Discord by the same username or on our server.

amatecha 2y ago

Proton's offical page about it, in case you want to head directly to the source: https://proton.me/drive/docs https://proton.me/drive/docs

Night_Thastus 2y ago

One of these days I might finally move off of just the Mail (~3$ per month) and onto a bigger plan. VPN might be nice so my ISP doesn't yell at me for torrenting if I screw it up, and my copy of VueMinder is getting pretty ancient at this point. I could stand to get a newer calendar app.

steakscience 2y ago

Seems like Proton is chasing the mythical customer that wants to run their company on the Proton suite (mail, calendar, drive, docs), because for some reason being super private is very important to the company. I don't think this segment exists. Most companies' top priority is a no hassle and reliable stack (Google or Microsoft) and not one that is trying to catch up from a feature standpoint. They should just focus on their main customer segment: individual users.

seec 2y ago
I agree but I also think that individuals can benefit from this new offering. They don't have to get a Google/Microsoft account for basic office needs. But I do agree that there are probably some better things to be done, I don't think they can be competitive long term, someone who needs just a little bit of collaboration or more advanced tools will run back to Google/Microsoft very fast. In a way it reminds me of the Apple Office suite: kinda cool but also very limited in many ways and a nightmare to collaborate with a wide range of people. The things you might want to use it for are pretty niche...
pl4nty 2y ago
and the niche customers that do need Proton's level of privacy are often more comfortable with a selfhosted product
Sammi 2y ago
You cannot know whether a customer exists for your product until you make it and publish it. Proton has been doing this for a while, and they still exist. This means they have validated that some users exist for their product.
sdrinf 2y ago
Alternative hypothesis on "job to be done": individuals attempting to de-google themselves, at least on the productivity suite. This does involve the rest of the suite as well, as individual users do, actually, have docs on google drive.

pharos29 2y ago

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