this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2025
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Proton

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Empowering you to choose a better internet where privacy is the default. Protect yourself online with Proton Mail, Proton VPN, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive. Proton Pass and SimpleLogin.

Proton Mail is the world's largest secure email provider. Swiss, end-to-end encrypted, private, and free.

Proton VPN is the world’s only open-source, publicly audited, unlimited and free VPN. Swiss-based, no-ads, and no-logs.

Proton Calendar is the world's first end-to-end encrypted calendar that allows you to keep your life private.

Proton Drive is a free end-to-end encrypted cloud storage that allows you to securely backup and share your files. It's open source, publicly audited, and Swiss-based.

Proton Pass Proton Pass is a free and open-source password manager which brings a higher level of security with rigorous end-to-end encryption of all data (including usernames, URLs, notes, and more) and email alias support.

SimpleLogin lets you send and receive emails anonymously via easily-generated unique email aliases.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/25445621

How did the transition go? Do you like the new service(s) so far?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I started testing out alternatives immediately after discovering his post. I understand they're saying this was a mistake and was meant to have been posted from his official account and not the company account, but that is still a bit off putting to me. As others have mentioned, this also made me aware of how many eggs I have in this basket, and after trying out alternatives for a few days I made the full switch away from ProtonMail, Calendar and VPN to Tuta + Mullvad.

Unfortunately, my Unlimited plan renewed in November and customer service has stated they will not refund me for the remaining time, as 30 days has passed. Oh well, I can at least cancel my auto-renewal :)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 days ago

No, I wouldn't switch unless it compromise my privacy. People are overreacting and politics makes them sensitive.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I bought a year of unlimited in November but I have canceled and will be migrating when my year is up

What's the deal with Lavabit these days? Are they good? I don't keep up with things that well. Am old man.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I was hard considering it but if I do it then it would cost me way more.

Tuta ($3)+Simplelogin ($4)+Mullvad ($5) = $12

A proton unlimited plan costs $10. Also, when I was on a vpn plus plan, they upgraded me to unlimited so I'm only paying like $6.50 or something.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Simplelogin is owned by Proton. If you meant Addy.io that's $1/mo or $3/mo. Personally I don't think Addy.io is strictly necessary with Tuta though. Just add a custom domain and make up your own aliases (or some password managers can generate & save them for you)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I used simplelogin before they got bought by proton and with it now being included in my subscription, it's even cheaper. I could move to addy.io but that would mean I would have to go through all my accounts and change it to the new addy.io addresses. Huge PitA. I could use my own domain but I don't wanna blacklist my own domain or for it to be so new that it's blocked from signing up accounts.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

That’s how they get ya

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Plus mulvad doesn't do port forwarding. Or it didn't last time I used it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I left and glad I did. It was a needed wake-up call. All-in-one is inherently risky. I'd rather support smaller, more focused products. If one doesn't fit my needs down the line, it's way easier to switch.

  • Email: Tuta (meh, loading issues)
  • Calendar: Tuta (don't like, can't handle recurring events)
  • VPN: Mullvad (like)
  • Drive: Tresorit (like)
  • Passwords: already using Bitwarden (love)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Same stack as me except KeePass for PW manager. I’ve actually been enjoying Tuta though. What issues are you having with recurring?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

External calendars I've imported have a bunch of events on the wrong days. I reported the issue and here's what they told me:

It seems like some events in your .ics file use advanced repetition rules which are not supported in the Tuta calendar yet. We are currently working on this to improve compatibility and hope to release them soon so the calendar should be imported correctly.

I know it's a small development team, but it's a little frustrating. A calendar service supporting only a subset of the ICS standard is silly in my opinion

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Ah shoot. I guess that makes sense that it might not match 1:1 if it's using some advanced recurrence rules. When I exported from Proton and imported to Tuta, I did it as a CSV and needed to modify the columns a bit to get it to import, but my recurring appointments seemed to have come over fine. They are fairly simple though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My struggle is finding an alternative to nonesense email alias system proton provides. Tuta and everyone else seems ridiculously limited with aliases. Like, I'll use my own custom domain idgaf, just gimme infinite aliases...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Based on my understanding, Tuta is better for aliases compared to Proton. Their alias limit doesn't apply to custom domains, only the domains they own (tuta.com, tutamail.com, tuta.io, tutanota.com, tutanota.de, keemail.me)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If you have proton pass you can generate random or semi random aliases. I don't believe there's a limit to this. Good to know on the tuta side though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh I see. That makes sense. I think Bitwarden can be hooked up to alias providers but I've never tried that myself

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

I hadn't thought of that, might have to look into that. That would be great for new accounts. I basically only used proton pass to create aliases and stored it all in bitwarden anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No, I've not switched. While I disagree with his comments, that does not make me switch.

I am fine with using services provided by companies whose employees or leaders I don't 100% agree with all the time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

I don't like his comments, but honestly... I haven't had the energy or time.

When I have one, I lack the other.

Do I want to? Yes, in a sense. I have an enterprise grade server I could self-host a lot of services on, and it sounds like a fun project... but getting that all done? A task. Getting cooling, noise reduction (fucker is LOUD), and such installed? A bigger task that takes more money than I have available right now. All that jazz.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I know this is lazy of me, but no. I was going to, downloaded tuta and everything, but I just switched this year and finally have it where I want it. I have my stuff forwarded from my old emails, and most of my important stuff has the email. I also failed to vary my programs, so it's also my VPN and password manager. Even just getting starting with the email was giving me a headache.

And, honestly, the vpn is better than mullvad (to me). When I was attempting to switch, I started with mullvad, but it was so much slower. And I had issues on sites I normally had no issues with. I'll keep the resources and maybe start transferring little by little as time goes on.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

No. Because changing email providers is a royal pain in the ass. Changed from Google to Ctemplar and from that to proton a year later after ctemplar went down.
I am not going to use smaller email providers because of that experience, and proton still seems to be the best of both worlds.
I absolutely hate that i am supporting a CEO like that with my money but I'm not in the mood to migrate anytime soon. Took me more than a whole weekend last time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

It's worth noting Proton's email export tool (marketed as backup & restore) is pretty decent. This Python script can sort them by folders & labels too

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

i have free proton accounts as am not loggin in to close them because lazy. but i havent really used it anymore...maybe for trashmail stuff. mullvad is cooler and 1$ rootboxes anywhere also. disroot,riseup and so many other mailproviders are cool too. i dont get why proton is so relevant to some. did you guys buy a lifetime package or why?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago

No. I'm tired of making my life inconvenient the moment someone says something stupid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There are a few alternatives in mind for me. Mailbox, posteo, disroot. Disroot is the only one among these with a free email. But posteo and mailbox do have cheap tiers. Posteo doesn't have support for custom domains last I checked.

That's just email. I've already not been using proton for almost everything else. KeepassXC for passwords, Addy.io for aliases, Syncthing and offline storage across my 3 devices instead of any Drive. VPN I rarely use so free proton is enough for that. Mullvad exists on the off chance I need it for a while (it's a constant price per month how many ever months you choose, and you can just "top up" with some amount and it will last you the appropriate number of days).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Mailbox and Posteo doesn't have their app in F-Droid 🤔

I know Tuta has, and just looked up Disroot, they also have...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

You can use Thunderbird with Mailbox and I think Posteo too? Does disroot even have an app? Even their official pages directed me to other clients like Thunderbird

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago

I highly-valued the cohesion and simplicity of having a suite of tools provided by a single vendor and all on a single bill, despite how often this turns into a vendor-lock-in strategy

Proton was part of my attempt to de-Google, precisely because it offered email (with custom CNAMEs), calendar, and storage, and because they open-sourced their clients and tools

Despite the UX and feature set being quite bare, I was okay with justifying this with the added privacy (which was a nice-to-have but not a deal-breaker for me)

It seems like all the alternatives are either less open-source, have even fewer features, are even less cohesive (indeed, I'd have to select entirely separate solutions and give up all integrations) or seem to have even fewer resources for development and project sustainability

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'd moved from Bitwarden to Proton Pass only 6 months ago, so moving back wasn't too much of a difficult choice (both services have great import/export and Bitwarden even offers self-hosting)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

I'd just go Keepass. Password managers don't need cloud to work. And Bitwarden could go rogue too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've got Keepass for password manager and Mullvad for VPN, and both have worked out really well for me so far. What I haven't been able to find is a good alternative to Proton Drive. For aliases I use Firefox Relay.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

Tresorit is a bit pricey but very privacy focused and based in Switzerland.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

A sociopath libertarian idiot.

The L part is the kind of person I want in charge of my encrypted data. Telling the government to fuck off because he legitimately can’t comprehend how government is a good thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I still use protonmail since it's hard to move mail instances after giving so many people my address but I've reconsidered my plans to switch to their vpn or paid plans.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Set your emails up with your own domain name. Never have this problem again.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This. I left proton and took my 300+ aliases with me. Took less than 30 min to switch from Simple Login to Addy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Which email host did you switch to? Looking for something hosted in Canada, ideally.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I can’t blame you, given the recent news. I chose Tuta (Germany) and am using Addy for aliasing

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I pulled the trigger and decided to leave. Not only because of the recent actions from Proton, but when I started looking for alternatives I quickly realized how deeply integrated I was into their eco system and how difficult it was to make the switch. That's personally not something I like. I guess this goes back to the saying, 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket'.

I'm now a happy customer of:

  • Mullvad for VPN
  • Bitwarden as password manager
  • Fastmail for email
  • Ente for photos
  • Yet to decide on cloud storage for files.

I know fastmail isn't the perfect privacy option but works very well for me. They own all their own hardware and use encryption at rest. They help develop open standards such as Jmap to replace imap. . This, to me says a lot about the people behind the company and is something I appreciate.

For those looking for a more private email solution then Tuta is a great option too!

Best of luck out there folks 👍

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Unless you're somehow looking for tonnes of storage, I don't think you need cloud services. I've set up just my 3 devices (phone laptop PC) to sync with each other using Syncthing. And that's plenty of space for just personal stuff (including photos). And it's so cheap (only the cost of the devices you're already using, and no subscriptions). It's something I wish most people did because of how prevalent Drive has become, even though it doesn't seem like it's necessary for a lot of use cases. You're situation might be different though, just a suggestion.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

I don’t think you need cloud services

I have 1TB of Tresorit in case my house burns down.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

What does that cost you a month/year?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 days ago

Makes sense if that's something you're worried about. I just meant that it seems to me like people immediately jump to cloud storage without even considering use cases and options. I wish I'd known about this setup that I'm using now a long time ago so I thought it'd be good to put the option out there.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago

Well Sync is not a backup, but I get what you mean. On top of that I do have my own Nas 😅 so using that with at least another separate offline ssd should be good enough.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

I haven't left, but now it's something that's on the cards, which wasn't the case beforehand.

I only recently linked my domain to my ProtonMail account, so if I do switch it should be relatively painless given I'll transfer the domain too, and the original PM address has become more of a lost cause anyway due to spam.

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