Proton Mail 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

I am delighted since I started using ProtonMail: the migration has been easy, although it took some time (but this is 100% due to a personal choice to rewrite almost from scratch my email setup and usage), and it simply worked out of the box. Not many bugs encountered as of now, no spam, no deliverability issues. The interface is clean and good looking, and it's a pleasure to work with. The help documents and guides are tailored more to the average user, and makes setting it up a breeze. I'm really satisfied and just subscribed for two years.

I have been using Protonmail Business (their highest tier) for about a year. I wanted a reliable e-mail service I could use for my freelance work and a few of my personal websites that did not harvest all of my data. ProtonMail was more expensive than pretty much any other e-mail service, presumably because they force you to buy their password manager, VPN, drive, and calendar solutions. I did not need all of these solutions and never used them, nor did I want super-secure e-mail. Nevertheless, I signed up for a 2-year Business plan because of the good reviews, 15 custom domains, and the unlimited SimpleLogin addresses. The first surprise came when I tried to set up my e-mail client. Turns out that Protonmail does not offer SMTP/IMAP and there is no desktop app either (well, there is but it's in closed beta for ages). Using other clients requires installing and configuring protonmail-bridge (a sort of e-mail proxy). This is an acceptable workaround for PCs, however, it is complicated and often impossible to configure for web servers, in particular virtualized or hosted setups. I tried a few community alternatives to protonmail-bridge but ended up having to restart the services daily because the bridge would randomly crash without any warning or error. Support was next to useless. Taking days or weeks to reply with boilerplate text that had nothing to do with my case. Eventually, I decided to migrate all business-critical mail away from Proton. MXRoute offers unlimited custom domains (and a lot of other cool things Proton does not) for a lifetime price that is equal to a yearly subscription to Proton, so I went with them. I decided to cancel my Proton subscription to avoid being charged for another 2 years. Worst of all was what happened when I tried to cancel: despite having paid for 2 years, as soon as I canceled my subscription, I INSTANTLY and WITHOUT WARNING lost access to all premium features for the remainder of the period (about 1 year). This means that all of the addresses I created for custom domains were deleted (luckily I had already migrated them). It also meant that all of my e-mail clients stopped receiving or sending mail because protonmail-bridge is not available for free-tier... Even Google lets you use the remainder of your subscription when canceling... Even my SimpleLogin aliases are going to be disabled because - get this - since Protonmail bought SimpleLogin and bundled it with their product, aliases are disabled when you downgrade (instead of just restricting your ability to create more like SimpleLogin used to to). I begged support to convert my credit to a SimpleLogin or even a Proton subscription but they refused. My only option is to purchase a significantly more expensive monthly subscription for 5 months (instead of the 9 I had left). Maybe ProtonMail was at some point customer-oriented. But my experience with them has been the opposite: overpriced, restrictive, unfriendly money-grabbers. Which frankly leads me to question their privacy and security claims as well.

A lot of the problem I'm solving has to do with 19 years of wrangling a Gmail inbox until it became a hot mess of unread emails from lists I didn't remember subscribing to. Now that I'm a more mature email consumer, I expect that the new digs at ProtonMail won't get that way. I'm instantly unsubscribing/spam-labeling mass mail that I didn't ask for instead of "letting it ride."ProtonMail has a simpler interface, simply because it has fewer features ... features which I seldom used in Gmail anyway. Sometimes less is more.I'm happy with it. It's not "free" like Gmail and some other offerings, but it's solid, it's simple, it's privacy-centric, and it offers the features I need.

My experience has been 100% positive, I integrated my proton account with my custom domain and use it as my business email platform as well as for my personal emails.

using protonmail i feel my privacy level increased a lot. I think my messages are now secure!

I think its a great, secure tool. But very hard to use for non technical people. Love the VPN functionality, and the new storage.

I was an early adopter, and their apps and service have continued to improve over time. The free plan is good enough for a Gmail replacement, but the paid plans give you access to many other services like a calendar, file storage, vpn, and more.

The fact that it is fully encrypted gives me a peace of mind about the sensitive business information not being leaked, which is especially important in the age of GDPR. Certain conveniences have to be sacrificed though, and the software could be improved.