As the title says, I have been using Proton Unlimited for almost a year; I mainly use Proton Pass, VPN and mail. Mail and Pass are pretty good. However, proton VPN is hit and miss because of the constant loading, slow and unreliable servers.
As the saying goes: don’t put all eggs in the same basket
I want opinions from current and previous Proton Unlimited users.
On a grandfathered visionary 2 year payment plan with a year remaining, so no change plans yet, but I’m keeping a list of annoyances and concerns for renewal considerations.
Email
Really want snooze/delayed email reminders for specific emails. What Mailbox from Dropbox? used to have, and Inbox had before it was merged with Gmail.
Annoyed I can’t delete pre-proton pass aliases
No android (bidirectional) contact syncing. Been using EteSync.
Have multiple family members on the plan
Calendar
Use daily. I had issues with the number of clicks it took when adding emailed invites that didn’t get picked up automatically. Have not noticed in awhile if this is still an issue but I also don’t get as many invites.
Passwords
I use BitWarden
Been using Proton Pass aliases, but I’m on the fence due to it creating a vendor lock-in situation
VPN
Use ProtonVPN for port forwarding situations.
Use Mullvad otherwise as my daily driver.
Drive
Proton - I use if I need to share a file with someone else in a pinch
rclone/b2 - Main off-site backup solution with my own encryption keys. RoundSync for android to backup my phone to b2.
I tried rclone proton support the week it was merged. Worked okay. I tried syncing some ISO backups though and it just sat forever. Didn’t troubleshoot and just kept using b2.
I have been paying for Proton Unlimited for a very long time. About a year ago, they changed their prices for new users. currently it is $12/m, but I have to pay only $7.50/m, and yes, I pay monthly.
I use Proton Mail with 3 custom domains, and I am an always-on VPN user. The VPN connection is always great with good speeds, but sometimes bad pings, but have a bad Linux app (yes, the new one as well). I also use their drive, currently using ~200GB. I have never touched Proton Pass because I have a self-hosted Vaultwarden server.
But I am seriously considering discontinuing their service, specifically due to their poor Linux support. Their VPN app is shit, they don’t provide and not even developing a Linux app for Drive. But their are 2 reasons that make me continue their service. One, I do not really wish to self-host my email, and I do not want to use Tutanota, because I need Thunderbird. Two, there are no trusted VPN providers that give Indian IPs.
Idk if this helps you, but you can download the OVPN-Configs for single Servers and countries, so you can usw the VPN Client your DE provides. Also, rclone now has Proton Drive support
Using multiple config files is a bother, plus I really need the kill switch. Is there a way to replicate it manually? I didnt’t know rcloje started supporting Proton Drive, I’ll start using it.
Never trust the killswitch. If you use proton for torrenting, you can set your torrent client to just connect over the tun0 interface, which will only exist if the VPN is on
For me, no. I used it for several years but their linux support is not good enough for me. The linux vpn client depends on networkmanager, but I use iwd, so I was sol (loading wireguard profiles is not a good enough solution, too much of a hastle). They also don’t support ipv6 for vpn. Their linux email client doesn’t exist, and on android their app depends on google play services and they refuse to put a degoogled version on fdroid or host their own fdroid repo.
i switched to mullvad for vpn (linux app works great, they have ipv6, and since I don’t use vpn that often I save money on the months I don’t use it) and tuta for email (they have a decent email app on linux and android, works great without google play services and is on fdroid, and their servers use green energy)
for pass, I’ve used keepass with syncthing and keepassxc on linux and keepassdx on android so proton pass wasn’t a bonus for me anyways
The VPN is decent enough. The new linux app is decent enough as well. The best privacy-respecting VPNs are $5 a month anyway.
Mail is great, Calendar is solid and great for my needs. Though I would much prefer calendar integration with Thunderbird.
Drive is new and underbaked, but it is improving. Once it gets a Linux client and Auto photo upload I’ll be happy.
Proton Pass is solid and I like having passwords and 2FA wrapped into one.
I am also grandfathered in for the $6.60/month for 24 months plan. For that price and combination of services (And even at $8/month) it cannot be beat.
I had the unlimited plan for a few months but downgraded only to the mail plan, that way I can try different providers for VPN, Drive, and password manager.
For password manager I’ve had Bitwarden for years now and it works great for me. VPN currently with AirVPN because of easy port forwarding, and drive with Nextcloud self hosted because I can, and also works fine for me.
Can’t answer, really.
i’m ok with Tutanota for mail, although Proton does have an .onion address whereas Tutanota does not.
Bitwarden for passwords.
No VPN but i’d go for IVPN.
I know for me, i don’t need all the services unlimited offers.
I created seperate accounts for the services i use as they don’t allow you to bundle only specific services together (ie just mail+ and drive+ together). This ends up saving a few bucks.
I mostly use Proton Mail, pass and VPN with free SimpleLogin Unlimited, which is a plus; however, the VPN is not as good as advertised. I’m considering moving to you are Mullvad (buying the Mullvad plan from Amazon). That way, you’re not forced to share your credentials.
As for cloud storage, I use Filen - lifetime 180GB (thinking of self-host using NAS or Raspberry Pie; however, I’ve never done it before, so it’s tough for me).
Mullvad is the gold standard if you dont need port forwarding.
You may want to look into Filen - I know they have had issues with them not using the best encryption methods. Just remember “lifetime” refers to the life of the service (which they can change at any time) and not your lifetime.
You may want to check out AirVPN - great port forwarding implementation.
Long history of being privacy respecting and completely FOSS but they don’t do audits (which is a super big deal to some and a big reason its not recommended on pg).
Just make sure to use the wireguard client as their own client kind of sucks.
I used Proton Mail since college student, it was great and upgraded to Unlimited tier after getting a job. Thier VPN was okay for occasional usage. However, coming from a personal perspective, over the time I became not a fan of them branching out to other services such as Proton Pass, when they still have work to do for their existing ones (eg. split tunneling on Linux VPN client, calendar sync on Bridge, to name a few), so I downgraded to only Mail Plus. I also switched to Mullvad VPN and I like the experience better than Proton VPN. As of now, I think Proton is still a great service for email and calendar, but I’m not sure about other ones
Personally, I don’t think Proton Unlimited should be considered unless it costs less than the combination of single premium products that you use from them, and even then, you should consider shopping around first.
Outside of mail, other services exist elsewhere for lower prices and similar functionality, with both privacy and otherwise. Pass: Bitwarden. SimpleLogin: AnonAddy, Ironvest*, DuckDuckGo. Drive: Filen.
And regarding things like government requests: I don’t think Proton is particularly egregious in this area, but it can’t hurt to limit the amount of data they have about you, the number of times you visit their server, etc. For example, maybe Bitwarden receives government requests too, but Bitwarden will never be able to passively intercept your email. Separation
* this is the one I use the most, although I find the free email plan to almost always be enough for my needs
I’m also interested in hearing Proton users’ experience. On paper it looks like an okay deal, but you could get a similar suite of services from Posteo + iDrive + Mullvad + BitWarden for cheaper and not end up locked into an “ecosystem”.
However, there is legitimate value in combining email and drive space. Posteo only gives you 2GB for email, and their upgrades are rather expensive.
Also, Mullvad might not be equivalent since they axed the port forwarding feature a while back, making BitTorrent only kind-of usable (incoming connections will not work).
Rather then committing a year to a service, do a monthly subscription until you find something you’re happy with. Then switch to annual billing if you want. I wouldn’t continue paying for a VPN that doesn’t work well. I’m personally pretty happy with PIA.
As others have mentioned, Bitwarden is a very good password manager that has a very full-featured free tier. And its paid tiers are very cheap if you decide to upgrade.
I accidentally nuked my internet the other day while testing Pass. Because it’s not local hosted, I could not access a single password. That’s not cool. Still not sure if I’m sold on using Pass. I’ve also had it not always offer to save new login details and some forms it misses 2fa. Hopefully all that gets fixed soon. But I’m an unlimited user for all the other features. Luckily they prorate the upgrade if you have current service. Might as well take the jump.
Mullvad was throttling my iptv connection. Ironically, from the same data center, using Proton the streams weren’t throttled. So not sure if Proton is paying a premium for better bare metal and uplink or what the deal was with Mullvad. Hope you have a better experience.
I’m also using Bitwarden; however, the UI is a big deal for me because me being a visual person. I still use it here and there.
I’ve heard they will have a visual overhaul soon; looking forward to it + thinking of self-hosting it. Even though I’m fairly new to “self hosting” any beginner self hosting tips and tricks would be appreciated.
Is it possible you tried Keepass? I thought Bitwarden’s UI was pretty good and modern, and that’s one of the silly reasons why I picked it over keepass long time ago
I have tried KeepassX. However, I had some file conflict issues and stopped using it. Regarding the password manager, my reason is similar to what you have said, but instead, I moved to proton pass from Bitwarden.
I would strongly advise against using the official Bitwarden server, and instead use something called Vaultwarden, which is API-compatible with Bitwarden but way easier to host.
I give VW a 5/5 on the arbitrary “easy to self-host with premium features” scale, and have never evaluated BitWarden proper (as it claims, among other things, to require six gigabytes of storage just to function).
Experiment with self hosting on things that don’t matter first. Many services allow you to pay by the hour, so the commitment is low.
If you can live without it, I would say no.
They have awful pricing for families.
And they have a history of cooperation with governments to leak their users’ data.
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On a grandfathered visionary 2 year payment plan with a year remaining, so no change plans yet, but I’m keeping a list of annoyances and concerns for renewal considerations.
Email
Calendar
Passwords
VPN
Drive
I tried rclone proton support the week it was merged. Worked okay. I tried syncing some ISO backups though and it just sat forever. Didn’t troubleshoot and just kept using b2.
I have been paying for Proton Unlimited for a very long time. About a year ago, they changed their prices for new users. currently it is $12/m, but I have to pay only $7.50/m, and yes, I pay monthly.
I use Proton Mail with 3 custom domains, and I am an always-on VPN user. The VPN connection is always great with good speeds, but sometimes bad pings, but have a bad Linux app (yes, the new one as well). I also use their drive, currently using ~200GB. I have never touched Proton Pass because I have a self-hosted Vaultwarden server.
But I am seriously considering discontinuing their service, specifically due to their poor Linux support. Their VPN app is shit, they don’t provide and not even developing a Linux app for Drive. But their are 2 reasons that make me continue their service. One, I do not really wish to self-host my email, and I do not want to use Tutanota, because I need Thunderbird. Two, there are no trusted VPN providers that give Indian IPs.
Idk if this helps you, but you can download the OVPN-Configs for single Servers and countries, so you can usw the VPN Client your DE provides. Also, rclone now has Proton Drive support
Using multiple config files is a bother, plus I really need the kill switch. Is there a way to replicate it manually? I didnt’t know rcloje started supporting Proton Drive, I’ll start using it.
Never trust the killswitch. If you use proton for torrenting, you can set your torrent client to just connect over the tun0 interface, which will only exist if the VPN is on
For me, no. I used it for several years but their linux support is not good enough for me. The linux vpn client depends on networkmanager, but I use iwd, so I was sol (loading wireguard profiles is not a good enough solution, too much of a hastle). They also don’t support ipv6 for vpn. Their linux email client doesn’t exist, and on android their app depends on google play services and they refuse to put a degoogled version on fdroid or host their own fdroid repo.
i switched to mullvad for vpn (linux app works great, they have ipv6, and since I don’t use vpn that often I save money on the months I don’t use it) and tuta for email (they have a decent email app on linux and android, works great without google play services and is on fdroid, and their servers use green energy)
for pass, I’ve used keepass with syncthing and keepassxc on linux and keepassdx on android so proton pass wasn’t a bonus for me anyways
For me, yes.
I am also grandfathered in for the $6.60/month for 24 months plan. For that price and combination of services (And even at $8/month) it cannot be beat.
I had the unlimited plan for a few months but downgraded only to the mail plan, that way I can try different providers for VPN, Drive, and password manager.
For password manager I’ve had Bitwarden for years now and it works great for me. VPN currently with AirVPN because of easy port forwarding, and drive with Nextcloud self hosted because I can, and also works fine for me.
Can’t answer, really.
i’m ok with Tutanota for mail, although Proton does have an .onion address whereas Tutanota does not.
Bitwarden for passwords.
No VPN but i’d go for IVPN.
Depends on your use case.
I know for me, i don’t need all the services unlimited offers.
I created seperate accounts for the services i use as they don’t allow you to bundle only specific services together (ie just mail+ and drive+ together). This ends up saving a few bucks.
I mostly use Proton Mail, pass and VPN with free SimpleLogin Unlimited, which is a plus; however, the VPN is not as good as advertised. I’m considering moving to you are Mullvad (buying the Mullvad plan from Amazon). That way, you’re not forced to share your credentials.
As for cloud storage, I use Filen - lifetime 180GB (thinking of self-host using NAS or Raspberry Pie; however, I’ve never done it before, so it’s tough for me).
Mullvad is the gold standard if you dont need port forwarding.
You may want to look into Filen - I know they have had issues with them not using the best encryption methods. Just remember “lifetime” refers to the life of the service (which they can change at any time) and not your lifetime.
That’s another issue; I tend to torrent here and there, so port forwarding is a big deal.
That makes sense. I’ve been thinking about self-hosting storage for a while now. I’m not sure how secure NAS is with their software.
You may want to check out AirVPN - great port forwarding implementation.
Long history of being privacy respecting and completely FOSS but they don’t do audits (which is a super big deal to some and a big reason its not recommended on pg).
Just make sure to use the wireguard client as their own client kind of sucks.
I used Proton Mail since college student, it was great and upgraded to Unlimited tier after getting a job. Thier VPN was okay for occasional usage. However, coming from a personal perspective, over the time I became not a fan of them branching out to other services such as Proton Pass, when they still have work to do for their existing ones (eg. split tunneling on Linux VPN client, calendar sync on Bridge, to name a few), so I downgraded to only Mail Plus. I also switched to Mullvad VPN and I like the experience better than Proton VPN. As of now, I think Proton is still a great service for email and calendar, but I’m not sure about other ones
Personally, I don’t think Proton Unlimited should be considered unless it costs less than the combination of single premium products that you use from them, and even then, you should consider shopping around first.
Outside of mail, other services exist elsewhere for lower prices and similar functionality, with both privacy and otherwise. Pass: Bitwarden. SimpleLogin: AnonAddy, Ironvest*, DuckDuckGo. Drive: Filen.
And regarding things like government requests: I don’t think Proton is particularly egregious in this area, but it can’t hurt to limit the amount of data they have about you, the number of times you visit their server, etc. For example, maybe Bitwarden receives government requests too, but Bitwarden will never be able to passively intercept your email. Separation
* this is the one I use the most, although I find the free email plan to almost always be enough for my needs
I’m also interested in hearing Proton users’ experience. On paper it looks like an okay deal, but you could get a similar suite of services from Posteo + iDrive + Mullvad + BitWarden for cheaper and not end up locked into an “ecosystem”.
However, there is legitimate value in combining email and drive space. Posteo only gives you 2GB for email, and their upgrades are rather expensive.
Also, Mullvad might not be equivalent since they axed the port forwarding feature a while back, making BitTorrent only kind-of usable (incoming connections will not work).
Rather then committing a year to a service, do a monthly subscription until you find something you’re happy with. Then switch to annual billing if you want. I wouldn’t continue paying for a VPN that doesn’t work well. I’m personally pretty happy with PIA.
As others have mentioned, Bitwarden is a very good password manager that has a very full-featured free tier. And its paid tiers are very cheap if you decide to upgrade.
I accidentally nuked my internet the other day while testing Pass. Because it’s not local hosted, I could not access a single password. That’s not cool. Still not sure if I’m sold on using Pass. I’ve also had it not always offer to save new login details and some forms it misses 2fa. Hopefully all that gets fixed soon. But I’m an unlimited user for all the other features. Luckily they prorate the upgrade if you have current service. Might as well take the jump.
I downgraded my sub to Mail Plus about a month ago. I had hopes for Drive and was using VPN too, but Drive wasn’t working well for me.
I self host Bitwarden, so never was interested in Pass. I also self host Nextcloud, so I don’t need Drive.
Switched over to Mullvad for VPN.
With downgrading, I had enough credits to cover my subscription of Mail Plus for 2 years.
Mullvad was throttling my iptv connection. Ironically, from the same data center, using Proton the streams weren’t throttled. So not sure if Proton is paying a premium for better bare metal and uplink or what the deal was with Mullvad. Hope you have a better experience.
I’m not your target for the question, since I haven’t ever tried Unlimited
Bitwarden is very solid for a password manager, and it works well for my family
You could compare prices between just ProtonMail+Bitwarden (or other manager)+VPN of choice?
I’m also using Bitwarden; however, the UI is a big deal for me because me being a visual person. I still use it here and there.
I’ve heard they will have a visual overhaul soon; looking forward to it + thinking of self-hosting it. Even though I’m fairly new to “self hosting” any beginner self hosting tips and tricks would be appreciated.
Is it possible you tried Keepass? I thought Bitwarden’s UI was pretty good and modern, and that’s one of the silly reasons why I picked it over keepass long time ago
I have tried KeepassX. However, I had some file conflict issues and stopped using it. Regarding the password manager, my reason is similar to what you have said, but instead, I moved to proton pass from Bitwarden.
I give VW a 5/5 on the arbitrary “easy to self-host with premium features” scale, and have never evaluated BitWarden proper (as it claims, among other things, to require six gigabytes of storage just to function).
Thanks for this, I will look into it.
If you can live without it, I would say no. They have awful pricing for families. And they have a history of cooperation with governments to leak their users’ data.
Lmao how many times are people going to misrepresent the proton email issue