Proton Mail Reviews 1,706

I had ProtonMail accounts since 2019. Without any warning, they permanently suspended all of them. When I asked for clarification, support replied:

“Be advised that your account has been disabled as a result of a direct connection to an account that was taken down due to violations of our terms and conditions while being used in a malicious manner… We consider that allowing access to your account will cause further damage to our service, therefore we will keep the account suspended.”

They never gave any specific evidence or details. When I asked for the actual reason, they ignored me.

The irony is painful: ProtonMail markets itself as a privacy-first service, yet they were able to “link” and ban all my accounts based on vague “connections.”

Be extremely careful paying for their service. You can lose everything overnight with almost no recourse.

I switched to Tuta and couldn’t be happier.

I think Proton is a good privacy-focused alternative to other workspace providers like Google. I set it up with two of my custom domains and have the Unlimited plan.
I do, however, think it could improve on the Photos feature in Drive. At current, it requires any viewer to have an account, which is not the same for general Drive files. This is a downside as competitor Google Photos allows a direct URL without a Google account.
I also dislike that they keep pushing me to move from a monthly to a yearly subscription. I chose monthly for a reason, I'm actually giving you more money, and I'm still being badgered whenever I open settings.

On another note in my experience their customer support / service has been good.

Proton Mail is declining: Broken core features and clueless support

​As a Proton Unlimited subscriber, I am deeply disappointed with the current state of Proton Mail. The Android mail app is severely lagging behind, missing essential features that are only available on the web version. Software updates feel entirely superficial—often just "changing a green button to blue"—and core mail development seems abandoned. Instead of fixing long-standing bugs, resources are clearly being wasted on half-baked features like their AI assistant, which doesn't understand anything and too often just tells you to do a web search yourself instead of providing an actual answer.

​Lately, Proton Mail has failed at its most basic job. The Gmail integration and forwarding stopped working completely, and the inbox sync constantly gets stuck. I have verified everything, and my settings are exactly as Proton's official documentation requires. Privacy and security mean absolutely nothing if the email client cannot reliably receive or sync messages.

​The final straw was the abysmal customer support. I submitted a meticulously detailed bug report regarding these email delivery issues, filling out every single field perfectly.

​My issue summary was clear: "Proton Mail is not importing emails from Gmail and is loading slowly."

​The support response I received: "Could you clarify what exactly you hope to achieve?"

​If premium support cannot comprehend a basic bug report about their own email service, it is time to take my business elsewhere. I am leaving the ecosystem.

Billing system is a trap — paid to upgrade yearly plan, money taken, nothing delivered.

My free trial ended. Proton attempted to charge my card, it was declined as I didn't have funds on it at the time. Fair enough. I then went back in, sorted it, and paid directly to upgrade to a higher yearly plan. Payment was taken from my card successfully.

Upgrade was never applied. I was told there is still an unpaid invoice on the account from the original failed charge, and that I cannot make any changes until that is settled first — meaning I would have to pay again on top of what I've already paid for a full year upfront.

I contacted support. The response was unhelpful and did not resolve anything. No escalation offered, no goodwill, no solution — just a copy-paste explanation of their billing logic.

In 2026, a customer proactively paying a full year upfront to upgrade their account should not result in money being taken with nothing received and support that goes nowhere. Avoid if billing issues are a concern.

Ticket reference: 4860525

Abuse department of Proton hides behind their TOS; while users obviously are abusing their service. Has nothing todo with privacy, but a commercial platform for online bullying. Refuses to take action even when the full evidence and logs are provided.

Long-time user: An excellent ecosystem, but serious concerns regarding neutrality.

As a user for over 7 years, I had never left a single review for Proton AG until now.

Today, I remain highly satisfied with the daily use of the products, their fluidity, their ergonomics, and the overall ecosystem. However, as a paying user (on high-tier plans) for all these years, I have several "red flags" to raise that are beginning to seriously worry me.

1. Political neutrality: A promise in jeopardy?
Originally, I chose Proton because I aligned with the values you promoted, particularly on two essential points:

- Absolute political neutrality (everyone is treated equally, regardless of their stance or ideas).
- A true, secure ecosystem with no backdoors or data reselling.

On the first point, I am starting to have strong concerns. If you look into it (and it is well-documented), several public figures have recently had their Proton accounts closed or their sponsorships terminated. Interestingly, these personalities all lean toward the same side of the political spectrum. I find it deeply regrettable to claim to be "apolitical" and "neutral" but fail to apply these rules to yourselves. I am not politically active at all, and no political side appeals to me, but that doesn't mean a tech company should position itself as a judge.

In today's world, where censorship is becoming commonplace, what will happen if the organizations meant to fight against it start doing the same? For my part, this raises serious questions about Proton's vision on this matter.

2. Product development and community feedback
On a technical level, I am globally very happy with daily use. However, as a paying customer, I would like to point out two downsides:

- improvements requested by the community for a very long time are still not available (with the development of Lumo AI seemingly being prioritized instead).
- software tools expected by users would have been much more relevant to develop than this AI project.

Conclusion
I am currently adopting a "wait-and-see" approach. These shifts make me fear that Proton is drifting away from its initial principles—a classic pitfall for any entity once significant financial interests come into play. I am watching closely, and I sincerely hope I won't be forced to abandon a ship I used to love so much.

In the last two days tried logging into ProtonMail (as i have done countless times), only to receive a red dialogue box saying my account's been disabled to "protect" me from "suspicious activity". Have appealed and got what i can only explain as an AI scripted response, "Are you using a VPN, by any chance?" NO, I am NOt using a VPN, and the rest is a infantile level of inane and innocuous replies, trying to placate. Absolute abysmal behavior from a company that sells itself as somehow being a bastion of human rights, and being prosumer, when in fact they've just revealed themselves as globalist, ultra-surveillance lapdogs. Absolutely disgraceful, and if ever i'm allowed to log back into the sideshow that is ProtonMail, will immediately cancel subscription and move to a proper, service driven email service provider that has a clue! ProtonMail, here's a 7-point repository... think creatively about how you can use it!

I purchased a product, wasn’t 100% on how to install, but the support service they provided was very good instant replies. Great experience with Proton, i have to give them 10/10

Upon first attempt of signing up for something, I got automation flagged. I literally have never used protonmail. Won't be coming back, go to tuta mail. They won't render their email service immediately useless.

Does privacy matter to you? Then you have come to the right place. Proton is a privacy-dedicated email and VPN provider based in Switzerland. Being outside the EU, they do not have to abide by the hysterical whims of unelected EU bureaucrats bent on "regulating" your thoughts and ideas.
Proton is affordable and offers a lot of great software. Highly recommended.

HORRIBLE SERVICE Ticket Numbers 4807582 and 4807528 - No response all through the day. Locked my accounts and said my account is scheduled for deletion the moment I created a new address@my domain name for my business (I pay for a Business Workspace Account). I regret switching from Google Workspace. I have to find another alternative. All my incorporation documents are in my mailbox.

They have no LIVE CHAT, NON EXISTENT CUSTOMER SERVICE that NEVER responds on all platforms (email, X etc). AVOID at all costs, they will RUIN your business. ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE

I am a free user and my experience with ProtonMail support has been frustrating mainly because of response times and lack of updates.

My accounts were suspended by the automated anti abuse system after I created accounts while migrating from Gmail for my game accounts. I contacted support immediately and, to their credit, the anti abuse team did reply and offered a resolution: they were willing to restore only one account. I accepted that offer and provided the account I wanted restored.

However, after that point, communication basically stopped. I waited about a week without any further reply or update on my ticket. Because of the silence, I became worried that my case was stuck or no longer being processed.

I understand that free users may not receive priority support, and I appreciate that support did offer some form of resolution. But long periods without updates, especially after a case seems close to completion, make the process stressful and unclear.

My main criticism is not the decision itself, but the lack of follow up and communication.

ProtonMail deserve to get rated low by everyone here, this is the last time i ever gonna use this service, so good bye.

I love their service, especially the integration with SimpleLogin, but something I HATE is that their email client for windows doesn't apply a dark mode for the email body.
I also hate that they focus on launching random services that nobody wants, instead of fixing/improving the existing ones.

Proton is #1 & ive used Proton for several years. Not once did they close any of my accounts, and they have responded to my questions always. Personally i keep a proton paid account because they dont rely on ads, so it helps them out a little. It's not that much $ and you get multiple email addresses. I stay with Proton bc i prefer Proton (& prton.me please dont ever share my info with google bc i see you have partnered with them yikes).

can't attach images to emails. i have hyperfast internet and regardless of whether i use proton in my browser, on my phone or the mac app, simple images spend 8-10 minutes attaching to an email and then i get a notification saying request timed out.

staggeringly dreadful for an email service that i pay for. do not under any circumstances pay for protonmail. i complained about this last year and they still haven't fixed it. i will be cancelling my subscription and using gmail instead. atrocious value for money

I used to use Protonmail for three purposes: filter out nuisance emails to a separate inbox from my personal, mask my identity due to my personal email's domain, and as a backup in case I am to lose access to my personal. Protonmail has now chosen to fail all points.

Let's start with the crux of this problem: my account was terminated without warning. I had logged in less than a year ago to access an email sent to this inbox, I had no warnings sent to my backup in case, you know, I may have been having issues with the email? No, instead, I am not told of any of this, and I suddenly have account errors on various services.

Next, the customer service is poor, insanely poor. When reaching out, they do not have a time frame for when they respond. My own job is to be a customer support representative, and we respond to tickets with a quick acknowledgement and any details in minutes. Anything that takes longer, and we let the customer know. Proton has chosen the path of an automated response and no hours or days they will reply in. Utterly pathetic and a waste of time.

Now, I have to go fix every account that uses this backup. Never using this service for my new email if they dare decide that their incompetence is my fault. Unacceptable.

Lost my device and couldn't locate the password I used for the account so I did a password reset. now my old emails are encrypted and because the recovery methods are "use a prior device or remember your old password or upload a recovery key/file" i now cannot access my old emails. these are not regular person methods of recovery. if you're looking for user friendly, Proton ain't it.

Avoid this company like the plague, they completely ignore your UK Statutory rights, if you complain they never read the complaint just blindly state their company policy, even though it’s illegal. Currently disputing with my bank, hope they charge them an enormous chargeback fee. AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Originally, I chose ProtonMail because of its FOSS web client, sieve support, the capability to contact support personnel, and that its UserVoice instance provided a way to vote on feature requests.

I intend to leave Proton Mail, because I see no way to acquire server-side IMAP credentials, for AOSP e-mail clients, which I require, to respond to mail on Proton's servers, via different providers. Bridge may provide this for desktop OSes, but that's useless 50 % of the time, because I'm not always at a laptop.

Although I don't utilise their other services, this is also true for Contacts and Calendar, which offer no CardDAV or CalDAV.

Additionally, their ZenDesk instance's web interface has been disabled, rendering accessing ticket information incredibly difficult without e-mail account access.

Pro:
- Mail is securely encrypted end-to-end.

- Incredible good customer service that replies to mail mostly within 24 hours. In my case, the replies are always clear and straight to the point.

Cons:
- Can only be used with Proton Mail. No import feature of other mail accounts.
Only emails from your other mail accounts can be imported, but not the accounts themselves.
So, users need to make a new Proton Mail account and inform all users of their current mail account of their new Proton Mail account.
If possible with your former mail accounts, you could automatically forward all email to your new Proton Mail account.
With internet accounts of companies, private data can be updated by the account holders themselves, but for others it depends on the people and companies themselves whether they change the new mail address with the old one in their database.
Hence, if people change to Proton Mail and automatically forwarding isn't possible, they still have to check their previous mail app on a daily basis for a long time because we don't know who still has our old mail address. What if someone wants to contact us after many years? We wouldn't receive their mail because we switched to Proton Mail.
If automatically forwarding is possible, we still have to keep the subscription with the previous email account and should never unsubscribe. Otherwise we would miss email.
Suppose people use Yahoo Mail or other paid accounts. They have to pay the subscription for many years to come if they want to receive emails sent to their previous mail account.
Of course, this doesn't work and doesn't make sense either. Why should we throw away our current default mail address?
This is asking for problems!
Even if Proton Mail is more secure than the former mail, it doesn't make sense to delete that account!

- The Proton Mail app only supports two subfolders of each folder. A third subfolder isn't possible.
Eg. Study (main folder) - name of institution (subfolder 1) - name of department (subfolder 2). That's it.
For sure, you want to list subfolders of 'name of department' with people's names and other information.
This is also asking for problems because it's normal to organize mail in subfolders, especially for companies.

- Secure mail sounds fine but is end-to-end encryption really important for mainstream users?
Cloud storage should be end-to-end encrypted, but email???
If we read the negative feedback it's clear that many people still don't understand the importance of 2FA and passkey security.
If people lose the key, there's no way to get into the account. It will be locked for always.
Proton has end-to-end encryption by default for its mail. But, I'm pretty sure that most people don't know the cons of end-to-end encryption. That's that they lose access if they lose the key!
End-to-end encryption of mail is only important for business users but not for mainstream users.
Currently, Microsoft is in the spotlight for closing accounts on request of the US government. This has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption but with government legislation.
So, it's much more important that users can be certain that their mail accounts won't be closed by the company.
Closing on request of certain governments is only applicable to certain business users.
In this regard, I see end-to-end encryption of mail accounts for mainstream users more of a marketing strategy than a real need.
The danger of losing the 2FA key or passkey is more important than end-to-end encryption.
I would advice to use email from a company which would't close your mail account if you haven't used it for a certain period and that doesn't has the danger of losing the access key.

To summarize:
Don't be too focused on end-to-end encryption of mail accounts unless you need it for your business and you understand the danger of losing the access key!
Concerning the Proton Mail app it's strange that such a well-known and reputable company has such a bad mail app.
The omissions of this mail app are not something nobody needs but default features that already existed 25 years ago with free mail accounts and free mail apps.