Swiss company Proton is further expanding its productivity suite. In addition to an email service, calendar, VPN, password manager, and drive, Proton Sheets is now available. It is an alternative to Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, an increasingly important advantage as countries take sovereignty more seriously.
Do we like Proton? I never know which VPN company I can truly trust.
They’re increasingly divisive I’d say. For me the fact that they rage-quit mastodon after a stint of bad publicity is all I need to know. If they were truly dedicated to a better internet they would be committed to stand up against big tech everywhere, not just wherever there’s money to be made from it. I’m migrating away from my proton mail account.
I get my VPN from Surfshark. Not because I necessarily trust them, but because it’s cheap and they don’t insist on doing anything else than just being my VPN provider. And I trust them more than Proton at this point, anyway.
Don’t let me ruin your good time, but my experience with Surf shark:
Used surf shark for about 3 years around pandemic timeframe. Had no complaints (other than it drained my phone battery super fast - didn’t test empirically, but seemed somewhat worse than other VPN providers). I was unemployed for a while, so took the opportunity to cut expenses; tried to drop my surf shark subscription. It was a HUGE pain in the butt. I forget the process, but iirc, you had to use their help chat to get the number for cancellations, they kept me on hold for ~10 min, then had a long winded questionnaire (“were required to ask you these questions before proceeding”) asking why I was quitting, then made an offer for discounted months before letting me unsubscribe.
Its my understanding regulations have changed such that that’s not allowed anymore and also that most VPN can elations are about that bad anyway, but still, wanted to share my experience. Lol, suppose so long as you never quit, you won’t have to deal with all that.
do you have a more current preference/recommendation?
I suspect Mullvad would be a popular choice, but it’s quite a bit more expensive. As I rarely use VPN (I hardly every do anything where it’s necessary), I’m a bit on the stingy side personally.
Yeah, I had a boss once who’s favorite saying was:
“You don’t always get what you pay for
But you never get what you don’t pay for”
Generally with software I will only pay for things that I get full access to without paying for them. I guess I would render your boss somewhat confused.
Well, he took it also to mean payment in the philosophical sense. He was also fond of saying “you can pay with your wallet or you can pay with your clock”. He had some extension of that to the effect of its worse when you have to pay with both, but I forget the wording (it didn’t flow well).
Not any authoritative recommendations. I’m at most a casual user of VPNs, and so long as I see the traffic getting encrypted, don’t think about it much more.
I always hear Mullvad is great for maximizing privacy. Never tried them myself though.
Personally, I use Proton. I was prepping to jump ship earlier this year, but ultimately decided it wasn’t worth it. I’ve had a pretty decent experience with them. The only issue was on on a Linux machine…Uh…and it was minor enough and long ago enough that I don’t even remember what it was?
See above for my dissatisfying experience with Surf shark.
I did try to sign up with ExpressVPN many years ago. They’re payment portal was busted (tried every day for a week, emailed support with no response).
That about sums up my experience.
Ah, yeah, that sucks. In Europe you can always cancel by just not paying for a subscription, so I’ve rarely had experiences like this. Only time it happened to me was when I had been stupid enough to have a New York Times subscription (gah) and decided to end it. Huge pain in the ass.
With Surfshark I bought a two-year subscription without automatic renewal, so I get what I paid for and then it’s done. But I’m sorry to hear about their bad business practices—it goes well with the overall sleazy look of their website. Hopefully I’ll find something better by the time the subscription period is over. :)
Thanks for letting me know! I try to avoid any company that doesn’t have open source software as the core of their business strategy, but with VPN that’s a bit tricky.
I use Proton because they are no longer a “VPN company”. They are slowly rolling out a suite of privacy tools that compete with Google’s Workspace (or whatever the hell they’re calling it these days).
If you want a “VPN company” I would recommend Mullvad.
When it comes to VPN my choice is always Mullvad.
No port forwarding
I torrent even without the port forwarding and still get great speeds, and >1 share ratios
Great for you, but most good private trackers will ban you if you aren’t connectable. If you’re only torrenting English stuff then public trackers are fine, or one’s with lax rules like IPT, but for many other languages private trackers are unavoidable.
It’s also just against the spirit of the P2P network to not accept connections from others, if your port isn’t forwarded then you can only seed to users who have their port forwarded
ah, im not that deep into it so i dont really do too much with that. I understand why you’d need port forwarding, then
If you don’t need port-forwarding, Mullvad is the best choice IMO. Eggs in a basket as well, if you already use other Proton products but don’t want to lock yourself into one vendor for everything.
If you’re buying an annual plan, Mozilla resells Mullvad for cheaper. Monthly, buying direct is cheaper.
Also, I assume, but don’t have any evidence, that buying from a reseller is a little more private due to separation of billing and services.
If you use Mullvad you get a token instead of an account. It’s not linked to any email address. You can then pay directly to this token using crypto. You can even send cash in an envelope. If you use Tor to get a token and pay, you’re as private as can be.
The thing however is that VPN providers can always see what IP address is using their service. So however private your account and payment is, in the end you always have to trust the provider that they are not logging IPs.
If you are buying from Mozilla, then both Mozilla and Mullvad have access to information. This means that buying from a reseller is less private by default.
Good idea budget wise. Mullvad doesn’t require any information from you though, except your payment info. And even then, you can pay by cash or crypto if you really want to purchase anonymously.
Not even sure anymore. Ceo recently said Trump is great.
This is not completely fair or true statement - though it is not too far from truth.
Proton Mail has long positioned itself as an apolitical company, dedicated solely to safeguarding user privacy. That’s why many were surprised when CEO Andy Yen posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the political landscape in the U.S. had shifted, stating, “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
This was earlier this year. So sure its up to interpretation.
So… He’s an idiot, is what you’re saying.
I remember there being a little more to it, but I don’t have receipts. They did fairly reasonable PR explanation which lowered my concern a little - but some doubts stayed with me for sure.
That quote was the crux of it. IMO Yen was foolishly only looking at the situation through the lens of which party would be less of a barrier to Proton’s business and interests in user privacy at that point in time. But the community very harshly (and rightfully so IMO) corrected him with regards to the bigger picture of corruption and cronyism and greed rampant in today’s GOP and how shortsighted it would be to trust them at all.
Proton as an org was pretty burned and officially walked it back and said they would refrain from allowing individual staff (CEO included) from making those kind of political statements that could be interpreted as representing the business.
I think that’s the right response, because he certainly fucked up. That doesn’t make them evil, but it does cause me concern around their awareness of the shifting US legal landscape.
Doesn’t make them necessarily evil. But yeah, overall I’d agree with you on it. I’m certainly in my guard since then though.
I recall him saying he was not american so it doesnt matter what he said. Which annoyed me cause then why open mouth?
That being said its more than understand the ceo is not the only voice in company and it was January 2025 so I may have outdated information if this stance is even relevant.
Yeah it’s a LOT far from the truth, like the distance between neptune and the sun
Yeah, I guess it depends on how you look at it and what are your limits on this stuff. I can see why you disagree even with me for sure.
It definitely didn’t look great. It certainly didn’t inspire confidence. Not bad enough for me to leave (once the head cooled), but enough for me to consider it if a competitor comes up with a similar offering (looking at Tuta Drive once they introduce it).
It was enough to get me to unsubscribe and move to tuta for email, pcloud for storage, and mullvad for VPN. I still have a free proton account but they will need to really regain my trust to get me to resubscribe.
Regardless of the walkback, it takes a real egghead to ‘accidentally’ praise an obviously corrupt fascist. Even from the narrow perspective of ‘what is best for their business’ it was moronic. You really think the guy in bed with Peter Theil, Palantir, Musk, etc etc and loves dictators who “rule with an iron fist” is somehow good for your privacy company and your users?
The statement revealed this dude as either at worst a fascist or at best a dipshit. Neither option is great for CEO of a company that requires very high trust from its users. Do I want to rely on and pay for products from the company he oversees? No not really.
I’m in a similar boat. I had Proton Unlimited because of a good deal they had, downgraded back to Mail Plus and got Mullvad for VPN (which looks to me better than Proton).
The thing about Proton is they make it easy to degoogle. I can easily set up gmail stuff to be forwarded for things I didn’t switch yet (or people who didn’t catch on the fact I changed emails) and they have a whole suite of products.
But really, if Tuta introduces a Drive on feature parity, I will consider a switch - though it will be pain to change everything again.
“Great pick by [Donald Trump]. 10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.”
- Andy Yen, Proton CEO
“Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
- Proton