Proton Mail Reviews 1,694

I am very surprised to see so many negative reviews. I am sure there were genuine reasons for them. I have been using Proton Mail for over 6 years with paid subscription, including other Proton applications, never had a single issue to complain about. Very satisfied with all the functionality and services.

I' ve been using Proton Mail for a few weeks now. Importing all history from my 2 Gmail accounts worked like a charm (some emails initially seemed to be missing, but that was just because Proton groups emails into conversations differently from Gmail). It has to be noted that all your email addresses appear into a unified inbox, there's no easy way to split them - which may be fine or not according to your personal preferences.

Features are definitely not as good as in Gmail - one striking example is how tedious it is to search the body of emails (and it seems it can't be done at all in the mobile app?!). There are some annoying bugs and some UX choices are questionable. Customer support is willing to help, but you have to insist and it takes several exchanges of messages before they actually start working on your problem.

The Proton Authenticator app is really good, better than Google's IMO, and exporting + importing accounts into it was a breeze.

Overall, despite its many flaws, I think I'll stick with Proton for the commitment to privacy and the European storage locations (I wouldn't feel comfortable relying on the US these days). The fact that the Proton company is owned by a foundation and that they open up their source code makes me trust their ethics - that's for sure better than just having "Don't be evil" as a motto.

In October 2025, after a third instance of my Proton email service not consistently sending or receiving emails, I asked ProtonMail to cancel my account and send me a refund.

I was assigned Maja, who offered “2 extra months in the form of credits” if I gave them a “chance to resolve” the issue. I explained that reliability was more important than anything else, and that I wanted to end my ties to ProtonMail as quickly as possible.

A new customer support agent, Ana-Marija, responded and stated that she would “proceed with the downgrade.” However, what she concealed was that the “downgrade” was not a refund, but months of “credits” – something I had already declined.

Three weeks later, I noticed I never received my refund, so I contacted Ana-Marija and asked for assistance in finishing my request. What followed was infuriating back-and-forth email exchanges which defied European Commission standards (which they are affiliated) as well as US Consumer Laws (where I am located).

ProtonMail customer representatives would ask me to provide proof of one thing or another under the auspices that, if I did so, they would “reconsider the refund” for me. So, each and every time, I would spend the energy and resources to dig up the information and proof they requested, only for them to not “reconsider the refund” as they promised.

After enough back-and-forth, my case was assigned a third customer service rep, Supervisor “Marija” (who is not the same person as Ana-Marija). Rather than reading the earlier email exchanges I had had with Ana-Marija, Marija had me re-explain the circumstances of the case.

At Marija’s request, I re-explained my customer service ticket concerns, but explained that I was not interested in troubleshooting the issue, especially if a refund was not actually available. I engaged with Marija as a good-faith effort, but expressed that I believed the situation was at a point where it was inappropriate for us to continue dialogue without a third-party representative mediating the exchange, as it felt like they were intentionally disregarding the information I was sending at their request.

Despite my request for communication to stop, ProtonMail continued engaging with me, specifically with a new customer service rep named Ivan who reached out to me after I believed the conversation had finished. Ivan contradicted each of the customer service reps I’d already dealt with, and talked to me as if I was the one who contacted him to continue pursuing a refund. I responded by explicitly explaining that I felt like the communication had risen to the level of harassment.

To summarize:

- Despite Proton’s terms of service explicitly referring to the possibility of a refund “at the discretion” of the company, customer service reps would deny the possibility of a refund. After I acknowledged this, they (Maja, then Ana-Marija, then supervisor Marija, and finally Ivan) would but then bring up that they had the authority to offer a refund if I troubleshot with them. I would do so in good faith, only to find that they had no intention to offer this refund, and after providing the info they requested, they would revert back to stating they could not violate “Proton’s refund policy.” As such, they received free IT troubleshooting by deceiving me into engaging with them and by having me track down the information they needed. I am not happy that a “discretionary refund” was being wielded as a carrot in front of me when there was ultimately no intention of ever granting me the refund. I worked for free for Proton’s customer support agents.

- When it became clear that ProtonMail had no intent to grant the refund, I requested no more contact from them without being afforded a third-party present. Despite this, Proton continued emailing me on multiple occasions (specifically Marija and Ivan).

- I requested a chargeback from my credit card and filed a BBB report, where they already have an outstanding "F" rating there.

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FEB 5 UPDATE - BUSINESS RESPONSE:
"Hello. Can you please share your ticket number with us here so we can look into your case?"

FEB 5 UPDATE - MY RESPONSE
Hi, no thanks.
First of all, it is unsafe to put ticket numbers across the Internet.
Secondly, did you read my complaint? I don't know how many times or how many different ways I need to say this: I do not want to talk to you without a neutral third party intermediary present, and it is inappropriate for you to keep pushing to speak with me.
I currently have an open case against you with the BBB; please respond to their inquiries, which you have not done yet. I will not be speaking to you "privately" anymore.

I just received an email from Proton: "We're donating $1.27 million"... Start by restoring (or refunding) the customers who lost their subscriptions by trying to delete your email address... and without any technical know-how worthy of an IT professional.

As a sole email user, I find the current and past plans inflexible. My limited use of email and lack of interest in other products or a second account for a family member puts me at a disadvantage. I’m forced to purchase unnecessary features and products to access the writing tools (Mail Assistance) I’d like. This inflexibility makes me hesitant to continue using Protonmail. While I’ve never been unhappy with the service, paying for something I don’t use and need is unacceptable. Using my latest MacBook, I’ve found workarounds for AI proofreading, but the question remains: why pay for a higher plan if I don’t need more than half the features?

I've been a user of Proton's suite of products for a few years now, I first created my account about four years ago. While Proton isn't perfect and some of their products could use quite a bit of work (looking at you, Drive), it has always been reliable and Proton is transparent when it comes to issues.

Just today, I decided to upgrade to Visionary while it was still an option, and even though it was quite a high price, what I got was certainly worth it.

In any case, i don't like put only one star but ..

Protonmail is the dumbest email service in the world

If two people access their email from the same IP address, both email address are automatically blocked and unusable.

You might say that's impossible, but yes, they're that stupid.

Not creating multiple email addresses from the same IP address would have been a good idea, but not allowing two different people to connect via the same IP address? You have to be seriously delusional, and profoundly so, if I may add.

How can such nonsensical behavior be used in a business ?

Some people at ProtonMail should be fired.

Not always the cheapest option for the services they provide, and some things definitely need to improve.

But negativity aside, I've never had any issues with their customer service. They have been super helpful and friendly. And in a world where more and more personal information is available for anyone to see without your consent, the privacy first aproach of Proton is top-notch and a welcome change.
Yes there isn't the integration like with Google but I know my data stays my data.
Stop been the product and become the Customer

Recently made the switch to Proton Mail and Drive (partly to decouple from US-based Gmail and Outlook). So far so good. The system feels slick, fast, easy to manage. The free tier is very limited so upgraded so I can also use our family domain name. The apps are reasonable on iPhone (iPad less so). The only caveat on MacOS is you need to use the "Proton Bridge" app if you want to continue using Mail (or other email app) to work with the encryption. The Drive app works very well though. Only downside was a massive lack of e-mail and username availability, probably too late to the party. A few more domain extensions would help!

I purchased the Proton Pass Plus plan because it advertised secure document storage. Unfortunately this feature is hit or miss as I have found the product remains unreliable. While some documents load correctly, many others display as garbled text or trigger "document does not exist" errors, despite the document being present. I am reliant on secure documents and paid for the Plus plan to be able to use this feature. The software is still very poor quality and full of bugs.


I only used it for 3 days and requested a refund, but it was refused just because I had been refunded for Proton Pass several months back when I tried it for the first time, only because they stated a 30 days money back guarantee if you’re unhappy with the product. Any exception to this has to be clearly stated on the advert and not buried in a T&C document, as that’s misleading. The product is not mature enough so I requested a refund. At the time I had to email several times in order to be finally refunded.

I should have learnt my lesson, but this time I gave them the benefit of the doubt as they had advertised several additional new feature that I wanted to use, so I gave them a second shot as I genuinely wanted to use their product.

The software simply does not work as intended. It’s as simple as that. I am not wasting my time with technical support and raising bug reports. The feature advertised has to work every time and should have been fully tested before releasing it to the public.

Under merchant agreements with card issuers, there is an obligation to provide the service as described. Because the software does not function as marketed, I am entitled to a refund regardless of internal terms and conditions and I have proceeded with the chargeback process at a cost to Proton and my card provider will be refunding me.

I will no longer be using or ever recommending your products or services again.

I'm shocked at the negative reviews on here. I've used Proton Mail for the last five years and have had the pleasure of seeing how they have developed the app during this time. Was/is it as feature rich as gmail? no. but if I wanted Gmail I'd use Gmail.

It was easy for us to setup a family account with multiple email aliases and allocate storage between the members. One family member also has a custom domain that was easy to setup and use and we've encountered no issues with it. My father-in-law is in infosec, and places a lot of trust into Proton Mail's servers and privacy policies.

I have encountered some issues with the Android mobile app, but the app is still marked as "beta", and updates bring more and more fixes.

I'm also quite happy with their other offerings (VPN, calendar, authenticator) and appreciate being able to handle things under my one account across multiple devices (mac, linux, android)

My experience with Proton email service has been very shaky. It started off good however now none of my email messages are being delivered and when I reach out to customer service there is no response. Even sent many "test" messages from another email and still no deliver of messages. Doesnt make sense

What a shame they don't deliver. I was really hoping to support an EU-based, privacy-centric organisation.

A litany of bugs across products and devices. The iOS app's notification count has been broken for months (no progress on the bug report), and the email list (in the iOS app) is absolutely useless displaying only the first few characters of the sender and subject. I have 78 identical rows for emails from GitHub, giving me no idea what they even are.

And now, my own events are inexplicably disappearing from my calendar with no way to recover them.

Customer service are similarly useless, often requesting information provided in the original report.

A waste of €100.

I have submitted numerous requests for support and they have failed terribly - the only solace is finding out I'm not the only one - Now I find out about about using the pm.suffix??? - I am submitting this here seeing they reach out in hopes that some action will be taken - to date this is some of the poorest customer support and help in 63 years of living🤯 - if something is done immediately I will update that my problem was addressed - if I knew then what I know now Would have passed - no amount of security is worth the hassle and time they have cost me over a simple request and extremely poor response

I nedded to reset my password and when you do you lose all your email. When you get them back they are all
Encrypted. They sent me a code to reset but did not work. I worked with them on the phone but they could not get it to work.
I lost many important emails that was related to property transactions. Cost me a small fortune to get it all back from lawyers that. had copies but charge alot to sent it to you.
Protonmail is only for ppl that send worthless emails just in case.

Products are great, all working as you would expect on all platforms. Automatic backup of mobile device photo's to proton drive is also great.

And it's a great feeling I am not depended anymore on US tech companies for e-mail and storage.

Also, I have had a great experience with the customer support. They were very helpfull.

Unfortunate that any payment issues are leading to instantly getting locked out of accounts. As a business it’s not something we can rely on as mail needs to be available.

Another downside is that there’s isn’t a proper workspace and you need alternatives. I want to be on a EU based and secure platform but this isn’t it sadly. Being locked out of my account instead of being able to resolve issues yourself is a big no

Update in regards to Protons response below this post: If a bank accidentally refunds it due to insignificant funds it marks you as fraud instantaneously and your account is not downgraded but blocked.

This e-mail service is supposed to be a top end, safe, secure and easy to use service. Often used by the likes of consultants. It's actually the most user unfriendly e-mail service I've ever used, and can picture some overpaid fool making it as complicated to use as possible. Go elsewhere.

I couldn't understand the set-up instructions for Proton's password manager.
My password manager now is a spiral-bound notebook with alphabet tabs. It works every time and I had no trouble setting it up - I know the alphabet and I've got a pen ....

Proton, please, you continue to miss the point so I will try to make it simple.
Since last year the "activity monitor" announcements (such as "wiped security events") have been forced on and irremovable, seemingly permanently. For the entirety of Proton before this, this did not occur.
It is neither wanted nor helpful. Most people do not need nor want an audit trail of the personal private emails.
Having this forced upon people is a direct and genuine security and privacy risk for those who must keep this Monitor on.
I also note though that having it turned off does not remove the information either.
Proton, focused on privacy, should also not want this information.

How do I turn this off so that the "wiped security events" message no longer exists?
It is a basic requirement that when you change your user experience there is an opt out especially when you opening up users to risk.

As explained previously going to you customer service team through direct channels in its current state is simply a waste of time.
On behalf of all users who have been forced to deal with this service team and those who will in the future we eagerly await significant improvement in your service standards, prior to this being done ticket numbers are irrelevant.