10 ms·

(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

(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.
  - cquintana92 2y ago
    Proton Pass supports Credit Cards as a paid feature!
    - szszrk 2y ago
      I'm curious why it's important? Do you pass on card details manually that often?
      - cquintana92 2y ago
        Autofilling when buying online, having the details handy/ready to be copied if autofill is not an option, keeping track of them in a single place while being encrypted together with other personal info... To me the benefits are many! (Disclaimer: Work in Proton Pass)
        szszrk 2y ago
        Thats cool but also so unusual for me. You just don't add card details at all here, and if you do, you just trust that service and save it permanently. If someone is actual heavy card user, he will have temporary/shortlived cards anyway.
  - digging 2y ago
    Bitwarden is pretty great.
  - tamimio 2y ago
    Keepassxc, or bitwarden, you can run your own instance too.
  - coffeeling 2y ago
    I've found Proton Pass to struggle with autofill in some situations where BitWarden doesn't, and their create alias+create new login for alias flow has failed me sometimes, which is awkward, to say the least.
juandemarco 2y ago
Missing Caldav support is really painful. I've had to spin up my own Caldav container (Radicale) and leave Proton Calendar behind, but I'm still unable to send calendar event notifications from any calendar app on mobile, only from thunderbird.
domh 2y ago
CalDAV and CardDAV support missing is the only reason I still have a google account. I understand it's "tough" with e2ee but adding support to the bridge would be perfectly sufficient, then at least I could use local Calendar/Contact apps.
- aarmenaa 2y ago
  I've been considering switching from Fastmail to Proton for Mail/Calendar/Contacts, but I didn't realize their bridge didn't do CalDAV or CardDAV. Also, apparently the bridge is desktop-only -- no mobile? That's kind of a deal breaker.
  - autorizo 2y ago
    Fastmail has mail/calendar/contacts with caldav and carddav support.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  It's pretty easy to self-host CalDAV and CardDAV. I went with Baïkal, it took me maybe 15 minutes to install on a server, it's supported by all of the calendar tools I use, and it's worked perfectly fine for a few months now. So now I'm completely free of Google. Maybe not for everyone, but a way more feasible option than most people seem to realize.
  - acidburnNSA 2y ago
    Agreed! I used radicale for the same purpose. Very easy installation given I already had a VPS. https://radicale.org https://radicale.org
  - domh 2y ago
    Yeah I've investigated it a couple of times but never pulled the trigger with self-hosting. Could run it on my rpi and access via Tailscale, but seems like something that should be provided by the email provider that I pay money for. They also do have Contacts and Calendar products, but they're completely self-contained and apparently can only be used by protonmail which is mostly pointless.
rapnie 2y ago
This. Also a paying customer. My Android mail app is definitely not fully baked. At times it drains my battery trying unsuccessfully to fetch notifications. Other times it fetches a ton of notifications I had already seen. Proton is on a good path in many ways, but these rapid launches of new apps will kill the company if they don't do it well.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
KeyBoardG 2y ago
It is interesting to watch them try to grow so quickly. At some point they'll need to turn more profit to hold all this scale up. We'll see if they can stick to the privacy claims or start to sell out.
- jacooper 2y ago
  They are already profitable without any VC investments.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  They just switched to a non-profit system of governance.
jacooper 2y ago
They can't add direct caldav support because it's e2ee, they should add a caldav bridge to their mail bridge, they also should work on contact sync. I agree that drive is underpowered, they still don't have a syncing client on Linux, and their android/iOS client is quite limited and the photo integration is really half baked. However Pass is really great, it has better UI/UX compared to Bitwarden.
mzajc 2y ago
Edit: they have since added support for this, my bad --- I am still bummed that ProtonMail doesn't support automatic forwarding. Their rationale is that E2EE makes this impossible, but most of my incoming mail is unencrypted anyway, and I could decrypt the rest myself with Thunderbird and GPG. Lack of automatic forwarding support makes it harder to switch mail providers, on the other hand.
- cedws 2y ago
  It’s misleading marketing. They sell their email service as “E2EE”, even though the majority of emails flowing through their system are in fact NOT end to end encrypted, they’re visible to Proton in plaintext upon receipt. This is a fundamental limitation of email protocols. You only get E2EE by using PGP at both ends.
  - mzajc 2y ago
    Indeed, and as far as I understand, even PGP-encrypted mail can be automatically forwarded and viewed easily, provided I have the correct PGP key installed in my client.
  - mikegreenberg 2y ago
    This is a matter of semantics... anyone who actually cares about E2EE probably understands the nature of email being cleartext over the wire and that Proton can't control what is outside of their control. Maybe inaccurate but I doubt they are misleading (in the sense that they are hoping to fool people into thinking their email is encrypted over the wire). Marketing copy would not likely care to include "E2EE" .... "at the point that Protonmail recieves your message" on their frontpage. Further, this is explain quite clearly on their FAQ: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained </pearlclutching>
    - codetrotter 2y ago
      I’m gonna start selling sugar-free soda and when people point out that there is sugar in the soda I’ll explain to them that the sugar was added to the mixture by a different supplier before the mixture arrived at my factory. My factory does not add any sugar to the soda. Therefore it’s clearly fair to market it as sugar-free!
tailspin2019 2y ago
Also a paying customer. I completely agree. They keep doing this, widening their scope constantly while every new product launched seems to get less ongoing attention than the last one.
- jamil7 2y ago
  Probably gunning for enterprise contracts in which they need an answer to every service and product.
0x1ch 2y ago
I can't even search on the mobile app for android... I could about two years ago until they decided to push out half baked rewrites or something.
triceratops 2y ago
The VPN is "well-done" but "useless"?
- ffsm8 2y ago
  VPN are pointless for the vast majority of people. You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton. Downloading copyrighted media is pretty much the only usecase I can think of for such a service, and most people don't do that. The only other usecase would be to conceal your traffic on a public wifi, but you'd be better served just going through your home connection at that point. Pretty much all decent routers provide you with dyndns+VPN services builtin
  - balls187 2y ago
    Avoid region restrictions are the biggest usecase. A number of my friends use VPNs exclusively for this purpose, geberally because they are big sports fans.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    That is like your opinion, man. VPNs are critical for getting around shenanigans when working out in the world. Especially from sketchy last miles.
    - ffsm8 2y ago
      You're right, I forgot geo blocking entirely as all services I've used it on added mitigations over the years. The last time I've successfully used a VPN for that was around 2015, but there might be services around (which I just dont use) that can still be unlocked by changing the IP, so that'd be a valid usecase for a few people
  - digging 2y ago
    > Pretty much all decent routers provide you with dyndns+VPN services builtin Most people don't know how to use that or that it even exists. Hell, I didn't know it existed until right now and I'm decently tech savvy. > You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton. Yes absolutely, this is the reason I use a VPN. I have negative trust of every ISP in the USA. They will harvest and sell your browsing history to anyone who will buy it. I have no doubt about that. Some VPN providers probably won't.
tossandthrow 2y ago
Yep. In the end I switched away from proton due to their negligence on this core product suite.
tombert 2y ago
If this is a Proton grievance panel, I really wish they'd optimize their web app, at least with Firefox. If I leave the Protonmail tab open, the amount of CPU and RAM usage for Firefox just spikes up like crazy, and it shoots back down once I close that tab. I can get around this with the ProtonMail Bridge and using Mutt, which works fine and makes me feel cool, but the web app is considerably more convenient.
- dinglestepup 2y ago
  Hm, I have Proton Mail in a pinned tab in FF (Mac) - no issues at all. The only time I re-open it is when FF restarts after an update (~once a month).
  - tombert 2y ago
    I feel like this is a somewhat recent change, so I don't know what happened on my computer or within Protonmail; I have an Intel Macbook Pro, and it really seems to slow everything down. Maybe I screwed up a setting but as I said everything else seems to work fine and when I use the Protonmail Bridge it works fine.
    - dinglestepup 2y ago
      Yes, could potentially be related to a different CPU architecture, but could also be something else eg RAM capacity (I have 64GB) or Proton Mail settings (do you have offline enabled? I don't).
      - tombert 2y ago
        I have 64gb of RAM as well. I don't think I have offline enabled. My CPU is an i9. I'm happy enough with my Mutt solution, and the iOS app is generally ok, and I do like the service overall, so while I complain it's not out of hatred. I just want the service to get better.
- digging 2y ago
  Both their web app and their android app are extraordinarily sluggish, unfortunately. And I currently am forced to use the web app in a PWA on my phone because the Android app has a current bug where the contents of emails won't load. In other words it's 100% useless, and I uninstalled. By the PWA is agonizing to use, so I've been missing emails lately. For a service to keep getting worse over the years when I want to like it is difficult to swallow, but every day I'm a little closer to canceling my subscription.
jamil7 2y ago
Also a paying customer, I'd like it if they would email an invoice every month instead of me needing to go login to the web UI and dig for it when I do my monthly tax reporting.
- KingOfCoders 2y ago
  If this is invoice griefing group, please 1. Everyone make invoices PDF 2. Send them out every month 3. If I need to log in, make them easy to find on the first page 4. Name them <company>-<invoice>-<date>-<number>-<amount>.pdf Thanks!
  - jamil7 2y ago
    I know right, especially number 4, more often than not I get emailed basically <UUID>.pdf.
  - calvinmorrison 2y ago
    a new document has arrived to your document portal.
    - KingOfCoders 2y ago
      This is a startup I wanted to found 10 years ago when writing an inhouse invoice PDF (+ thumbnails etc.) plattform
  - dx034 2y ago
    My biggest issue with Backblaze B2. It’s so much effort to get my invoice each month. I don’t get why companies send out billing emails but don’t just attach the invoice or insert a link directly to the invoice.
    - KingOfCoders 2y ago
      Same, also Backblaze customer :-)
CivBase 2y ago
> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? I suspect they're attempting to build up an attractive package for business customers, competing with the likes of O365 and G-Suite. There's probably a lot more money in that than in personal email hosting.
vishnugupta 2y ago
> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? New product often means new segment of customers they can go after. Whereas refining existing ones will help reduce the churn. Their sales/marketing pitch gets that much better.
frenchman99 2y ago
I'm even more convinced that me being a Fastmail customer is a good thing. Fastmail has been rock solid for years. Their email, calendar and contacts solutions work well with iOS and android (using the DAVx app). WebApps work flawlessly on Firefox. They have all sorts of customisation for spam filtering, catch all email addresses, etc. They don't do all the things (vpn, passwords, drive, what have you). But what they do, they do very well.
- lloeki 2y ago
  > android (using the DAVx app) It borderlines on the insulting that Google refuses to support CardDAV and CalDAV OOTB.
- stavros 2y ago
  I'll second this, I've had absolutely zero issues with Fastmail over many years. It always just works, and is super fast.
- fhd2 2y ago
  Absolutely, very happy Fastmail customer here! My only qualm is that their apps could be better at multi account (switching is too much of a hassle), but that's the only problem I ever had, and I work around it by using different mail/calendar clients. If you just have a single account with them though, their app is quite excellent and has everything (mail, calendar, notes), no need to get multiple apps and stuff like DAVx unless you want to.
  - anotherhue 2y ago
    Fastmail Employees Form a Union (6 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656727 Fastmail lays off 60% of union bargaining committee in surprise restructure (9 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778214 It's a good product, no longer so sure about the company.
    - fhd2 2y ago
westpfelia 2y ago
I can see it as trying to compete with say a google in all competencies. So hopefully once they have tool parity with Gsuite they would buckle down and work on features of each application?
- al_borland 2y ago
  They need to keep in mind that Google spend decades getting to where they are with the current toolset. Proton shouldn't be expected to replicate it in a couple years. I'm sure people are asking for this stuff, but I hope it is sustainable. I'm a paying customer and only use the email today. With the pace of these releases, I'm not comfortable investing in these new tools, because I'm not sure how long they'll be around. I'm starting to question the email choice, since I'm worried they are spreading themselves too thin. I'm not sure what their financial situation is like, but I hope this isn't all from a bunch of funding or debt they will need to answer for at some point.
  - karlzt 2y ago
    >> Google spend decades getting to where they are with the current toolset. Proton shouldn't be expected to replicate it in a couple years. Well, with AI that's probably possible now.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  certainly not in all competencies, but there is definintely a demand for O365 or GSuite that's not going to actively datamine the hell out of you. This isn't even a "im a paranoid l33t hacker", just that I don't want someone capturing 100% of every document and communication in my business. like holy shit, we're gonna let MS hookup their AI to monitor everything all the time? cuz that's what my org is doing with Copilot...
swatcoder 2y ago
As soon as somebody decides that a brand's future requires adding more top-level features rather than specializing in top-of-class delivery of core features, product design becomes an endless treadmill (death spiral?) of adding "yet another half-baked product" That's not to say that "one thing well" products are sure to be viable, and the "bullet point maximizers" that dominate product design for the last 10-15 years may know best, but this is what it looks like once they run the show either way.
- viccis 2y ago
  This happened so bad with Wyze. They had a really great little camera for a very brief time. Then I turn around and they're just a white box product reseller, with everything from vacuums to earbuds. Meanwhile, their camera service is a shadow of its former self.
treprinum 2y ago
What irritates me is that their ProtonMail iOS client always sends a notification when I log into ProtonMail from my laptop and I can't turn that notification off without turning off all notifications. I don't want to be spammed by yet another useless security-freak notification.
McDyver 2y ago
Talking of half-baked, one thing I find really frustrating is that on the mobile app you can't even see the mail headers of a message. Absurd
stockhorn 2y ago
(Paying customer) Yes! I cant believe I still cant share a folder with another account on proton drive (apart from read-only sharing via link), but now instead they add .....
- protonmail 2y ago
  You can now, with this recently introduced feature: https://proton.me/blog/enhanced-sharing-drive https://proton.me/blog/enhanced-sharing-drive
maximinus_thrax 2y ago
> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? Growth. I'm also a (happy) customer, I've been using their products for years and my personal impression is that they're trying to catch up and build a full productivity suite as fast as possible.
denysvitali 2y ago
I love Proton Mail, but their mailbox search on Android is just awful.
drpossum 2y ago
I use pass for all my TOTP and keep my passwords separate with KeepassXC. It works really well. I agree and wish for Calendar to use much better integration
philwelch 2y ago
On the one hand I can agree with this—I would love them to focus on refining the current suite of Proton apps. On the other hand, Google’s ability to monitor the contents of Google Docs and engage in censorship is extremely concerning and Proton seems well-placed to provide an alternative.
logicprog 2y ago
Well I'm also a paying customer and I'm really glad they're doing this — this way I don't have to awkwardly piece together a VPN, a password manager, a mail client, a notes app, and a Google Docs alternative all from different places, probably paying separate subscriptions to each since I wouldn't trust free services. Instead I get a reasonably good suite of apps for everything privacy-related I need, all for $10/mo. The more they add, the more that money feels worth it and the more affirmed in my choice to pay it I feel.
- paledot 2y ago
  I didn't feel comfortable with Google controlling my entire digital life, should I feel comfortable with migrating it wholesale to Proton?
- jacooper 2y ago
  I agree, everytime I think of migrating away from Proton, there's nothing that can replace the stack for the same price. Maik + aliases alone are 6.5$, that's without including cloud storage or a vpn, you just can't beat it at that price.
kertoip_1 2y ago
They are probably targeting to provide services for companies. It's hard to convince someone to pay for mail if your competition (like Google Suite or Ms365) offers mail AND a bunch of additional stuff. They also just want to tie customers to they services as much as possible to prevent them leaving
icar 2y ago
It's not going to be as half baked as other products they've released in the past that were made from scratch because this is basically Standard Notes that they bought directly integrated in Drive.

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.
- cquintana92 2y ago
  Proton Pass supports Credit Cards as a paid feature!
  - szszrk 2y ago
    I'm curious why it's important? Do you pass on card details manually that often?
    - cquintana92 2y ago
      Autofilling when buying online, having the details handy/ready to be copied if autofill is not an option, keeping track of them in a single place while being encrypted together with other personal info... To me the benefits are many! (Disclaimer: Work in Proton Pass)
      - szszrk 2y ago
        Thats cool but also so unusual for me. You just don't add card details at all here, and if you do, you just trust that service and save it permanently. If someone is actual heavy card user, he will have temporary/shortlived cards anyway.
- digging 2y ago
  Bitwarden is pretty great.
- tamimio 2y ago
  Keepassxc, or bitwarden, you can run your own instance too.
- coffeeling 2y ago
  I've found Proton Pass to struggle with autofill in some situations where BitWarden doesn't, and their create alias+create new login for alias flow has failed me sometimes, which is awkward, to say the least.

juandemarco 2y ago

Missing Caldav support is really painful. I've had to spin up my own Caldav container (Radicale) and leave Proton Calendar behind, but I'm still unable to send calendar event notifications from any calendar app on mobile, only from thunderbird.

domh 2y ago

CalDAV and CardDAV support missing is the only reason I still have a google account. I understand it's "tough" with e2ee but adding support to the bridge would be perfectly sufficient, then at least I could use local Calendar/Contact apps.

aarmenaa 2y ago
I've been considering switching from Fastmail to Proton for Mail/Calendar/Contacts, but I didn't realize their bridge didn't do CalDAV or CardDAV. Also, apparently the bridge is desktop-only -- no mobile? That's kind of a deal breaker.
- autorizo 2y ago
  Fastmail has mail/calendar/contacts with caldav and carddav support.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
It's pretty easy to self-host CalDAV and CardDAV. I went with Baïkal, it took me maybe 15 minutes to install on a server, it's supported by all of the calendar tools I use, and it's worked perfectly fine for a few months now. So now I'm completely free of Google. Maybe not for everyone, but a way more feasible option than most people seem to realize.
- acidburnNSA 2y ago
  Agreed! I used radicale for the same purpose. Very easy installation given I already had a VPS. https://radicale.org https://radicale.org
- domh 2y ago
  Yeah I've investigated it a couple of times but never pulled the trigger with self-hosting. Could run it on my rpi and access via Tailscale, but seems like something that should be provided by the email provider that I pay money for. They also do have Contacts and Calendar products, but they're completely self-contained and apparently can only be used by protonmail which is mostly pointless.

rapnie 2y ago

This. Also a paying customer. My Android mail app is definitely not fully baked. At times it drains my battery trying unsuccessfully to fetch notifications. Other times it fetches a ton of notifications I had already seen. Proton is on a good path in many ways, but these rapid launches of new apps will kill the company if they don't do it well.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

KeyBoardG 2y ago

It is interesting to watch them try to grow so quickly. At some point they'll need to turn more profit to hold all this scale up. We'll see if they can stick to the privacy claims or start to sell out.

jacooper 2y ago
They are already profitable without any VC investments.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
They just switched to a non-profit system of governance.

jacooper 2y ago

They can't add direct caldav support because it's e2ee, they should add a caldav bridge to their mail bridge, they also should work on contact sync. I agree that drive is underpowered, they still don't have a syncing client on Linux, and their android/iOS client is quite limited and the photo integration is really half baked. However Pass is really great, it has better UI/UX compared to Bitwarden.

mzajc 2y ago

Edit: they have since added support for this, my bad --- I am still bummed that ProtonMail doesn't support automatic forwarding. Their rationale is that E2EE makes this impossible, but most of my incoming mail is unencrypted anyway, and I could decrypt the rest myself with Thunderbird and GPG. Lack of automatic forwarding support makes it harder to switch mail providers, on the other hand.

cedws 2y ago
It’s misleading marketing. They sell their email service as “E2EE”, even though the majority of emails flowing through their system are in fact NOT end to end encrypted, they’re visible to Proton in plaintext upon receipt. This is a fundamental limitation of email protocols. You only get E2EE by using PGP at both ends.
- mzajc 2y ago
  Indeed, and as far as I understand, even PGP-encrypted mail can be automatically forwarded and viewed easily, provided I have the correct PGP key installed in my client.
- mikegreenberg 2y ago
  This is a matter of semantics... anyone who actually cares about E2EE probably understands the nature of email being cleartext over the wire and that Proton can't control what is outside of their control. Maybe inaccurate but I doubt they are misleading (in the sense that they are hoping to fool people into thinking their email is encrypted over the wire). Marketing copy would not likely care to include "E2EE" .... "at the point that Protonmail recieves your message" on their frontpage. Further, this is explain quite clearly on their FAQ: https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained https://proton.me/support/proton-mail-encryption-explained </pearlclutching>
  - codetrotter 2y ago
    I’m gonna start selling sugar-free soda and when people point out that there is sugar in the soda I’ll explain to them that the sugar was added to the mixture by a different supplier before the mixture arrived at my factory. My factory does not add any sugar to the soda. Therefore it’s clearly fair to market it as sugar-free!

tailspin2019 2y ago

Also a paying customer. I completely agree. They keep doing this, widening their scope constantly while every new product launched seems to get less ongoing attention than the last one.

jamil7 2y ago
Probably gunning for enterprise contracts in which they need an answer to every service and product.

0x1ch 2y ago

I can't even search on the mobile app for android... I could about two years ago until they decided to push out half baked rewrites or something.

triceratops 2y ago

The VPN is "well-done" but "useless"?

ffsm8 2y ago
VPN are pointless for the vast majority of people. You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton. Downloading copyrighted media is pretty much the only usecase I can think of for such a service, and most people don't do that. The only other usecase would be to conceal your traffic on a public wifi, but you'd be better served just going through your home connection at that point. Pretty much all decent routers provide you with dyndns+VPN services builtin
- balls187 2y ago
  Avoid region restrictions are the biggest usecase. A number of my friends use VPNs exclusively for this purpose, geberally because they are big sports fans.
- sitkack 2y ago
  That is like your opinion, man. VPNs are critical for getting around shenanigans when working out in the world. Especially from sketchy last miles.
  - ffsm8 2y ago
    You're right, I forgot geo blocking entirely as all services I've used it on added mitigations over the years. The last time I've successfully used a VPN for that was around 2015, but there might be services around (which I just dont use) that can still be unlocked by changing the IP, so that'd be a valid usecase for a few people
- digging 2y ago
  > Pretty much all decent routers provide you with dyndns+VPN services builtin Most people don't know how to use that or that it even exists. Hell, I didn't know it existed until right now and I'm decently tech savvy. > You're essentially just shifting the person you're trusting from your ISP to proton. Yes absolutely, this is the reason I use a VPN. I have negative trust of every ISP in the USA. They will harvest and sell your browsing history to anyone who will buy it. I have no doubt about that. Some VPN providers probably won't.

tossandthrow 2y ago

Yep. In the end I switched away from proton due to their negligence on this core product suite.

tombert 2y ago

If this is a Proton grievance panel, I really wish they'd optimize their web app, at least with Firefox. If I leave the Protonmail tab open, the amount of CPU and RAM usage for Firefox just spikes up like crazy, and it shoots back down once I close that tab. I can get around this with the ProtonMail Bridge and using Mutt, which works fine and makes me feel cool, but the web app is considerably more convenient.

dinglestepup 2y ago
Hm, I have Proton Mail in a pinned tab in FF (Mac) - no issues at all. The only time I re-open it is when FF restarts after an update (~once a month).
- tombert 2y ago
  I feel like this is a somewhat recent change, so I don't know what happened on my computer or within Protonmail; I have an Intel Macbook Pro, and it really seems to slow everything down. Maybe I screwed up a setting but as I said everything else seems to work fine and when I use the Protonmail Bridge it works fine.
  - dinglestepup 2y ago
    Yes, could potentially be related to a different CPU architecture, but could also be something else eg RAM capacity (I have 64GB) or Proton Mail settings (do you have offline enabled? I don't).
    - tombert 2y ago
      I have 64gb of RAM as well. I don't think I have offline enabled. My CPU is an i9. I'm happy enough with my Mutt solution, and the iOS app is generally ok, and I do like the service overall, so while I complain it's not out of hatred. I just want the service to get better.
digging 2y ago
Both their web app and their android app are extraordinarily sluggish, unfortunately. And I currently am forced to use the web app in a PWA on my phone because the Android app has a current bug where the contents of emails won't load. In other words it's 100% useless, and I uninstalled. By the PWA is agonizing to use, so I've been missing emails lately. For a service to keep getting worse over the years when I want to like it is difficult to swallow, but every day I'm a little closer to canceling my subscription.

jamil7 2y ago

Also a paying customer, I'd like it if they would email an invoice every month instead of me needing to go login to the web UI and dig for it when I do my monthly tax reporting.

KingOfCoders 2y ago
If this is invoice griefing group, please 1. Everyone make invoices PDF 2. Send them out every month 3. If I need to log in, make them easy to find on the first page 4. Name them <company>-<invoice>-<date>-<number>-<amount>.pdf Thanks!
- jamil7 2y ago
  I know right, especially number 4, more often than not I get emailed basically <UUID>.pdf.
- calvinmorrison 2y ago
  a new document has arrived to your document portal.
  - KingOfCoders 2y ago
    This is a startup I wanted to found 10 years ago when writing an inhouse invoice PDF (+ thumbnails etc.) plattform
- dx034 2y ago
  My biggest issue with Backblaze B2. It’s so much effort to get my invoice each month. I don’t get why companies send out billing emails but don’t just attach the invoice or insert a link directly to the invoice.
  - KingOfCoders 2y ago
    Same, also Backblaze customer :-)

CivBase 2y ago

> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? I suspect they're attempting to build up an attractive package for business customers, competing with the likes of O365 and G-Suite. There's probably a lot more money in that than in personal email hosting.

vishnugupta 2y ago

> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? New product often means new segment of customers they can go after. Whereas refining existing ones will help reduce the churn. Their sales/marketing pitch gets that much better.

frenchman99 2y ago

I'm even more convinced that me being a Fastmail customer is a good thing. Fastmail has been rock solid for years. Their email, calendar and contacts solutions work well with iOS and android (using the DAVx app). WebApps work flawlessly on Firefox. They have all sorts of customisation for spam filtering, catch all email addresses, etc. They don't do all the things (vpn, passwords, drive, what have you). But what they do, they do very well.

lloeki 2y ago
> android (using the DAVx app) It borderlines on the insulting that Google refuses to support CardDAV and CalDAV OOTB.
stavros 2y ago
I'll second this, I've had absolutely zero issues with Fastmail over many years. It always just works, and is super fast.
fhd2 2y ago
Absolutely, very happy Fastmail customer here! My only qualm is that their apps could be better at multi account (switching is too much of a hassle), but that's the only problem I ever had, and I work around it by using different mail/calendar clients. If you just have a single account with them though, their app is quite excellent and has everything (mail, calendar, notes), no need to get multiple apps and stuff like DAVx unless you want to.
- anotherhue 2y ago
  Fastmail Employees Form a Union (6 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656727 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38656727 Fastmail lays off 60% of union bargaining committee in surprise restructure (9 days ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40778214 It's a good product, no longer so sure about the company.
  - fhd2 2y ago

westpfelia 2y ago

I can see it as trying to compete with say a google in all competencies. So hopefully once they have tool parity with Gsuite they would buckle down and work on features of each application?

al_borland 2y ago
They need to keep in mind that Google spend decades getting to where they are with the current toolset. Proton shouldn't be expected to replicate it in a couple years. I'm sure people are asking for this stuff, but I hope it is sustainable. I'm a paying customer and only use the email today. With the pace of these releases, I'm not comfortable investing in these new tools, because I'm not sure how long they'll be around. I'm starting to question the email choice, since I'm worried they are spreading themselves too thin. I'm not sure what their financial situation is like, but I hope this isn't all from a bunch of funding or debt they will need to answer for at some point.
- karlzt 2y ago
  >> Google spend decades getting to where they are with the current toolset. Proton shouldn't be expected to replicate it in a couple years. Well, with AI that's probably possible now.
red-iron-pine 2y ago
certainly not in all competencies, but there is definintely a demand for O365 or GSuite that's not going to actively datamine the hell out of you. This isn't even a "im a paranoid l33t hacker", just that I don't want someone capturing 100% of every document and communication in my business. like holy shit, we're gonna let MS hookup their AI to monitor everything all the time? cuz that's what my org is doing with Copilot...

swatcoder 2y ago

As soon as somebody decides that a brand's future requires adding more top-level features rather than specializing in top-of-class delivery of core features, product design becomes an endless treadmill (death spiral?) of adding "yet another half-baked product" That's not to say that "one thing well" products are sure to be viable, and the "bullet point maximizers" that dominate product design for the last 10-15 years may know best, but this is what it looks like once they run the show either way.

viccis 2y ago
This happened so bad with Wyze. They had a really great little camera for a very brief time. Then I turn around and they're just a white box product reseller, with everything from vacuums to earbuds. Meanwhile, their camera service is a shadow of its former self.

treprinum 2y ago

What irritates me is that their ProtonMail iOS client always sends a notification when I log into ProtonMail from my laptop and I can't turn that notification off without turning off all notifications. I don't want to be spammed by yet another useless security-freak notification.

McDyver 2y ago

Talking of half-baked, one thing I find really frustrating is that on the mobile app you can't even see the mail headers of a message. Absurd

stockhorn 2y ago

(Paying customer) Yes! I cant believe I still cant share a folder with another account on proton drive (apart from read-only sharing via link), but now instead they add .....

protonmail 2y ago
You can now, with this recently introduced feature: https://proton.me/blog/enhanced-sharing-drive https://proton.me/blog/enhanced-sharing-drive

maximinus_thrax 2y ago

> What's the rationale behind releasing yet another half-baked product? Growth. I'm also a (happy) customer, I've been using their products for years and my personal impression is that they're trying to catch up and build a full productivity suite as fast as possible.

denysvitali 2y ago

I love Proton Mail, but their mailbox search on Android is just awful.

drpossum 2y ago

I use pass for all my TOTP and keep my passwords separate with KeepassXC. It works really well. I agree and wish for Calendar to use much better integration

philwelch 2y ago

On the one hand I can agree with this—I would love them to focus on refining the current suite of Proton apps. On the other hand, Google’s ability to monitor the contents of Google Docs and engage in censorship is extremely concerning and Proton seems well-placed to provide an alternative.

logicprog 2y ago

Well I'm also a paying customer and I'm really glad they're doing this — this way I don't have to awkwardly piece together a VPN, a password manager, a mail client, a notes app, and a Google Docs alternative all from different places, probably paying separate subscriptions to each since I wouldn't trust free services. Instead I get a reasonably good suite of apps for everything privacy-related I need, all for $10/mo. The more they add, the more that money feels worth it and the more affirmed in my choice to pay it I feel.

paledot 2y ago
I didn't feel comfortable with Google controlling my entire digital life, should I feel comfortable with migrating it wholesale to Proton?
jacooper 2y ago
I agree, everytime I think of migrating away from Proton, there's nothing that can replace the stack for the same price. Maik + aliases alone are 6.5$, that's without including cloud storage or a vpn, you just can't beat it at that price.

kertoip_1 2y ago

They are probably targeting to provide services for companies. It's hard to convince someone to pay for mail if your competition (like Google Suite or Ms365) offers mail AND a bunch of additional stuff. They also just want to tie customers to they services as much as possible to prevent them leaving

icar 2y ago

It's not going to be as half baked as other products they've released in the past that were made from scratch because this is basically Standard Notes that they bought directly integrated in Drive.