Hello,
Just a small news to share. I was monitoring SimpleLogin waiting for BlackFriday sales, I was surprised today that they increased the price from 30$ to 36$. On the other hand, they added Proton Pass to both paid and free accounts using SL.
A little disappointed. As I think at this point, buying a custom domain with Unlimited email addresses would be cheaper (but probably not easier to handle).
You can take a look at the Addy.io Lite package. Iâm also using it, and it works quite well for me.
Price increases are never fun.
But theyâve had the same price for a long time and years now so this is not that big a deal though.
If you use it enough, itâs still great value for what you get.
while I think price increases are understandable, it does seem to me like giving a warning to your customers ahead of time would be the appropriate thing to do
I know people will say âits only $6â thats still a 20% price hike.
This is also feels like the very Proton thing of forcing people into a bundle (SL+Pass) for a higher price instead of allowing people to purchase the service they are actually there for.
EDIT: only affects new customers
The price will only increase for the new users:
âIf youâre an existing SimpleLogin user, the price of your subscription will stay the same: youâll still pay $30 annually.â
Super glad I got my subscription just before the price increase. Good stuff.
Okay
I hear you. Weâre in the privacy community and think differently about all that out favorite privacy companies do snd the decisions they make.
But Protonsâ leadership has to think about all they do from a different perspective while ensuring itâs adequate if not satisfactory to all privacy enthusiasts too.
From a business perspective when they are trying to court people interested in privacy and making easy for them to make the switch to Proton, such bundles make a lot more sense.
The extreme customization of the hard core privacy fans wanting to only pay for the specific feature set they need - is not going to happen nor does it make business sense.
I do understand what you mean and it would be nice to have that in an ideal world. But humankind has never lived in an ideal world.
I donât buy this. There is no legitimate reason not to offer services a la carte as well as in a bundle.
This is not a new concept. Before the enshitification of streaming, one of the big knocks on cable tv was your were forced to buy these expensive cable bundles when you only needed a few channels.
I think its pretty clear now they just wanted to make SL slightly more expensive, so that people who want premium would just get Pass+ instead.
Yep. And thatâs a good thing because it forces people to adopt password managers and be more private and secure online.
You also need to remember that we know more so we can decide for ourselves but the vast majority donât and Proton is trying to provide a simple solution that âforcesâ them to use a powerful privacy tool thatâs a password manager to protect sure security for them and many others, including businesses at large.
The reason they donât offer extreme customization is because that would make pricing exposition to potential customers a lot more tricky and complicated. In essence, it becomes a logistical issue for them as a business and for the average user to decide what subscription with what premium features to buy.
You may not buy that but itâs a business decision nonetheless. It wonât make it not true if you donât agree or see why it is the way it is.
And if youâre mentioning enshittification, youâre jumping way too ahead where I no longer fathom your argument because this is nowhere near it.
Yes, every thing and every company has the potential to become enshhittified but that doesnât mean it is now/today. And if this is your concern today, then I no longer can find words to explain why youâre way off course with your thinking on this.
You have your opinions, others have theirs. And this is mine.
What you are really saying is that new customers are idiots and should be forced into using the tools we have decided they need.
I buy its a business decision but what I donât buy is that its somehow a good thing for customers to pay more for services they didnât want just to get the service they do want.
what? its not a hard concept. I have faith you could easily âfathomâ it.
Youâre taking what was an example and expanding it into something I was not talking about. I stand by my example and my opinion that streaming services have indeed been enshitified.
Totally and its great we can have a discussion about it.
Okay, on desktop now so I can comment better.
Not what I mean and not what I ever meant. This is your incorrect inference from what I said - which can happen to anyone.
What I meant more is that not new customers are idiots but new customers are less knowledgeable at the very least about 100% of the features and functionality of all that Proton offers with their individualized or Unlimited plan/family plans. The pricing structure for every subscription based product/service needs to be intentional and well thought out - and this is not an easy thing to always achieve. Hence, a simplified structure without extreme customization and payment options to only pick what they want and only pay for that is not possible.
It is also extremely difficult from a technical POV to have the account/app/software only provide access to select features and functionality to people who choose this level of customization if offered because software development will become a nightmare for them. It already is difficult to make privacy by default products/apps as it is with the standards they have.
I understand where the logic comes from - a point of fairness and to only pay for things you will actually use. But no company with a subscription model has this level of customization. It doesnât work and canât logistically work and make it available for the potential user this way. In other words, itâs just the way it is with the technical and other logistical hindrances in place.
Itâs not that I donât fathom what enshittification is - what I donât fathom is you bring up enshittification here and trying to make sense of it when this is nowhere near what that concept means. And thatâs why I think youâre jumping to your own potentially and at-least somewhat flawed conclusion about what it means.
Personal opinion. The industry has become enshittied - the streaming platform still is functioning the same way it always did. It sucks that we donât have all the shows and movies on a single platform and thatâs why we have so many streaming services but the basic way each streaming service works - is still the same as it was 10 years ago. Of course the quality of content has changed and become a lot worse overall.
Edit: I think now the discussing is no longer fully on topic. And this is my last comment on the matter.
Shame. I understand price increases, however SL hasnât been updated in like a year. Before Proton acquisition, they were working on alias folders and labels, and they completely stopped developing new features for SL after the acquisition.
Another thing is Proton bundling everything, I feel that was unsolicited. Although Iâm happy for current SL customers who will stay on the current pricing.
From Reddit:
âHERE ARE UNRELATED ADDONS THAT NOBODY ASKED FOR WHICH LOCK YOU INTO OUR ECOSYSTEM THAT WILL BE A 20% INCREASE CASH OR CARD FRIENDO? 
â
-Protonâs nOn pRoFiT tEaM"
Thatâs because the SinpleLogin team is now the Proton Pass team. And theyâve done fantastic work with the rate of improvement of it.
Also, Proton is still a for profit company for their biggest shareholder which is a non profit foundation.
I understand all that. Still sucks. 
Iâm thinking about purchasing one of them. So, which one is better now? SimpleLogin or Addy.io? They both now have the same price. Also I donât use Proton Pass.
I donât see much difference between the two applications. Iâve used both in their free versions, and now Iâm quite content with Addy.io Lite.
Addy can be abit troublesome for its hard quota limit if you enable catchall and got hit by mass spam attack. Theres no leeway once you hit the quota, mail would bounce so you wouldnât even receive legit mails anymore until the quota refreshes next month.
Luckily it supports regex now so can do semi catchall to avoid generic catchall spam.
Which is irrelevant and unsatisfying for the many Simplelogin subscribers who do not want or need a new password manager and are not looking for a bundled âecosystemâ and just want a good aliases service, particularly those that purchased SL before Proton bought it.
And it serves as a good example of why many people prefer a-la-carte single purpose tools. On the other hand I can absolutely see the logic of integrating password management & aliasing itâs a natural pairing in some respects.
I think there are too many variables in that comparison to confidently say X or Y is better.
addy.io is fine. Definitely a good option. 12 bucks for the lite package definitely is an interesting alternative to SL.