6 ms·

Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

79 points by joshSzep 2y ago

I'm considering doing so. It's much better priced, I would like to keep adwords separate as all the horror stories I've seen posted here, and the end-to-end encrypted communications could be valuable to my startup. Has anyone used Proton's business suite in a startup environment?

joshSzep 2y ago
I bit the bullet and am trying it out. I'll let anyone who is interested know how it goes.
inquisitor27552 2y ago
may i ask whats the horror with adwords? email wise whats cumbersome with proton is it tries to upsell me again and again with its add-ons. on google workspace i can say the best advantage is how almost 90% other sites out there supports signing in with google. and it's also cheap at $6 per head, and it doesnt harass you with upsells unlike proton.
- p_l 2y ago
  Lots of stories about having google account connected to adwords locked out for various reasons, not all valid.
  - danjl 2y ago
    There's are several third party Google backup services for the paranoid...
    - p_l 2y ago
      It's not about backups - it's about loss of ongoing use infrastructure
      - danjl 2y ago
        The backup mitigates the problem because, if you are banned, which only happens to fools and fakes, you can take the backup and set it up on another service. Sure, you lose a couple of days of time migrating, but that's not a reason to avoid choosing a better solution.
        frmfrm 2y ago
        it can happen to you
        gertop 2y ago
        > if you are banned, which only happens to fools and fakes If that is truly how you feel then I pity the fools who give you their business.
        justinclift 2y ago
        > which only happens to fools and fakes Lots of people have directly stated otherwise. Are you super sure they're wrong?
        serial_dev 2y ago
        A couple of days migrating can be a 100K+ outage in lost work if you have around 50 employees. And for this estimation, I’m really taking your word that migrating 50 people in an emergency is really going to take only a couple of days, which I honestly don’t believe. Sure, if you get a business account for your solo business, a backup will save you. If you have more people or a non trivial Google setup, the backup recovery is it’s on challenge while you could be working on your business if they didn’t, in this hypothetical but very possible scenario, lock you out of your business tools.
metalmangler 2y ago
I am bootstraping, and have used proton for years as my only email, but have my own email now, and am slowly backing out of proton. The horrible way that they extort by limiting and degrading a service is only part of the problem.They degraded email replies at one point, to a tiny "page" with less than one full line of text. There is more, but proton is not worth the effort to remember and detail all of it. I will use google or any other service for building up an advertising presence. And keep the proton, until everything is moved. And then again, pragmatism might decide in favor of useing the proton service, but only as the core of my business is seperate,and will spread my add bucks around, so I feel safe. Currently have NO guggle anything, because of past denial of service, and will only use them for the advertising side as well.
- nemosaltat 2y ago
  Same here. When you say your own email, do you mean Fastmail? I love Proton and they got me and my SO largely off of Google. Fastmail is just so good, I’m going to migrate everything there eventually.
  - kfrane 2y ago
    I migrated from gmail to proton then to fastmail and I can now really appreciate how much more polished gmail was. My biggest pain is fastmail's ios app, e.g. clicking on an email notification will in 50% of cases result in fastmail's app to open in an unresponsive state where I have to forcefully quit the app and start again. It's been like that for close to two years now.
    - omnimus 2y ago
      I think most business people dont care about clients at all because they use IMAP/SMTP/carddav/caldav. Once you have more than one mailbox then its kinda the only way. So apple mail, thunderbird etc. And then you mostly get some quality provider mailbox.org, fastmail, infomaniak or whatever but its all the same.
  - 3np 2y ago
strikemoney 2y ago
[flagged]
RockRobotRock 2y ago
In my opinion, E2EE comes with too many compromises to be worth it for most people and/or companies. Proton wasn't evolving quickly enough, so I switched to Fastmail. Email aside, no CardDav/CalDav is a dealbreaker for me.
- palata 2y ago
  I went from Proton to Fastmail and then Migadu. But I think that it is not really answering the question. The question is about a Business Suite similar to the Google Suite. I don't think that Fastmail provides a Drive or Docs (as far as I know they have mail, contacts and calendar, right?). Not to say that Proton is a perfect alternative: Proton Docs is pretty new and doesn't have the excel/powerpoint equivalents that Google has.
solarman5000 2y ago
I pay for it. I dont do anything super fancy, and its been working fine for two years now. I think the cost is low enough that I'm happy paying and not thinking about email setup, and happy I'm not paying google
pcb-rework 2y ago
Proton suffers from the Lavabit problem but worse, it pretends to offer security and freedom when it does neither and acts as a tool of foreign governments to abuse individuals. Use your own GPG keys and better clients, preferably with self-hosting in Iceland or Sweden.
- cpach 2y ago
  For truly sensitive communication, it’s better to use Signal: https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/ https://soatok.blog/2024/11/15/what-to-use-instead-of-pgp/
  - pcb-rework 2y ago
    You're a fool if you believe handing over metadata like your personal phone number so you can be tracked is an improvement. That's not email and not a replacement for GPG, something that actually works properly. Session is a superior app for text replacement. I think you need to find new blogs that don't offer crap advice.
    - cpach 2y ago
      What kind of threat model do you operate under where Signal Technology Foundation knowing (one of) your phone numbers is a large risk?
      - gertop 2y ago
        The fact that signal knows my phone number doesn't bother me. The fact that anyone who knows my phone number can know that I use signal does bother me.
        cpach 2y ago
        May I ask why you’re bothered by this fact?
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danjl 2y ago
At a startup you can run your company on the communication tools provided in Google workspace. There's much more to this than calendar and email. Tagged comments for coordinating actions, using gdocs with meetings and transcription and summarization by Gemini, communal editing and sharing, the gdocs history, sheets and slides, backup and logging tools, domain management and more. If you use proton, you get Google workspace from 15 years ago, at best.
trod1234 2y ago
I don't know about their business suite. I've used their calendar and email. The calendar has had issues over the past few months where it would revert unexpectedly and silently back to a previous date (like they reverted to backup but no notification), with all changes and appointments changed after that date being lost. Some of the email features are very dependent on browser features where you can't set them manually for example timezones impact all visible dates among both apps, and are derived from the metadata of the client which don't update to the current date/time but to last visited time. If you happen to be traveling, this can cause missed appointments/confusion when you do the mental gymnastics from your original timezone. Personally, I don't think its ready for production requirements of business.
southernplaces7 2y ago
It's amusing to see people here continuing to recommend Google tools for core aspects of some shiny, fragile, new startup despite so many, many posts and comments on HN having been placed time and time again describing how arbitrary that monster can be about cutting you completely down from whatever it offers you for some bullshit algorithmic reason or another, and with near zero customer service recourse. By now Google often acts worse than the complaints departments of many government agencies, which at least usually by law have to have a human accesible to you somewhere along the line. Yet it keeps getting recommended by either the clueless or the indifferent.
- millzlane 2y ago
  Yea, my dumbass used Google voice as my main 2fa number and recently lost access to it. Can't get it back and I'm locked out of everything. Don't be like me. Google really can't be trusted for personal or business use. If I could talk to a human and pay $100 for it I would.
  - coldtrait 2y ago
    I used to live in the US and use voice as my primary number for everything. I don't think there is a better option.
    - millzlane 2y ago
      Just use it everyday and you'll be good.
      - _blk 2y ago
        Doesn't seem to do too well with foreign numbers. Never had issues calling but 2FA texts don't come through.
    - nyclounge 2y ago
      Not for free! When you are not paying for the product then you are the product!! But it is NOT that hard for HN community to get VOIP number over SIP. All the smart phones have a sip client now days.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
I am also interested because of Proton’s commitment to privacy and Google’s commitment to…the opposite. But I would think Proton will not (yet?) have the type of controls most businesses need to administer a company wide service and manage confidentiality, security, etc.
pluc 2y ago
Proton is so bad. Full of bugs and edge cases. Use fastmail instead.
benoau 2y ago
I'd consider Synology, upfront investment but if you really want privacy and control they have a nice suite of tools you host yourself on your NAS.
wanderingmind 2y ago
I suggest Zoho one. It's been in service for many many years. It's not as feature rich as Google or MSFT, but their service is fantastic and gives you all options a small business needs (office, marketing, CRM, sales, HR, Finance among others). https://www.zoho.com/one/ https://www.zoho.com/one/
- mooreds 2y ago
  Pricing[0] is $37/employee/month, so 3-6 times the price of Google Workspace[1]. But avoiding getting locked out of your account and having to post on HN to get any support from Google? Priceless. 0: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/ https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/ 1: https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/ https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Structurally, what does proton do that means you'd not get locked out of your account?
    - mooreds 2y ago
      I was referring to Zoho (that is the pricing I mentioned). I don't know if Zoho has great customer service, but I cannot imagine it is worse than google's.
  - Saris 2y ago
    It also provides a lot more than google workspace does, assuming you need those extra tools it ends up being very cheap for what you get.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
dielll 2y ago
I use Zoho, cheap and has more services. In Africa they even give us localised prices.
cperez081890 2y ago
[dead]
jkartchner 2y ago
I have used it now for almost 7 years running a law firm. It's worked great for exactly our use case: privileged emails, including attachments, can be time and passworded with legit TNO encryption. I initially used nextcloud/webDAV for our own calendar, but switched over recently to protonmail and it hasn't been an issue. Some storage space is useful. Haven't used the VPN. It's a boutique firm. We have only 4 employees. YMMV

authorfly 2y ago

Problem is eventually you need it for Google Ads, or YouTube really for many things. And none of them are "vital" if they go wrong. They aren't core income pipeline parts. And then you get sucked in. B2B and go to a conference? Where are you putting your video demo reels/talks? YouTube Consumer and testing marketing messages for something non-consumer? Google Ads. Your B2B client wants you to provide your SaaS via a private endpoint on GCP? What else are you going to do than use GCP? Then once you are on it on company computers, it's a short walk to Google Docs and then Google Workspace, etc.

southernplaces7 2y ago
Needing Google occasionally is understandable but keeping it to a minimum and as disconnected as possible from core business functionality, and as replaceable as possible if things go sideways with its brainless algorithms, is absolutely doable. Please, enough justification for why almost anyone generally "needs" Google. For example: >B2B and go to a conference? Where are you putting your video demo reels/talks? YouTube Really? Simply no alternatives exist? I guess Vimeo is just a curious internet legend. >Your B2B client wants you to provide your SaaS via a private endpoint on GCP? What else are you going to do than use GCP? So explain to the client why you prefer not to use Google, but if they insist, then keep it specific to them and avoid it for anything generally essential to your business. You state this as if nearly a dozen alternatives to Google Cloud don't exist. >Then once you are on it on company computers, it's a short walk to Google Docs and then Google Workspace, etc. Don't take that short walk then, take another one instead. The point is that alternative solutions do usually exist and even where Google becomes unavoidable, it absolutely shouldn't mean having to fully embrace its services.
- authorfly 2y ago
  I agree with you as a technical guy. It's not the worst. But as to why is happens: If your business-focused founder or Marketing guy is going to the conference, it'll be Youtube, even though Vimeo is accessible. Unless you go make the account, share it to them, and have a SOP, why would they look at Vimeo? The problem is when you get any sort of size the non-tech people choose Google as a default and then it (with weak force) slowly black holes up what they do. Just like people chose Microsoft Office (and still do for mature corps) for all kinds of admin, not necessarily technical people using Google (although I would say >80% of the tech graduate emails I am given for contact past graduation are gmail which is a sign of the times!)
  - frognumber 2y ago
    The rule is simple. Google is fine for anything not in the critical path. Need something to spread on social media? Fine. Post on Twitter, Facebook, Google, go nuts. Never use Google (or other sketchy vendors) for anything you need to rely on to be there tomorrow. Example: Youtube is fine for promotional materials. If you run an ed-tech and need videos to be there for students (core business), pay for something which works. Example: Running a Black Friday promotion? Adwords. Relying on Google SEO for your main business as the main way to recruit customers? Bad idea. You get one exception to this if you're building a Google-centric business. Is your business an Android App? You obviously get to use Android in your core business. If your business a Youtube channel? You get to use Youtube. Things like Google Workspace, Google Cloud Platform, etc. are out. If, tomorrow, Google decides to wipe all you Google Workspace data (yes, it did this to a startup I was involved with), you're DOA. Office 365 is annoying compared to Google Workspace, but still worth it, since Microsoft won't wipe out your business as a statistic. The way I think about this is each business has risks which multiply out: (failed to execute technically) * (odds of market fit failing) * (odds of not being defrauded by your co-founder) * .... This should multiply out to how likely your startup is to succeed. The way exponentials work, most of those risks need to be very, very low. You get one, maybe two, big ones. Every Google product in the core critical path has perhaps 10% odds of wiping out your business. Adopting Android is totally worth it if your business is Pokemon Go, but for most aspects of your business, pick trustworthy vendors.