Comment by KAMSPioneer
3 days ago
What GP likely means is that a Protonmail user can exchange encrypted emails with a non-Protonmail user without doing anything except importing the non-Protonmail user's keys once.
This could allow a single technical user with an elaborate PGP key and email setup to convince his or her social circle (or at least email circle) to switch to Protonmail and follow a set of (comparatively) simple steps to get Proton to recognize the key to their non-Proton address.
Thereby having PGP-encrypted conversations with users who don't know how PGP works, but followed their friends' instructions to use a slightly different webmail interface. Meanwhile the technical user can use a smartcard, a self-hosted email server, or other madness that a normal user would never tolerate.
Thank you KAMSPioneer. This is exactly what I meant.
There is AFAIK only one other email service that offers a similar level of functionality, and that is Mailbox.org.
However the proton UI/UX experience for importing and managing keys is much better for the non-technical user in Proton. The UI/UX in Mailbox.org is messy.
"GMail+PGP or AOL+PGP or FastMail+PGP or $coolNameMail+PGP" is not the same thing and I hope the GP who replied to me knows that full well. ;)