Proton Mail Reviews 1,691

Upon first attempt of signing up for something, I got automation flagged. I literally have never used protonmail. Won't be coming back, go to tuta mail. They won't render their email service immediately useless.

Does privacy matter to you? Then you have come to the right place. Proton is a privacy-dedicated email and VPN provider based in Switzerland. Being outside the EU, they do not have to abide by the hysterical whims of unelected EU bureaucrats bent on "regulating" your thoughts and ideas.
Proton is affordable and offers a lot of great software. Highly recommended.

HORRIBLE SERVICE Ticket Numbers 4807582 and 4807528 - No response all through the day. Locked my accounts and said my account is scheduled for deletion the moment I created a new address@my domain name for my business (I pay for a Business Workspace Account). I regret switching from Google Workspace. I have to find another alternative. All my incorporation documents are in my mailbox.

They have no LIVE CHAT, NON EXISTENT CUSTOMER SERVICE that NEVER responds on all platforms (email, X etc). AVOID at all costs, they will RUIN your business. ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE

My computer crashed hard. All of my accounts are on this mail. I could not access my email and it was hard contacting Dell. I had to call them. I will never use this service again because if you do not know your password or the security words they give you, you are sol. All of that info was on that computer. Do not use proton mail. It's not worth it if your computer dies. It's too encrypted. There is no help if you lose your credentials. You will not be able to get your mail because you cannot sign in unless you write down or store your crap on a usb. Awful.

I am a free user and my experience with ProtonMail support has been frustrating mainly because of response times and lack of updates.

My accounts were suspended by the automated anti abuse system after I created accounts while migrating from Gmail for my game accounts. I contacted support immediately and, to their credit, the anti abuse team did reply and offered a resolution: they were willing to restore only one account. I accepted that offer and provided the account I wanted restored.

However, after that point, communication basically stopped. I waited about a week without any further reply or update on my ticket. Because of the silence, I became worried that my case was stuck or no longer being processed.

I understand that free users may not receive priority support, and I appreciate that support did offer some form of resolution. But long periods without updates, especially after a case seems close to completion, make the process stressful and unclear.

My main criticism is not the decision itself, but the lack of follow up and communication.

ProtonMail deserve to get rated low by everyone here, this is the last time i ever gonna use this service, so good bye.

Proton is #1 & ive used Proton for several years. Not once did they close any of my accounts, and they have responded to my questions always. Personally i keep a proton paid account because they dont rely on ads, so it helps them out a little. It's not that much $ and you get multiple email addresses. I stay with Proton bc i prefer Proton (& prton.me please dont ever share my info with google bc i see you have partnered with them yikes).

The email works well for what it is - a non big tech , private email - and I'm happy with the service, and the integration with simplelogin, as well as built in aliases, is a big plus.
Four stars for the desktop app really needs to migrate off Electron software fraemwork, and in general, I think as a company their priorities are spread too thin right now. The email itself is pretty great though , could just use better software.

can't attach images to emails. i have hyperfast internet and regardless of whether i use proton in my browser, on my phone or the mac app, simple images spend 8-10 minutes attaching to an email and then i get a notification saying request timed out.

staggeringly dreadful for an email service that i pay for. do not under any circumstances pay for protonmail. i complained about this last year and they still haven't fixed it. i will be cancelling my subscription and using gmail instead. atrocious value for money

I used to use Protonmail for three purposes: filter out nuisance emails to a separate inbox from my personal, mask my identity due to my personal email's domain, and as a backup in case I am to lose access to my personal. Protonmail has now chosen to fail all points.

Let's start with the crux of this problem: my account was terminated without warning. I had logged in less than a year ago to access an email sent to this inbox, I had no warnings sent to my backup in case, you know, I may have been having issues with the email? No, instead, I am not told of any of this, and I suddenly have account errors on various services.

Next, the customer service is poor, insanely poor. When reaching out, they do not have a time frame for when they respond. My own job is to be a customer support representative, and we respond to tickets with a quick acknowledgement and any details in minutes. Anything that takes longer, and we let the customer know. Proton has chosen the path of an automated response and no hours or days they will reply in. Utterly pathetic and a waste of time.

Now, I have to go fix every account that uses this backup. Never using this service for my new email if they dare decide that their incompetence is my fault. Unacceptable.

Lost my device and couldn't locate the password I used for the account so I did a password reset. now my old emails are encrypted and because the recovery methods are "use a prior device or remember your old password or upload a recovery key/file" i now cannot access my old emails. these are not regular person methods of recovery. if you're looking for user friendly, Proton ain't it.

Avoid this company like the plague, they completely ignore your UK Statutory rights, if you complain they never read the complaint just blindly state their company policy, even though it’s illegal. Currently disputing with my bank, hope they charge them an enormous chargeback fee. AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Originally, I chose ProtonMail because of its FOSS web client, sieve support, the capability to contact support personnel, and that its UserVoice instance provided a way to vote on feature requests.

I intend to leave Proton Mail, because I see no way to acquire server-side IMAP credentials, for AOSP e-mail clients, which I require, to respond to mail on Proton's servers, via different providers. Bridge may provide this for desktop OSes, but that's useless 50 % of the time, because I'm not always at a laptop.

Although I don't utilise their other services, this is also true for Contacts and Calendar, which offer no CardDAV or CalDAV.

Additionally, their ZenDesk instance's web interface has been disabled, rendering accessing ticket information incredibly difficult without e-mail account access.

Pro:
- Mail is securely encrypted end-to-end.

- Incredible good customer service that replies to mail mostly within 24 hours. In my case, the replies are always clear and straight to the point.

Cons:
- Can only be used with Proton Mail. No import feature of other mail accounts.
Only emails from your other mail accounts can be imported, but not the accounts themselves.
So, users need to make a new Proton Mail account and inform all users of their current mail account of their new Proton Mail account.
If possible with your former mail accounts, you could automatically forward all email to your new Proton Mail account.
With internet accounts of companies, private data can be updated by the account holders themselves, but for others it depends on the people and companies themselves whether they change the new mail address with the old one in their database.
Hence, if people change to Proton Mail and automatically forwarding isn't possible, they still have to check their previous mail app on a daily basis for a long time because we don't know who still has our old mail address. What if someone wants to contact us after many years? We wouldn't receive their mail because we switched to Proton Mail.
If automatically forwarding is possible, we still have to keep the subscription with the previous email account and should never unsubscribe. Otherwise we would miss email.
Suppose people use Yahoo Mail or other paid accounts. They have to pay the subscription for many years to come if they want to receive emails sent to their previous mail account.
Of course, this doesn't work and doesn't make sense either. Why should we throw away our current default mail address?
This is asking for problems!
Even if Proton Mail is more secure than the former mail, it doesn't make sense to delete that account!

- The Proton Mail app only supports two subfolders of each folder. A third subfolder isn't possible.
Eg. Study (main folder) - name of institution (subfolder 1) - name of department (subfolder 2). That's it.
For sure, you want to list subfolders of 'name of department' with people's names and other information.
This is also asking for problems because it's normal to organize mail in subfolders, especially for companies.

- Secure mail sounds fine but is end-to-end encryption really important for mainstream users?
Cloud storage should be end-to-end encrypted, but email???
If we read the negative feedback it's clear that many people still don't understand the importance of 2FA and passkey security.
If people lose the key, there's no way to get into the account. It will be locked for always.
Proton has end-to-end encryption by default for its mail. But, I'm pretty sure that most people don't know the cons of end-to-end encryption. That's that they lose access if they lose the key!
End-to-end encryption of mail is only important for business users but not for mainstream users.
Currently, Microsoft is in the spotlight for closing accounts on request of the US government. This has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption but with government legislation.
So, it's much more important that users can be certain that their mail accounts won't be closed by the company.
Closing on request of certain governments is only applicable to certain business users.
In this regard, I see end-to-end encryption of mail accounts for mainstream users more of a marketing strategy than a real need.
The danger of losing the 2FA key or passkey is more important than end-to-end encryption.
I would advice to use email from a company which would't close your mail account if you haven't used it for a certain period and that doesn't has the danger of losing the access key.

To summarize:
Don't be too focused on end-to-end encryption of mail accounts unless you need it for your business and you understand the danger of losing the access key!
Concerning the Proton Mail app it's strange that such a well-known and reputable company has such a bad mail app.
The omissions of this mail app are not something nobody needs but default features that already existed 25 years ago with free mail accounts and free mail apps.

I have had an email with proton for 2 years which cost me a small fortune. Somehow my password was changed and I couldn’t log in to my account. After sending proton multiple emails with proof of my account they wanted me to send them my credit card details from an unsecured gmail account to which I refused so I now cannot access my account AT ALL ANYMORE!!! What a waste of money !!! I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PROTON MAIL AT ALL

Do not use THEY ERASE EVERYTHING without consent and without informing you. So I went to check on my mail, even though I had not gone on they can see regular mail coming through. But because I have not gone and physically opened it in the app. I go there today to find a receipt to a message stating due to inactivity we have erased everything. This has to be the worse email service I have ever came across. I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

1. I discovered that Proton wasn't trusted by the Review site I used. I was allocated a reward for having done a lot of online reviews. But it took 8 months to get it paid. The payments were cancelled 7 times. When I asked about this the review site said that their integrity checking wasn't happy with claims coming from Proton email accounts. When I claimed through a different email provider the reward was paid in a couple of weeks.
2. I use Proton Free at the moment. I started to get messages that my mail box was full. So I deleted various things. I got the total down to an acceptable limit, so I thought. But overnight my total jumped to a level higher than it was before. I contacted the Proton help people and they suggested other places to look for things to delete. I did as they suggested. The total has now dropped to a very low level. But I have now lost data which I would have preferred to keep. I feel the false high memory signal was meant to prompt me to sign up for a paying account. I am very disappointed.
3. I contacted their help people and they said my messages weren't completely lost because they had a mechanism to retrieve them. They agreed to do so and later emailed that they had done so. They didn't retrieve them so I guess that's 200M gone.
Update
Just got response on here to provide ticket number publicly. I don't think that's an appropriate suggestion.

After 3 days, this was the ridiculous reply I got from support.

They claimed my account was “directly connected” to another account that violated their terms and was used maliciously. The problem is: they never explained what exactly I supposedly did wrong.

I only used my account to send legitimate emails to a business partner regarding motorcycle spare parts offers. That’s it.

No spam, no fraud, no malicious activity, just normal business communication.

Instead of providing actual evidence or clarification, they permanently suspended my account and said they were doing it to “avoid further damage to their service.”

The irony is that they are damaging their own service by randomly suspending paying customers without proper explanation.

Very frustrating experience. Be careful if you rely on this email provider for important business or personal communication.

I had the same problem and it was extremely frustrating.

I even paid for a subscription, and when I tried to log in, I got this message:

Dieses Konto ist aufgrund eines möglichen Verstoßes gegen die Richtlinien gesperrt. Wenn du glaubst, dass dies ein Fehler ist, kontaktiere uns bitte unter //proton. me/ support/ appeal-abuse.

I contacted support immediately, but never received any response.

Losing access to a paid email account without clear explanation or proper customer support is unacceptable. If you use this provider for important emails or personal data, be careful and make sure you have backups of everything.

Based on my experience, I felt completely let down and would not recommend this service. I saw on YouTube that the owner is a rich kid from China—that explains everything... They also check your emails and read all your messages! They claim it's secure, but they are very dangerous.

Absolutely horrible service.

Was recommended this as it was supposed to be secure and it would keep your things save.

I made several accounts. I didn't check on them for years as they were for other services. I recently checked on them, and sure enough proton deleted all of the mails.

Two more recent acccounts I had made weren't deleted, but proton had deleted every single mail in them "to keep them safe". What a horrible disgusting service.

If I had known what I was going into with Proton Mail so I had stayed away. I do not want to touch Proton Mail with a fire poker, and would recommend anyone even slightly considerating proton as an option to also think twice.

I think the icing on the cake was Proton support recommended to use paid subscription services to keep the account active. You know who also keeps your account active and for free permanently? Yahoo, for free. FREE.

It's just disgusting when companies tries to squeeze money out of consumers by providing a less than medicore service.