Proton Mail Reviews 

I want to give proton 5 stars.
I want to support the movement and actively engage in it further.
I want to share the company with everyone and help others.
The reality…
Proton customer service is shocking, terrible at responding, mostly respond with unclear answers, vague words without any progress.
The business team is just as bad.
You ask clear questions and get no response.
Generally disinterest and dismissive nature.
In personal paid plan, have a technical issue, good luck!
They won’t reply, or guide you.
If they feel like it , you might get a link for some copy to read.
No active fix, and often the links provided , are things you read before reaching out to them.
Yet nothing from them to fix anything.
I can see why soo many businesses just find it easier to remain with other providers.
I also understand why soo many people make negative reviews are findable, even when most their products are so necessary and valuable in the privacy tech world.
Such as same.
They shoot themselves in the foot with their terrible communication and customer services.

Update 8/9/2026:
Continued to try and get basic support, and they continue being very odd and adding frictions.
So review score corrected to match this increased disparity with customer services and product.

The could storage can't show thumbnails of photos and its ridiculously slow. It's not a functional solution for regular use.

Absolutely horrible. Whenever I enter the settings or want to do anything, there's alot of stuff locked behind a paywall and it feels like I'm using a sketchy email client. Gmail is clean, no distractions. This is the complete opposite. Why's there diamond icons everywhere? Are you that desperate about making everyday consumers pay to use emails? And 500 megabytes of email storage? Really? What am I supposed to do with only 500 megabytes?

Had the misfortune to get involved with Proton VPN and email. I can't find strong enough words to describe HOW BAD THEY ARE. Customer Service is ignorant and arrogant and frankly bloody awkward. I cancelled within a month and am being harassed for $3.99 AFTER CANCELLATION. They have tried to take it several times so I keep that account at zero. The email structure is just a mess, the VPV was poor and often did not disguise my location the whole point of VPN. Have exchanged numerous emails with them and will admit used inappropriate language but they deserve it. They truly are either arrogant or stupid. They will never get a penny from me and told them at least a dozen times yet still they try and tell me I need to cancel which I have several times. Google them and see they have appalling reviews on here and on Google. I strongly warn anyone that reads this do NOT trust this company - go to Nord - Express - Total - any of the main VPN providers but AVOID. I promise you will regret getting involved with PROTON

I used to be a fan of Proton and paid for VPN etc. I'm increasingly disillusioned. Security is one thing but I've been locked out of my accounts, I'm told that codes have been sent to unlock them, and they aren't. I shall be letting my paid for services lapse at the end of my contract.

They promote privacy and anonymity, in fact it’s their whole business model: Meanwhile they happily will give your IP away like that famous case where they gave Swiss authorities a French climate activist IP address.

Whatever standard reply you have cooked up for this because I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot of negative talk about it already it will never justify it. You are scumbags. Period.

Best email provider by far. Been using the premium version since 2024 now for all Proton products

There is NO EFFECTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE / SUPPORT. There is NO WAY TO CONTACT PROTON HELP OTHER THAN EMAIL. You send an email and they reply to that email. That is the model and that model takes DAYS (not hours or minutes....DAYS) to resolve an issue. After 5 days of no meaningful help, I disputed the upgrade charge to a higher service tier after being on the platform for more than one year. Yes, they lock you out if they do not like the measures you take as a consumer. Be aware, there is a lock-in to an email service if you use it for financial account and/or 2FA account authentication. I think their products are good; however, I have changed my whole usage plan for their products because they have no meaningful support model.

I have only been using proton for less than a week, got it for my business mostly for the password protection. Trying to get ANY kind of human suport!!!!! FORGET IT!!!!! It does not exist so far!!! I bought what I thought was the ful on version only to find out that it wasn't, upgraded to the larger business one and that's when I found out that the only support is an AI computet. The AI computer told me that I can only get one refund, not a refund for both purchases. I will update this review if I ever have any contact with a real human.

They delete your account!

Review:
My account was automatically suspended after only a few manually written private emails. Proton later admitted that apparently even the username itself triggered their anti-spam system.

Despite explaining the legitimate purpose in detail, Proton now demands additional business documentation or an official business domain before correcting their own false positive.

For professional communication, this is completely unacceptable: false suspension, days without access, then the burden of proof is pushed onto the customer.

If an email provider can lock you out of your account without valid reason and then make you prove you are legitimate, it is not reliable enough for business use.

Do not subscribe to Protonmail service if you value your time and your files.

I have been completely blocked from downloading my files from Proton Drive for over a week across both the desktop app and the browser.
Instead of helping, customer support (handling my ticket under a repetitive loop) has dragged this out for over a week with basic, repetitive troubleshooting steps while refusing to actually escalate the issue to a senior engineer or management.
When a zero-access cloud service fails to let you access or download your own data, and support traps you in front-line loops with no backend resolution, it is completely unacceptable.

Proton, please escalate Ticket # 5039876 immediately and fix this data access failure.

I bought an annual subscription to Proton's password manager 4 years ago. The product worked well. This week, I decided to add ProtonVPN to my account, but I'd purchased the password manager again. About 30 minutes after my purchase and trying to use VPN app, I double checked, realized my mistake and contacted customer service via email, reddit, and then discord. I got re-directed to a zendesk human.
I described that I wanted to purchase 2 years of VPN service and I wanted to revert my password manager account. I got no response via email for about 20 hours.
It took 3 days to establish that I won't allow me to purchase the standard VPN, I would need to "upgrade" to Unlimited.
I did not want the unlimited service because it didn't offer value over what I desired, the password manager that I'd been paying for for a few years and the VPN service that I'd just tried to buy two years of service.
The customer service told me that they can't revert my old account.
So, now I plan to leave the Proton services completely. Mostly because it took 4 days and 8 emails to "resolve" this. When I pay for a service, I expect more responsiveness. When I want to purchase more from a company and have already paid them, I expect that they should attempt to retain me as a customer. This has not been worth my time. So, I plan to look for a new VPN service and a new password manager.
A service like this should not turn away a custom who has already paid them for out-of-the-box services.
I had service ticket 5058345.

great products, clean, user-friendly with powerful functions.
The privacy focus is amazing

I have a band, and we just recorded a new album. I set up a Proton Mail account just to use for the distribution company. Before giving this new email address to the distribution company, I checked to make sure that I could log into the email account. Everything seemed fine, so I gave this email address when I paid a year up front to the distribution company. As I stated, I made sure the email address worked because that is the one thing you cannot change with the distribution company. I uploaded the new album to the distribution company and was informed by them that I needed to validate my email address and that they sent the validation information to this Proton Mail address. Lo and behold, I was unable to log into the Proton email that I logged into just the day before. I contacted Proton customer service and explained the situation. Since then, I've been in a back-and-forth battle with their customer service and still am unable to log in. It's been three weeks; our new album is still not released. This should have been an easy fix, but instead, they want me to jump through a bunch of hoops, which doesn't work anyway. Terrible customer service. They take days to even get back to you, and then they don't answer any of your questions or help you log in. Now, I have to cancel our account with the distribution company and set up a new account and pay another year in advance for the new account. I always try to help out smaller companies, but this time, it was an obvious mistake. I should have just set up a new Google email address, and none of this would have happened. Do not use Proton for anything important! The only thing that I am grateful for is that I haven't paid them any money yet. Nothing I hate worse than to pay for incompetence, and their customer service is one of the most incompetent I have ever dealt with, and that's saying a lot.

Update (October 2026): I just read Proton Mail's response. Now, they claim they want to be helpful. I gave them over a month to help me, and they didn't, so I'm not really in the mood to deal with them anymore. They cost us money and a lot of valuable time for no valid reason. Every time customer service responded to me, they would tout their "high security". When an email company is so secure that you can't even log into your own account or do a simple password change, it makes the entire point a bit moot. They didn't say anything in their response or any of the many responses that could get me to change my opinion of them. Sorry, but it is a lot too little and a lot too late.

I submitted a query about opening my account and after 36 hours am still waiting for a response. This is not acceptable.

Proton: Ticket no. 5035111

Update: Now 48 hours without a response. It appears that Proton Mail prefer to attend to their Trustpilot reviews than to their customers' queries. Avoid this company.

Second update: Finally, after 55 hours, Proton Mail responded (satisfactorily) to my query and I have upgraded my rating to two stars.

I chose to setup a free account with Proton mail a while ago, as I wanted to keep an alternative to Gmail. Proton mail likes to impress, talks the talk about all of its market leadership on privacy.
Privacy is big at Proton mail. Privacy is important at Proton mail. Yet only a couple of weeks ago, I found an *email* in my proton inbox Missing? Somebody had simply got in and deleted it!
This was private to me, a sort of note to self. I had enough storage and was nowhere near the limits of how many emails I can send etc. "My" email had a link I kept to a YouTube vid.....why would anyone have a Neeeeeed to hack into my account and delete this? It was no one's business but mine... .
Someone wanted to prevent me accessing my own email. I had to reset this 1 up, and send the same email again, to other providers such as mail.com, outlook etc with that 'link'.... Anything digital and online is hackable (isn't that right meta WhatsApp!)
Thanks Proton. Proton mail, your not as professional as you make out to be.

I signed up about a year ago because I needed a service that blocked spam and fluff mail from a football pool provider. For year 1 it was well. Stopped using after the football season ended.
Now, I receive TWO attempted charges on my business card (rideshare) for a heavily inflated amount from 2025.
The fact that a user cannot leave via the app is ponderous.
I have reached out to the developers and said "hey, the price jump for something I use only for a few months..." an increase just isn't worth it.
I do not remember my log-on credentials but left a username, address, last 4 digits of card etc. Tonight I have submitted my second ticket and simply wish to part on good terms. It's impossible, and support does not reply at all (at least the first 24 hours). Oh and I was attempted to be charged BEFORE year two was to start - now TWICE!! I just want OUT!

**edit/reply**
Case number 5038315 by Tamara N.
NO CHARGES (or attempts to charge) in over 24 hours. Treading cautiously.
Tamara has not yet responded directly
Found username now as well: escpwisc

Overall Proton Mail delivers what I expect for an e-mail service.

- Can I view e-mails? Yes
- Can I send e-mails? Yes
- Can I organise e-mails? Yes
- Do Proton Mail have a native Desktop client? Yes
- Does support react to my tickets and questions? Yes

Is Proton Mail perfect? No.
- Proton Mail automatically downgraded my account and cleared all my client settings when I missed a payment. This was super annoying as the last time it happened it had nothing to do with me. Yet Proton disabled my accounts premium features, my addresses and cleared my settings.

Proton should give a grace period for payment related issues of 30 days, as it is a serious thing that they IMMEDIATELY disabled much of my account and all my paid features, for an error I had no control over.

- Proton sends notifications when my membership is renewed, they for example write 'we have charged you X EUR' but if payment fails they AFTERWARDS write 'Payment failed' in a separate notification, which makes no sense to me. As what they say boils down to 'you're subscription is renewed, but payment failed.' And this is confusing.

Besides the above "complaints" I have not experienced anything negative to comment on after a bit over a year of use. And in the world we live in today, I think it is important to have an e-mail provider that is not only secure but also actively privacy focused.

Best regards

PROTONMAIL HAS ISSUES. it was nice I was all happy to find out about an easy and free website that gives a free email, cool right? BUT about 5 days ago it just said "Account scheduled for deletion, if you did not request it, please contact customer service" WTF?!?!?!?!? I NEVER REQUESTED THIS AND I KNOW WITH 100% OF MY HEART AND SOUL THAT NOBODY CAME IN TO HACK MY ACCOUNT BUT THE THING IS IS THAT MY ACCOUNT HAS REALLY IMPORTANT STUFF ON IT THAT IF I LOSE THIS EMAIL I LOSE IT ALL. So naturally I go to support, i tell them about this issue and I've given them more than 5 tickets to help me and A LIL OVER 10 BUSINESS DAYS HAS GONE BY AND STILL NOTHING. I'VE GOTTEN 3 RESPONSES 2 OF THEM WERE COPY PASTE AND THE OTHER ONE WAS JUST TALKING ABOUT LUMO. I WANT MY ACCOUNT AND ANSWERS IMMEDIATELY.