So I am currently testing proton suite out, and it works out about £10 p/m give or take (I pay for it using dollars), honestly, for the price you get a lot, and its replaced a lot of services for me.
Email / Calendar - Used to use Fastmail, its included in the unlimited plan, thats $5 saved straight away essentially.
Drive - I use drive and photos (My needs are simple, but I also backup using Ente and Seedvault to USB), but I reckon when (in the next century) Proton improves the photos side, I think it could genuinely be great.
VPN - Used to use Mullvad but I had a lot of issues with it randomly disconnecting after being stable for ages, shame, but proton has filled the gap for me.
Pass - Used bitwarden, but I find pass’s autofill much better, its more basic, but still works for my needs.
Obviously there are downsides to proton, I think their main one being slow developments, but I still think at as I said £10 p/m, its worth it for a simple, no frills, set and forget privacy suite.
Just need to get standard notes into that plan now and we are golden
For those of us who cannot afford to pay for such services, Proton’s Free Plan is really good too. My only concern is putting all my eggs in one basket, which is why I always suggest looking at incorporating alternatives such as Tuta email & calendar, Ente, etc.
I agree thats the downside for me also, is all eggs in one place, however, Proton has been around for what 10 years now? and they have a decent track record.
Another plan I was considering is Tutanota, Addy.io, Keepass and then backing everything up using Seedvault to USB, this would also be free considering you can use a tutamail address for free, then addy unlimited alias for free (but obviously give where you can in terms of payment to keep these guys running, if the user can afford )
I was paying for Simplelogin and Proton Plus and decided to do a little math. Turns out Unlimited is only $1.75 more per month (when I pay for 2 years) vs SL and PP. For that buck 75 I get Drive, Pass, VPN, Calendar but I’m happy with Fossify.
The only better deal, afaik, is to use free foss and hope the developer continues to develop. That isn’t a long term solution.
I agree with this although I would love to hear more from Proton about this.
If each service is E2EE, and audited, is there a threat by using this ecosystem?
Also I would like to learn more about how the servers are separated. They say they physically own each server, so do they use the same servers for mail and VPN?
You are right, actually. If we compare my favourite services with Proton, it concludes as follows:
Tuta: $36
Filen: $40 (Comparing to Proton Unlimited’s 500 GB)
Windscribe: $30 (If you catch up on deals which will be recurring instead of original $69)
Bitwarden: $10|
SimpleLogin : $30
Total: $146 which is expensive to Proton Unlimited: $119 or could be $116 if Proton pass does the work of aliases.
Everything in one billing, E2E, Swiss privacy, etc.
But I am not yet comfortable with proton (personal opinion: feels snake oil to me.), Too flashy webpage, web apps are good though, trying to rush into market with half-baked products that has a lot of rooms for improvements.
Could have just said “feels too good to be true”, or “they have half-baked apps” or something. Saying “snake oil salesman” is an accusation of selling make-believe or fake solutions. Unless you can provide evidence going against the multiple audits they have had, it’s just FUD.
Why is it so hard to just not use projects you don’t like instead of saying stuff like “honeypot”, “snakeoil salesman”, etc. to projects that absolutely not deserve it lol (unless of course you can prove their claims misleading or wrong). Privacy space already has too many conspiracy theorists, let’s not malign established products based on “opinion”.
As an aside, your usage of unaudited filen while calling Proton snake oil is slightly ironic
Hello, it is understandable. I should have been factual instead of ideological. I am not used to Proton ecosystem and am not sure about it. Snake oil wasn’t the right term. I do take it back. Sorry for the misrepresentation.
I have trust in filen than Proton and hope that they will do once they refine everything further. Proton is not for me. Period. My previous messages should have been strictly confined to their pricings.
As a member of their discord. What I know is They locked down their Lifetime plans to 100 GB, and it will be available based on the demand. If too much demand increases, they will cap it to a certain number and Lifetime plans or only during Black Friday deals which is also not unlimited. It is also capped based on demand like “Offer applies till stocks last” policy.
These lifetime sales help them like a VC funding. They use an Algorithm (which can refer to as AI) for now.
P.S. The team has only said “Algorithm” only till now and not endorsed the term till AI.
The biggest threat is denial of service, either intentional (banned or blocked account) or unintentional (infrastructure down, goes bankrupt, etc.). But it’s the same issue with every single service you use, Proton or not. Although the ecosystem approach does increase the risk a lot.
The second biggest is compromised server attacks, where they (or an adversary who can successfully emulate them) can serve you a malicious webpage and steal your credentials. Having all services by proton means a single compromise is enough. Now they can use this single credential to access all your data. This is not a normal attack on multiple people, it can only happen with a state level attack on a single individual, and can still be mitigated by using secure browsers, using HTTPS, and security keys as MFA. Not in the threat model of most people, unless you are Snowden.
If you are thinking of data surveillance or something similar, their current implementations of encryption are well tested, so no actual issue on that front as long as you use their website and their apps to access it, and not entrust your credentials to another party. Even if they try to access your data directly, they can’t without your creds.
I have personally never used a single VPN provider that doesn’t randomly disconnect. Seriously. And that includes ProtonVPN. I would love to know why a VPN disconnects when you have no issues with your internet connection.
Even without Wi-Fi, ProtonVPN disconnects all the time on my phone, even though I have unlimited data through my cellphone carrier. And again, this is not unique to Proton. From my experience, all VPNs disconnect.
I remember watching a video from a YouTuber reviewing multiple VPN providers, in which he specified that he was in the US, and that his experience with a certain VPN was fantastic from there.
This made me wonder the following. If one person lives in Australia and another lives in Canada, but they both have an unlimited and unthrottled 500 Mbit fiber internet connection, are they not going to experience the same VPN more or less the same way?
If not, that is insane to me. It also suggests that VPN reviews are unreliable, unless the reviewer lives in the same country/city as you.
I’m assuming you’re paying yearly, and just for yourself?
I personally think that it’s a dark pattern when companies deliberately hide or de-emphasize the yearly price of their subscriptions.
Many privacy companies are guilty of this, including Proton.
If customers have to pay a large amount upfront yearly in order to get a discount on the monthly cost, then the former should be emphasized. Not the latter.
Quite a few times in the past, I have found myself on the checkout page of a website from which I was about to purchase a subscription, thinking I was going to pay monthly, only to find out in shock that I had to pay a large amount yearly, which I couldn’t afford.
Yearly subscriptions may be cheaper in the long run, but there is no point over emphasizing the monthly cost, when many users cannot afford the yearly cost, which is the real price.
For me, that’s a dark pattern, and I hope the FTC passes a legislation against it. To be clear, I’m not againt discounts through yearly subscriptions, I’m against how they are marketed.
Oh 100%. Ideally MFA should always be something you don’t upload online, and always physically retain. Like offline auth apps, or hardware keys, depending of course on your threat model. But a lot of people do use the same manager for MFA, and also do use online sync even if they use a separate app for MFA.
In defense of Proton, they also offer pretty sizable Black Friday deals every year. You can even roll over your existing subscription into the discounted one.
As for the marketing, I’m someone who pays the upfront cost of a multi-year proton subscription (I’ve been with them from the beginning as an original beta tester ten years ago). For a company offering a service, a guaranteed annual upfront payment is worth more than a monthly one that might stop at any time.
Having a known annual amount of money to invest allows them stability a monthly payment doesn’t. Hence the discount.
Your comment doesn’t really address the issue that I raised. I’ve also been with Proton from the very beginning and got my account when it was invite only. Moreover, I also have a yearly subscription.
My comment was not focused on the price. It was about the way Proton and other companies present their yearly subscriptions, ie the marketing.
If I’m going to pay $100/year for a subscription, then that is the price that should be emphasized. That is the price that I should see in big bold characters.
Emphasizing that I’ll be paying $8.3 dollars is misleading, because I’m not paying monthly. Hence, $8.3 dollars should not be in big black bold letters. Instead, it should be $100, because that’s what I’m actually paying.
In regard to Black Friday deals, it is my understanding that you cannot benefit from them if you already have a paying Proton subscription for the same product. My understanding is that that is the rule for pretty much every online product of any company.
This is very subjective, really depends on your threat model and what you need.
For me it would be:
MullvadVPN: 60€ / year
iCloud+ 50GB: 12€ / year
Bitwarden: free Addy.io: 12€ / year (I feel like the Lite version should be enough for me)
So it’s going to cost 84€.
Also, only addy.io is yearly so to me that is also a bonus that Mullvad + iCloud are monthly.
Then again as I am a student I only pay 60€ / year which is great, but I doubt that I’ll pay 120€ after that unless Proton improves Drive and makes storing Photos not suck as much, maybe then.
I do really like Proton’s Suite, but I don’t like their dark patterns like the fact that I can’t just unsubscribe and then use Proton until the subscription ends…
It’s only getting better for Proton, as they’re going to officially support the VPN client on Flathub soon.
Aside from that, they’re the only trust worthy VPN provider (beside Mullvad and IVPN) that allows port forwarding. The client along with many other of their apps are already on Flathub by the community effort, with official support on the way.
So, yes, I think Proton has the best deal in the privacy space right now.
