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Comment by highwaylights

3 years ago

They also don’t care about locking you permanently out of your own e-Mail with no warning, for no reason, with no recourse.

Honestly - there are far better options out there. They’re not in anyway a responsible enough business to manage an e-mail service. It’s run more like a hobby project than critical infrastructure.

47 comments

highwaylights

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jrootabega  3 years ago

I think it's worse than that - they are well into the stage of growth where privacy and reliability are just marketing deceptions. Some other recent data points:

- They suddenly weakened a privacy setting, and even exposed some client IPs for good measure. - https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/yj5m59/pm_visio...

  • OneLeggedCat  3 years ago

    That changed setting should have been a huge story. I've paid for ProtonMail for like 6 years now, and this was the most disappointing thing I've dealt with.

    • jrootabega  3 years ago

      Thank you; it's frustrating that this isn't being covered more widely, but good to know that there are people who see the problem. If nothing else, don't give up trying to inform people!

mr_mitm  3 years ago

What are those better options that HN likes? I just switched all my accounts to protonmail, but stories like this make me want to reconsider. The fact that they won't allow me to set up a forwarding rule in case I want to switch again doesn't help.

  • Toutouxc  3 years ago

    First of all, bring your own domain. That way you can just point the same address elsewhere if you need to switch again without having to deal with forwarding.

    edit: As mentioned by a sibling comment, my email is currently on Fastmail, zero problems.

    • Eumenes  3 years ago

      I don't need a custom domain anymore and I find it trivial to change email addresses. I can use 1password to locate accounts, easily migrate, apply a tag, and work through the change over a few hours. I typically change email every 2-3 years and it serves as a good way to review security settings/change passwords. Modern email providers have mailbox porting tools, and they work fine. I use to like having a domain, but dunno, for a privacy nut, seems more secure to not use one.

      3 replies →

    • mr_mitm  3 years ago

      Sounds reasonable. Any gotchas there? I already read that vanity TLDs are bad, obscure countries' TLDs are bad, and even .eu may be unstable. Which are good services that can sell me an .org or .de domain for a fair price?

      10 replies →

  • gobip  3 years ago

    HN is hooked on fastmail which is a great provider to be honest. Have a look at mailbox.org which is in business since the 90s too. Avoid the privacy trending providers promising you to encrypt your emails.

  • BluSyn  3 years ago

    FWIW, I went from gmail -> protonmail -> fastmail, and have been very happy with fastmail.

    protonmail is great as a secure disposable email, but as a go-to daily email service I found it too difficult to manage. Hard to use other email clients due to requiring this bridge, and their mobile apps and web guis are just not up-to-par with other offerings. Being able to use any frontend on mobile (and not deal with complicated proxy setups) was my biggest issue.

    Using a custom domain has made the switches easier, as I don't have to tell anyone to update their contacts or worry about forwarding. Just exporting/importing, change some MX records, and I can switch providers any time.

    • tikkabhuna  3 years ago

      I did the same thing. Custom domain with Protonmail. Ended up frustrated that I couldn't set up forwarding rules and alike. I realised I didn't need the privacy as much as I needed features.

      Swapping from Protonmail to Fastmail was super easy. Exported all my email, imported into Fastmail, and swapped over the DNS records. Took me a couple of hours in between other tasks.

  • twleo  3 years ago

    I uses FastMail after I discover this serious issue about Proton. I would say it work flawlessly and their web mail client is super fast; even faster than Gmail.

    Besides, FastMail exists before Gmail and the people in FastMail are active standard protocol developers like IMAP and recently JMAP (a modern mail protocol will replace SMTP/IMAP, FastMail as a reference implementation), which is good because at least I know they understand the protocol and implement it by themselves.

    • Semaphor  3 years ago

      > even faster than Gmail.

      It’s really fast, but come on, that’s one low bar to jump over. Gmail is the electron of mail interfaces.

  • mostafah  3 years ago

    I’ve been a Fastmail user for about a decade (I just checked; wow!) and am very, very happy with them. I wish more companies were like them. The service is very reliable, the product is great, their support is amazing and very kind. A lot of companies get distracted by big pivots and hyper-growth ideas, while companies like Fastmail focus on doing their main job very well.

    • vr46  3 years ago

      Today I've just given up on Protonmail, the Bridge is a POS. When things were reliable, I was ok to jump through hoops in maintaining a separate app, but I cannot be bothered any longer. Just set up a Fastmail account to see what it's all about.

  • alpaca128  3 years ago

    I personally use mailbox.org for years now. Granted, I don't have remotely the usage mentioned in the linked issue and I know users that aren't very satisfied with features like the integrated office webapp, but it does everything I need (emails & calendar sync) and I haven't found a reason not to trust them.

    Originally my reason to choose them instead of Protonmail was that Protonmail only works with their official client, which is a far too limiting dependency in my eyes.

  • worble  3 years ago

    Happy user of Migadu here, mostly because they let you bring as many domain names as you want and just charge usage.

  • MrBuddyCasino  3 years ago

    Anyone has experience with hey.com?

    • benhurmarcel  3 years ago

      I tried it for a year.

      I'm quite positive on it, nice interface and unique useful features, and it's reliable in my experience. However you have to be ok with its particularities, mainly that it doesn't have IMAP, and it's expensive.

      Ultimately it's for people who love their unique interface/features, and don't mind paying so much for email.

ClawsOnPaws  3 years ago

Randomly, I get locked out of my Protonmail webmail interface by an hCaptcha. This in itself isn't a problem. The problem starts because I can't actually see the captcha images. So in order to get at my email, I have to provide hCaptcha with a third party email which isn't protonmail, and enable third party cookies and/or install a browser extension for them to set an "accessibility cookie" to get past the captcha. And, well, nobody wants to do anything about that either. I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem reasonable to me.