Proton

I started testing out alternatives immediately after discovering his post. I understand they're saying this was a mistake and was meant to have been posted from his official account and not the company account, but that is still a bit off putting to me. As others have mentioned, this also made me aware of how many eggs I have in this basket, and after trying out alternatives for a few days I made the full switch away from ProtonMail, Calendar and VPN to Tuta + Mullvad.

Unfortunately, my Unlimited plan renewed in November and customer service has stated they will not refund me for the remaining time, as 30 days has passed. Oh well, I can at least cancel my auto-renewal :)

I left and glad I did. It was a needed wake-up call. All-in-one is inherently risky. I'd rather support smaller, more focused products. If one doesn't fit my needs down the line, it's way easier to switch.

• Email: Tuta (meh, loading issues)
• Calendar: Tuta (don't like, can't handle recurring events)
• VPN: Mullvad (like)
• Drive: Tresorit (like)
• Passwords: already using Bitwarden (love)

No. I'm tired of making my life inconvenient the moment someone says something stupid.

I bought a year of unlimited in November but I have canceled and will be migrating when my year is up

What's the deal with Lavabit these days? Are they good? I don't keep up with things that well. Am old man.

I highly-valued the cohesion and simplicity of having a suite of tools provided by a single vendor and all on a single bill, despite how often this turns into a vendor-lock-in strategy

Proton was part of my attempt to de-Google, precisely because it offered email (with custom CNAMEs), calendar, and storage, and because they open-sourced their clients and tools

Despite the UX and feature set being quite bare, I was okay with justifying this with the added privacy (which was a nice-to-have but not a deal-breaker for me)

It seems like all the alternatives are either less open-source, have even fewer features, are even less cohesive (indeed, I'd have to select entirely separate solutions and give up all integrations) or seem to have even fewer resources for development and project sustainability

I was hard considering it but if I do it then it would cost me way more.

Tuta ($3)+Simplelogin ($4)+Mullvad ($5) = $12

A proton unlimited plan costs $10. Also, when I was on a vpn plus plan, they upgraded me to unlimited so I'm only paying like $6.50 or something.

No. Because changing email providers is a royal pain in the ass. Changed from Google to Ctemplar and from that to proton a year later after ctemplar went down.
I am not going to use smaller email providers because of that experience, and proton still seems to be the best of both worlds.
I absolutely hate that i am supporting a CEO like that with my money but I'm not in the mood to migrate anytime soon. Took me more than a whole weekend last time.

No, I've not switched. While I disagree with his comments, that does not make me switch.

I am fine with using services provided by companies whose employees or leaders I don't 100% agree with all the time.

I'd moved from Bitwarden to Proton Pass only 6 months ago, so moving back wasn't too much of a difficult choice (both services have great import/export and Bitwarden even offers self-hosting)

I've got Keepass for password manager and Mullvad for VPN, and both have worked out really well for me so far. What I haven't been able to find is a good alternative to Proton Drive. For aliases I use Firefox Relay.

A sociopath libertarian idiot.

The L part is the kind of person I want in charge of my encrypted data. Telling the government to fuck off because he legitimately can’t comprehend how government is a good thing.

i have free proton accounts as am not loggin in to close them because lazy. but i havent really used it anymore...maybe for trashmail stuff. mullvad is cooler and 1$ rootboxes anywhere also. disroot,riseup and so many other mailproviders are cool too. i dont get why proton is so relevant to some. did you guys buy a lifetime package or why?

There are a few alternatives in mind for me. Mailbox, posteo, disroot. Disroot is the only one among these with a free email. But posteo and mailbox do have cheap tiers. Posteo doesn't have support for custom domains last I checked.

That's just email. I've already not been using proton for almost everything else. KeepassXC for passwords, Addy.io for aliases, Syncthing and offline storage across my 3 devices instead of any Drive. VPN I rarely use so free proton is enough for that. Mullvad exists on the off chance I need it for a while (it's a constant price per month how many ever months you choose, and you can just "top up" with some amount and it will last you the appropriate number of days).

I still use protonmail since it's hard to move mail instances after giving so many people my address but I've reconsidered my plans to switch to their vpn or paid plans.

I know this is lazy of me, but no. I was going to, downloaded tuta and everything, but I just switched this year and finally have it where I want it. I have my stuff forwarded from my old emails, and most of my important stuff has the email. I also failed to vary my programs, so it's also my VPN and password manager. Even just getting starting with the email was giving me a headache.

And, honestly, the vpn is better than mullvad (to me). When I was attempting to switch, I started with mullvad, but it was so much slower. And I had issues on sites I normally had no issues with. I'll keep the resources and maybe start transferring little by little as time goes on.

No, I wouldn't switch unless it compromise my privacy. People are overreacting and politics makes them sensitive.

Yes, I canceled my Ultimate account. Andy can believe whatever he wants in private, but publicly stepping outside of non-partisan policy advocacy at this exact moment in time was a red flag, doubly so because he espoused his personal politics through an official business account in his response to the Reddit thread.

Email/calendar went to Tuta, AirVPN for VPN, BitWarden for passwords. Everything is encouragingly smooth so far.

Fair warning: Tuta's email import is very new and only available on the more expensive tier at the moment (not sure if that's permanent). I didn't have any problems, but there were some issues a few weeks ago.

I do think people are over-reacting to Andy's words and assigning him political views he didn't express. He didn't endorse Trump or the Republican party at large, and definitely didn't "go full MAGA" or express Nazi sympathies. His statements about Democrats I partially agree with and partially disagree. His remarks about the priorities and actions of Republicans, though, were pure tailpipe-huffing fantasy. Being able to say these absurd things in public--under an official business account no less--shows poor judgement and implies he might believe other absurd things he isn't willing to say publicly.

Another factor in my decision: Proton's privacy policy specifies they can modify the policy at any time with no notification to users, and deems continued use of the services as agreement to the updated terms. The updated terms they didn't notify you about.

That being said, no service provider is perfect. I don't think Proton stores enough data to really be a concern if they turned over everything they have. But this whole thing is based on trust. Even with their clients being open-source software, you're trusting that they always serve the same browser scripts that they published. You trust that the password you provide at key generation or login isn't ever passed back to their servers. You trust that they don't keep unencrypted copies of your emails, files, or VPN activity. You trust that they aren't going to modify their privacy policy and quietly undo protections you thought you had.

The way Andy responded was enough to question my trust in the company with him at the helm. I didn't leave as a heavy rebuke, just as a "do better". There are plenty of other companies which provide equivalent services. That's the risk companies take when a major part of their market is ideological people: if you chafe their ideology they're more likely to put the effort into leaving.

I am currently still using their stuff since my husband and I just purchased a longer subscription as a bulk purchase, but we will not be renewing and I am actively researching alternatives for the VPN and emails.

The emails is the more difficult part for me, because everyone suggests hosting your own on your own domain, but to me that just seems like a great way to have any site you tie your email to to be directly linked to your house. Unless I am massively misunderstanding how that would work, in which case any resources would be greatly appreciated.