r/ProtonMail

As a paying customer Why cant i register a email with pm.me if someone else has the same email with proton.me ? For me not being able to do so significantly decreases its value, i know you can use custom domain but for me i would love to have pm.me

a few years ago - maybe 2? I don't remember... , I've set up my first Proton mail address. I was around 16, and all I knew is "Proton is better than Gmail."

now, being a bit older, I started actually realizing the entire story, with Google being an advertising company, and how all of them are just data-hungry.

but now it's also a bit too late. sure, I have Proton Duo (I need the storage and 2 premium inboxes) but it's pretty new. until then I've only had Mail Free, and I didn't really have the brains to think about making aliases, anyway.
what do I do now? most big social media's already have my mail now...

thanks for reading and taking the time 🙏🏻

I contacted Support, but they are taking a while to respond.

Custom domain is with Namecheap and all is green. Online MX and Domain tools all show good. I have 4 different addresses for the custom domain set up in Proton Mail, and have had them up since yesterday.

I can send email OUT to other email providers and Gmail just fine. If I reply to those emails, nothing shows up in Proton Mail.

The only clue I have is 1 bounce back stating "The recipient does not exist." But it has existed for at least 24 hours.

Any ideas?

I'm trying to decide when it's better to use email aliases and when it's better to use a permanent email address.

For job platforms

1. Welcome to the Jungle
2. Wellfound
3. Built In
4. Hiring Cafe

would you use:

• a permanent email address (for example name@mydomain.dev), or
• a unique alias for each service?

I'm mainly thinking about privacy versus long-term reliability. If recruiters contact me months or even years later, I don't want to miss those emails, but I also like the privacy benefits of aliases.

How do you handle this?

I just emailed this directly to Proton’s Management and Billing teams tonight. Unsurprisingly, I immediately got hit with the standard automated ‘black-hole’ bot replies. While I know a human won’t see it until next week, I wanted to post this here now because, looking at recent threads, I know I am not the only paying user frustrated by this trap.

To the Proton Management and Billing Team,

I am writing to express my absolute disgust with the misleading marketing and anti-consumer pricing traps you are currently running on your paying user base.

Let me be brutally honest about why I am even a paying customer. Companies like Google offer a vastly superior, deeply integrated ecosystem (Email, Drive, Docs, Calendar) completely for free. The only reason I pay for Proton Mail Plus is for privacy and to escape the “single point of failure” trap that Big Tech creates. I have friends who were locked out of their Google accounts without explanation by an automated system, completely destroying their digital lives overnight because their email, files, photos and calendar were all held hostage by one provider.

I came to Proton to decentralize my digital life. But instead of respecting that, you are using forced bundling to try and trap me in the exact same walled garden.

When I tried to upgrade my current Mail Plus plan to get a usable VPN, I realized your rigid billing system physically prevents me from doing so. You do not allow a user to simply combine Mail Plus and VPN Plus on the same account. Instead, you artificially block that combination to force an upsell to the $7.99/mo Proton Unlimited tier. You are trying to force me to put my cloud storage, password manager and calendar under your roof just to get a VPN.

I do not want a 500 GB Proton Drive. I do not want Proton Pass. Putting every vital digital tool I own under a single Proton login is a massive security and accessibility liability, exactly like Google. Penalizing users for not wanting your “Unlimited” bundle is a fundamentally anti-privacy, anti-consumer practice.

Furthermore, the way you market the VPN included in my Mail Plus plan is completely deceptive. Your summary explicitly touts access to “2000+ VPN servers in 10 countries”. To any reasonable consumer, this implies you can actually choose between those 10 countries. Instead, I find out that it is just your randomly-assigned free tier, basically making the feature completely useless if I actually need to select a specific region. The way this is worded on your pricing page feels intentionally misleading.

Your much-praised privacy reputation is being dragged through the mud by these exact types of cheap shenanigans, forced bundling and shady upsell traps. You are acting exactly like the companies you claim to be an alternative to. A quick look at Reddit shows I am far from the only user who feels completely bait-and-switched by this.

As it stands, your pricing structure actually incentivizes me to keep my cheap Mail Plus plan and go give my money to a standalone competitor, where I can get a faster, better VPN without being forced into an ecosystem trap.

More than that, this entire experience has made me think twice before I even renew my current Mail Plus subscription. If you are going to use deceptive marketing and forced bundles to squeeze your users, that destroys the very trust that justifies paying you in the first place.

Stop hiding behind misleading marketing and stop using bundle traps to squeeze your users into pricier plans. Let us pay for the specific tools we actually want to use and we will reward you with loyalty.

Sincerely,
A frustrated Mail Plus subscriber

I have multiple proton accounts. I downloaded Windows app so it can download all emails of accounts. But there was a 14 days warning. After 14 days do the Windows app stop checking all accounts?

i want to do a clean Windows 11 IoT LTSC 2024 install without my microsoft account connected as it is right now, dual boot Linux Bazzite, install GrapheneOS on my Pixel, switch all of my emails from Gmail to Proton Unlimited or anything similar, start always using Proton or Mullvad VPN, Mullvad browser for private searches, Librewolf for daily use, but i dont know from what i should start😭

how should i even attack this massive change? in which order should i do any of these things? like, should i change my emails first before reinstalling my OS's so that there's no link or something? should i get the VPN after i also reinstall my OS's? i'm genuinely stuck and cant bring myself to do anything cause i dont know which order would be the best to do a clean transfer with no major links to my new private stuff.

if anyone could help me with making an order of action i'd be grateful🙏

Should i get Proton Unlimited or something else? It seems nice cause of the ecosystem but i've heard that separating your stuff is essential so i'd be willing to give that up.
are there any other email services that let you have infinite aliases? and should i even use aliases for most of my accounts? What does it do exactly?

how should i go about using my SIM and mobile data on aswell? i NEED my SIM but idk if using mobile data would make tracking even worse, would it? or do they already triangulate your position just by having your SIM in your phone?

and what about accounts that require a linked phone number for verification?

Recently was reminded that an online account login I'd registered with many years ago is with an email provider I no longer have access to, as that paid email account was no longer accessible when moving away from that ISP. Password reset requests are being sent to that email account I can't access so I'm locked out of this account.

If I ever choose to close my paid Proton account can I still access ProtonMail to receive e-mail? If not, can I pay a nominal fee to have email forwarded to a new email account?

If you have your original firstlast@protonmail.com address used for a few websites already like amazon or walmart, is it unnecessary to nuke this and start a new account with custom domain and aliases?

I have read several posts saying you shouldnt use your original account for sites like this but its done already. What would you guys do?

I have ProtonMail Unlimited and one other custom domain. Both custom domains are registered in Porkbun.

what the title says, from digging around it seems that proton's services is a good first step in my quest. trying to set up a pm account rn. a couple questions tho:

1. when signing up, it gives the option to "use my email, or get a secure proton mail address", does it mean that if i use a gmail account for it, my email domain would still be gmail.com but in proton? I don't really get it

2. if I link my proton mail account to other services (i.e discord, fitness apps etc), would it help in terms of privacy? or whatever I'm doing is out of proton's protection and they are still able to track my activities and collect data?

3. I'm not gonna upgrade to the premium version, but just for info, what are the differences?

BEFORE YOU READ: the sudden wave of downvoting implies that users do not want native desktop apps. This is simply not true. We absolutely want native apps. The scale of this undercover downvoting is mind-blowing.

Main Post:

I previously shared a post about the need for native desktop applications for Proton Mail and Proton Pass, focusing primarily on CPU and RAM consumption issues with the current Electron-based setup: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1t9y542/proton_desktop_apps_are_electronbased_not_cool/

Since then, another post and article by u/pascalschaerli titled "Proton's Crypto Is Not Transparent and Not Opaque" has brought attention to security vulnerabilities associated with Electron applications: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1udieku/protons_crypto_is_not_transparent_and_not_opaque/

These two discussions taken together make it clear that the Electron compromise is no longer sufficient. The combination of poor resource efficiency and potential security exposure means that developing proper native desktop apps should be treated as a necessity, not simply a preference.

While the web versions do offer some relief on the performance front, they don't adequately address the underlying security concerns raised in the linked discussion. For users who expect both good performance and genuine privacy protection, there is no substitute for properly built native desktop applications at this point.

In short, moving away from Electron toward native builds isn't a luxury anymore. It’s a requirement.

EDIT: It seems that a Volunteer Mod immediately took a defensive position, citing a reply from Proton dating back 147 days. The mod added that “no update available means there's no new information and/or ETA to share.”

This comment implies that there has been no progress on this at all, which I genuinely hope is not the case.

The intentional downvoting of my comments below says a lot about some of the mods and other users behind/in charge of this sub. You think other users don’t see that?

I think it would be in the interest of most users if Proton could finally confirm if there has been any progress with the development of native desktop apps.

I'm just getting confused thinking about it. I guess I can create my ProtonMail account with a different username, and then link up my domain, and create an alias to "recover" the use of my main email address in ProtonMail? Does that make sense?

Some mail may not be delivered - got this from support after an issue receiving an email: For reference, the email was from a well-known stock-picking newsletter service. It may, in fact, spam people with advertising, but since I'm a subscriber, it's not spam to me. I'm used to other carriers marking email as spam, but still delivering it - this is a non-starter for me (I mean really, incorrect HTTPS formatting?, elements similar to other spam messages?). They really need a way for forwarding these things - I didn't hire a nanny, I hired someone to deliver my email to me.

>
The email in question has triggered multiple spam and phishing indicators. To maintain the security of all Proton accounts, our system has rejected emails exhibiting such characteristics. 
 
Although we are unable to disclose specific details, we can provide some general information that may be of assistance. 
 
Common reasons for rejection include:
 
  1. The email contains links whose URL domain and/or IP address may be listed on one or more global blocklists.
  2. The email may include one or more URLs with incorrect HTTP or HTTPS formatting.
  3. The email body contains multiple elements resembling those found in other spam messages we have identified. 
 
We kindly ask that you report this issue to the sender's IT department. Their technical team should investigate the underlying spam and global blocklist concerns. 
 
Please be advised that emails rejected for these security reasons cannot be bypassed using User Filters or Allow Lists. 

Hi folks.

Hope you're doing well.

Another day, another "priority" email from Proton about their current sale. i get it, Proton, you have a sale going on. As if the red "summer sale" link above isn't enough. Or the other emails about this they've sent me.

I've been a loyal user for years now, but I'm honestly considering my options now with these spammy emails from them. This, plus all the recent controversy surrounding Proton.

I have read this on here a few times, so i guess it's not uncommon?

Thanks again for all the help I've had here, I think I'm nearly there! I have a few questions about aliases with Simple Login and Bitwarden.

- I have a custom domain setup in Simple Login, I'd like to create Aliases in that for random websites. I can do this in Simple login no issue. But when I go to Username generator in Bitwarden, put in the API Key, put my custom email domain, then when I generate a username, its some random words and then @simplelogin.com and what I want is amazon@mycustomdomain.com for example. Is this possible?

- Maybe this is a limitation and I just have to create aliases in Simplelogin and copy and paste them into Bitwarden every time?

- Secondly, I can use my Proton login to log in to Simple Login, but it also offers me the option for 2fa. Do I need to add 2fa to Simplelogin if I have it enabled for proton?

Thanks