I'm thinking of switching my business email to protonmail from gmail.
Any users like it ?
The whole google memo revealed google employees are not as trustworthy as I thought. All the social media talk of blacklists, and inquisition tactics from some of upper management is bad for business.
I've already gotten emails from clients asking me to change their business google services to something else (anything else in their own words).
I've tried it, but their solution is (IMHO) a very poor fit for a business e-mail account, as there is (or was when I used the service) no way to manage e-mail accounts for your employees and no way to archive / extract their e-mails in case of need (I understand that it's a privacy-focused e-mail service, but as an employer you have legal requirements to keep business documents for several years, and having to rely on your employees goodwill to get the data out of the system is not an acceptable solution for this). Also, there's no calendar integration (https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-feedback/sugg...), which again makes it difficult to use this as a business e-mail account.
I've switched to Mailbox.org in 2016 and I'm very happy with their product and service: Their system is based on an open-source solution (OpenExchange) so they don't need to reinvent the wheel and can focus on prodiving good hosting and service (which they do). They also have support for 2FA (including hardware tokens like Yubikeys) and recently revamped their management portal, which allows you to easily create and manage e-mail accounts for your employees.
I've not seen anyone else talking about mailbox.org. I've been using them for a while after moving away from Fastmail and I'm loving it. Cheap and they're recommeded by https://www.privacytools.io/.
I am very impressed with their service, accessing it on their .onion site. I've been paying with Bitcoin, but it has been a manual process. Their support seems responsive. The UI is great.
I was going to use fastmail, but ProtonMail's inbox encryption seemed like a nice bonus. I know it is not really securing my email, but it is nice to know that if they get a subpoena or warrant they cannot just dump my inbox. At least not without compromising their product - an active step.
Setup of domains and accounts is slick. Changing payment plans all works online, pro-rating and all.
I just set it up for my custom domain and it could not have been any simpler or easier. They have a really clean UI/status checks for setting up MX/SPF/DKIM/DMARC, I setup some custom addresses and a catch-all and it all just worked.
I won't go into details, but I moved my personal and business activities (including 8 domains) away from PM after using their top tier service for a year. Let's just say that performance and usability in moderately heavy business use was not acceptable.
And keep in mind that even though your email is encrypted within PM, it is not encrypted on the mail servers of the people you have been communicating with (unless they are also PM accounts). So the primary attraction is largely moot.
I hope they catch up in the areas I think they need improvement, but providing Gmail level service is quite difficult unless you're big and well funded.
I gave it a try and I really like the Webmailer and the apps, but not having IMAP/SMTP is a dealbreaker, because you can't import/backup your mails at all. As soon as they add those features, I'll sign up for a paid plan again.
I love proton and am a paid user, but I'm not sure if it has all the features a business needs. I'm personally waiting for a calendar before dumping google altogether (except for spam / email lists). Still, it seems better than anything else out there as far as privacy, though I would never count on email privacy to begin with for obvious reasons (unless I encrypt it myself / have others send encrypted email).
Also the fact that they leaked an internal document to the world doesn't give me great confidence they won't do that again. There have already been instance of Google employees snooping in gmail:
If you like Proton features and want to move away from Gmail, consider Mailpile[1]. It's almost ready, there's a release candidate and packages for Debian/Ubuntu; it offers to protect your data with a master password like Proton; it supports GPG which with all its problems is still the way to encrypt your emails; and you can run it on your own server. Best of all it's open source and written in Python. You can know exactly what it does with your messages.
Mailpile is an email client (MUA) so you will need a server (MTA). At first you can try it out with your regular ISP, even Gmail. Later you can set up your own server. Setup is a little involved but much less than people tell you and, if you choose a competently run distro, requires very little ongoing maintenance.
With your own server, you can have it working exactly as you like. Export feature? No problem, you have direct access to the maildir, mailbox or the database. Want a catch-all? One switch in the config. You will have little trouble finding a provider who accepts your preferred method of payment, too.
This is a little bit "late". Fastmail has supported Bitcoin payment for a very long time. In fact, I was surprised last year when I wanted to try proton mail and they didn't have Bitcoin payments.
Sure, you can find the web client sources. How about the server, and the mobile apps? The website makes a big deal of them being open source after all ( https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-open-source/ ).
You are never anonymous when you connect to the Internet, even over Tor, even through 7 proxies. There is always a connection right back to you.
We need to move beyond the obsession with anonymity and refocus the goal as being privacy. Then, recognize that privacy has several levels. That way, the expectation is more clear.
If you're very concerned, you could use a high speed/volume BitCoin Mixer[1]. For example, if it currently has sufficient volume, something on the Darknet like BitBlender[2][3]. There are a number of different mixers out there. You could also, of course, wash the BitCoins by hand yourself.
It's close to being anonymous though. If I give you a random bitcoin address, what are the odds you can identify the owner of it? It's very close to zero.
I've been forwarding all of my email from Gmail to ProtonMail, just to see how I like the ProtonMail interface. So far I'm liking it a lot. A little weirdness on getting timely notifications on Android. But I might switch completely.
I did, and I switched back. Maybe I'll try them again if they ever release a feature that allows me to export (bulk) email. Until then, any emails you receive directly to PM are trapped there (unless you manually forward each one, by hand).
More "progress" from ProtonMail, while they still provide no way to export emails in bulk. They recommend you forward every individual email or print it.
The Export feature has been an open request since before March 2015.
Another feature which would give users a way to get their mail out of PM is the ability to check mail from a client like Outlook or Thunderbird. That has been an open feature request since before February 2015.
They, as with other companies that refuse to listen to their customers, will eventually fail. Of course failure may mean being bought by a larger competitor (and a few of the bad decision-makers cashing out)...
It doesn't look like they have an option to validate account creation from a bitcoin payment instead of an SMS/email. I suspect it would be a popular feature.
And this is coming from a security-conscious company?
Unless I mined the Bitcoins myself, and never spent the remaining 12.45 BTC that I mined (after presumably spending 0.05 BTC on protonmail)... it is far from "Anonymous".
I've played around with ProtonMail in the past but never made the switch. I see now that there is a one password mode that seems more convenient than my legacy 2 password mode. I already have 2FA setup. Given that, is one password mode safe enough or are you still using 2 passwords?
I want to use ProtonMail (and will pay for it), but lack of IMAP is a deal-breaker. Some of the other commenters mentioned IMAP is in beta; can I get on this too? I'm currently managing an iRedMail instance and it's not ideal.
Disappointed that there's no mention of a discount. Cryptocurrency payments will save them a lot of money. Web/email hosting is an industry with a high risk if fraud.
Very good initiative. Happy to see that you're moving in the right direction. Remember, though, that Bitcoin is many things and anonymous is not one of them. It's pseudo-anonymous at best. You should consider accepting the open-source, community-driven, private criptocurrency Monero that has been around for many years now. If you have plans on adopting Monero, send me a message and I'll be glad to guide you on the right direction.
They have been accepting Bitcoin for a long time already, now its just integrated better.
The whole talk about "freedom and privacy" in relation to Bitcoin made me a bit nauseous. These are tech guys. It destroys trust for them to be blabbering nonsense about privacy like this.
[+] [-] MollyR|8 years ago|reply
Any users like it ?
The whole google memo revealed google employees are not as trustworthy as I thought. All the social media talk of blacklists, and inquisition tactics from some of upper management is bad for business.
I've already gotten emails from clients asking me to change their business google services to something else (anything else in their own words).
[+] [-] ThePhysicist|8 years ago|reply
I've switched to Mailbox.org in 2016 and I'm very happy with their product and service: Their system is based on an open-source solution (OpenExchange) so they don't need to reinvent the wheel and can focus on prodiving good hosting and service (which they do). They also have support for 2FA (including hardware tokens like Yubikeys) and recently revamped their management portal, which allows you to easily create and manage e-mail accounts for your employees.
[+] [-] Accacin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_stc|8 years ago|reply
I was going to use fastmail, but ProtonMail's inbox encryption seemed like a nice bonus. I know it is not really securing my email, but it is nice to know that if they get a subpoena or warrant they cannot just dump my inbox. At least not without compromising their product - an active step.
Setup of domains and accounts is slick. Changing payment plans all works online, pro-rating and all.
[+] [-] captn3m0|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KirinDave|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladimir-y|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arkadiyt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blunte|8 years ago|reply
And keep in mind that even though your email is encrypted within PM, it is not encrypted on the mail servers of the people you have been communicating with (unless they are also PM accounts). So the primary attraction is largely moot.
I hope they catch up in the areas I think they need improvement, but providing Gmail level service is quite difficult unless you're big and well funded.
[+] [-] jameskegel|8 years ago|reply
What made you feel this way, specifically, in the memo?
[+] [-] Lunatic666|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mnm1|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] influx|8 years ago|reply
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-stalked-teens...
[+] [-] hacksome|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] angry-hacker|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] blfr|8 years ago|reply
Mailpile is an email client (MUA) so you will need a server (MTA). At first you can try it out with your regular ISP, even Gmail. Later you can set up your own server. Setup is a little involved but much less than people tell you and, if you choose a competently run distro, requires very little ongoing maintenance.
With your own server, you can have it working exactly as you like. Export feature? No problem, you have direct access to the maildir, mailbox or the database. Want a catch-all? One switch in the config. You will have little trouble finding a provider who accepts your preferred method of payment, too.
[1] https://www.mailpile.is/
[+] [-] the_common_man|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] csomar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teleproto|8 years ago|reply
Sure, you can find the web client sources. How about the server, and the mobile apps? The website makes a big deal of them being open source after all ( https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-open-source/ ).
[+] [-] mi100hael|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmeyer2k|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] intopieces|8 years ago|reply
We need to move beyond the obsession with anonymity and refocus the goal as being privacy. Then, recognize that privacy has several levels. That way, the expectation is more clear.
[+] [-] vabmit|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mixer
[2] https://bitblender.io/
[3] http://bitblendervrfkzr.onion/
[+] [-] beaner|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] olegkikin|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] savethefuture|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] riazrizvi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wakkaflokka|8 years ago|reply
Anybody make the switch?
[+] [-] blunte|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxk42|8 years ago|reply
I only use it for a small fraction of my business, though.
[+] [-] blunte|8 years ago|reply
The Export feature has been an open request since before March 2015.
Another feature which would give users a way to get their mail out of PM is the ability to check mail from a client like Outlook or Thunderbird. That has been an open feature request since before February 2015.
They, as with other companies that refuse to listen to their customers, will eventually fail. Of course failure may mean being bought by a larger competitor (and a few of the bad decision-makers cashing out)...
[+] [-] jron|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GigabyteCoin|8 years ago|reply
How exactly... by paying with Bitcoin?
And this is coming from a security-conscious company?
Unless I mined the Bitcoins myself, and never spent the remaining 12.45 BTC that I mined (after presumably spending 0.05 BTC on protonmail)... it is far from "Anonymous".
If they started accepting Zcash, however...
[+] [-] tradersam|8 years ago|reply
Monero would be a better option.
[+] [-] brewdad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yakshaving_jgt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristianp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tradersam|8 years ago|reply
[1]: https://www.coindesk.com/ostk-hodl-overstock-keep-50-bitcoin...
[+] [-] rtpg|8 years ago|reply
Are there major products out there priced in Bitcoin yet?
[+] [-] cevn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arosier|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rdslw|8 years ago|reply
You can check quite recent truly and honestly made (!) comparison of VPNs here: https://vpnreport.org/
Disclaimer: There are no affiliate links in this comment.
(!) not shown within first 10 google results among the usual crap for 'best xxx services'
[0] https://www.ovpn.com/en/blog/complete-guide-for-using-bitcoi...
[+] [-] firekvz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txmx2000|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trustworthy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BusinessInsider|8 years ago|reply
Legacy Bitcoin fees can be higher than their actual monthly plans.
[+] [-] Strategizer|8 years ago|reply
The whole talk about "freedom and privacy" in relation to Bitcoin made me a bit nauseous. These are tech guys. It destroys trust for them to be blabbering nonsense about privacy like this.
[+] [-] TheSpecialist|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bartbutler|8 years ago|reply