Hi, I would like to know if there are limited number of free accounts can someone create, and if so, what that limit is. Also, if a household has multiple members, and each create a free account but using a single device, or even multiple, would that consider to be in violation of their terms? UPDATE: Let me add this on top as I feel like it's necessary to clarify one thing resoundingly before anything else: > PortonMail does NOT allow more than one free account for each individual. >Does it sometime tolerate users create more than one free account even if they find out about them? Yes. >But it doesn't change the fact that they reserve the right, through their TOS, to suspend/delete all those free accounts, even if you have used them for legitimate reasons. So ask yourself, do you feel you cannot afford losing those extra free accounts of yours, or are you OK with having them getting suspended and not being able to access them at some point. If the answer is the former, you might be at risk losing them, otherwise, do as you wish. With that out of the way, here's what happened in my case: I managed to secure all my accounts, but also wanted to share with whoever ends up here what the rules are and how to deal with the suspended accounts. First and foremost, based on several answers I received by PortonMail staff, it is clear that their policy prohibits usage/registering of multiple "free" accounts. One is the max you are allowed to register. So if you see post on Reddit (even in this thread) talking about multiple free accounts are allowed, that is NOT true. You might be getting away with it by using VPN or some other tricks, but officially, you are not allowed to have more than one free account. I posted what I received from the support below as requested to clarify any ambiguity. > Please note that your accounts have been subjected to our anti-abuse algorithm which is targeting multiple accounts created in succession or by a single user. > From the Terms of Service you have agreed to upon sign up, you may already know that we disallow multiple account creation or bulk sign-up and since this is not an acceptable use of our service your accounts have been suspended accordingly*.* > We had several reasons to implement this measure, but we aim to protect Proton Mail's reputation and prevent our IP from being banned by the third-party services users usually sign up for with the multiple accounts they create on our service, which will risk the availability of said services for the rest of our users. > https://proton.me/legal/terms Second, in my case, the initial contact I had with the support team, they asked me to provide the purpose behind using each of the suspended free accounts. I was honest about it and explained that they all belong to me and were being used for legitimate reasons (provided description of what each account was being used). You could be dishonest and claim that each email belongs to a family member, and you all use a single machine, etc, but that's up to you. I rather be forthcoming about my actions. > We have noticed that your account was flagged and disabled by our automatic anti-abuse system. Would you please inform us of any other accounts you may have created on our service, along with their intended purposes, so we can try to further assist you with your inquiry? They explained what they can do for me is to reinstate those suspended free accounts, and give me 48 hours to sort things out. Beyond that, accounts would be permanently suspended. In this 48 hours, I could only receive emails, but not send any (read-only access basically), which was more than I needed. > In your case, we are offering our assistance, but regretfully, as a result of the violation done against our terms, we can only help you in restoring one of your accounts. As for the other accounts, we can offer to temporarily restore them for the following 48 hours, with read-only access, so you may gather the data contained. > If you agree with our solution, confirm with us by stating to which account you wish to be fully restored and which accounts you wish to receive read-only access, and we will help. I used the time to create several new aliases with my paid account and re-registered what I needed with the re-enabled accounts to switch to the new alias addresses. After that, those accounts got permanently locked up (I don't think you can reuse the usernames to register an account with. In other word, those usernames are forever taken on a suspended account). They allowed one of my free account to continue operating without suspension, however, since I had an unlimited plan, what I did was to ask them to merge/combine that free account with my paid one. For that, they send the email asking for confirmation to that free, or merging, account, and you have to confirm that request. After that affirmation, your account is deleted (you will lose all your emails, so if you want to save/send any content, do it before making this request), at which point, you can recreate it as an alias in your paid account. All in all, ProtonMail demands and process were fair, and the support was very helpful to resolve this issue.

TL;DR: If you're a Linux user, you probably don't want to pay for Proton VPN (yet). If you search this subreddit, you'll find a lot of people saying that. However, I thought I'd go into a little more detail. I hope it helps some folks! First off, let me say: I love Proton, I love their mission, and I'm a (mostly) happy user of Proton Mail, Calendar, and even Drive. I also had a very good experience with Proton VPN on Android. In short, I'm not a Proton-hater (if such a thing is even possible). I'm writing this because I wish I had read something like it before plunking down my cash for Proton Unlimited. (I upgraded from "Mail Plus" solely for the addition of the VPN. And because I was happy for an excuse to give Proton more of my money, frankly.) First, a message to the Proton team I'll just quote my own message from a relevant Github issue: Sounds like y'all are pretty understaffed and I'm sure it's not your decision directly, but I will say: leaving a clearly half-finished client as the only option for (paying) customers while a new client is in the works -- and scrolling up, this thread has been open for over a year now -- well, I think y'all will start to burn through good will pretty quickly. My honest suggestion would be: take a pause from the new client development for a month. Squash some bugs. Plug some memory leaks. Make the current client stable and unbroken. (Not talking new features even, just... not broken.) Put it in a decent spot, then leave it to focus on the new client. (And even then, if bugs come up in the old client, I think you have a responsibility to fix them.) Also, seeing something happen on the current client will make your (paying!) customers feel less abandoned. (Take me for example: as I said, I love the Proton mission, but even I feel like this is a bit of a bait-and-switch.) And as an addendum: if you're not going to implement actual fixes, please put an asterisk on the Proton VPN marketing copy, be clear about your (lack of) Linux support. Call it a "beta" client, explicitly say which features are not supported. Something, anything. State of the Linux VPN client: A summary It's Pretty Bad. GUI client No wireguard No split-tunneling No port-forwarding No profiles Broken search functionality Slow, unresponsive UI Lacking basic usability features (e.g. "connect to fastest server that supports P2P", "connect to last server", etc.) Changing VPN connection state breaks many other applications (including Dropbox, Steam, etc.), requiring a restart Horrible memory leaks I've put the memory leaks in bold because it's essentially a blocker. If you leave the GUI client open, it will slowly devour your memory. For me, this usually resulted in a client crash. Summary: Don't use the GUI client. Like, period. Command-line client No wireguard No split-tunneling No port-forwarding No profiles Changing VPN connection state breaks many other applications (including Dropbox, Steam, etc.), requiring a restart Takes minutes to establish initial connection The CLI client is a big improvement over the GUI client. It (mostly) works! You can (e.g.) connect to a P2P- or Tor-enabled server easily, or the fastest server in a given country. Also, it does not hemorrhage memory. However, its initial connection takes minutes. I can't imagine why. I didn't have this issue with the GUI client. (It's slow, but not that slow.) Note that if you have the kill switch enabled (which you should!), you have no network at all during this time. (By the way: after that initial connection, e.g. if you disconnect and reconnect, it's not nearly as bad.) Also note that after you're finally connected, many apps that will have started during that time will silently have lost their network connection. (Possibly a kill switch bug?) Dropbox and Steam were two obvious and consistent examples of this for me. This also happens when resuming from suspend, or any time the VPN connection status changes for any reason, manual or otherwise. This is also consistent for me -- happens every time. I do not experience this with any other Linux VPN client. Summary: The command-line client is way better than the GUI client, but still worse than many other (non-Proton) Linux VPN clients. Using the provided wireguard profiles This is a decent possible alternative, but it's a very manual process. You login to your VPN account on the web, use the provided interface to download a wireguard configuration for a single server, and then you can use Network Manager or whatever you want to connect to that server. There's no bulk-download option, no way to dynamically connect to servers in different regions based on capabilities or load. This is a downgrade from just about any other VPN client out there. The only upsides are: you avoid having to use Proton's own client and you get support for wireguard (and port-forwarding!). I considered building some tooling to automate the process of finding the fastest server with a given set of capabilities, pulling down the wg config, and connecting to it. Then I realized: what am I even paying for, at that point? Easier just to use a different provider. Final note I'm not writing this (just) to complain -- more for visibility. Both for the Proton team as well as potential users. If I had read something like this before paying for the service, I simply would have continued using my existing VPN and kept my eye out for the arrival of the "new" Proton Linux client at some point in the future. But finding all this out after-the-fact -- after reading various glowing reviews, marketing copy, and after paying for a subscription -- is enough to leave a sour taste in any user's mouth.