I’ll start off by saying everyone’s economic situations are just as varied as their threat models and how people make decisions on which services can be specific to themself and not one that can apply to anyone else. The services one chooses to use for free or to pay for may be based more on what they can afford vs what’s the best broad reaching plan.

That being said i’d like to see what others think about the proton suit of services. I’ve been eyeing it as an option for a paid service for a while but am hesitant to put all my eggs in one basket. I’m interested in a vpn, mullvad seems to be the other popular choice. I’m also interested in email address anonymizing service like anonaddy. At $5 for mullvad, $3 for anonaddy, and $3 for base proton email it comes out to a dollar more than protons premium tier which gets cheaper if you pay for 1 or 2 years at a time.

As said above would the biggest reason not to use proton for all of these separate services be not putting all your eggs in one basket?

  • b9chomps@beehaw.org
    3·
    3 years ago

    I switched from Proton to Tutanota for two main reasons.

    1. I didn’t want to put all my eggs into one basket, just like you. With Tutanota I get email and calendar in one package. For VPN and online storage I use independent solutions (Mullvad, local solution via syncthing). Related to this, I don’t like paying for a bundle of programs when I only really want to use a subset.

    2. Proton isn’t following through all the way. They keep adding services (password manager and captchas recently), but they don’t provide the same experience across all devices. I’m on linux and their drive doesn’t offer a client that syncs my folder with essential documents. I have to manual upload. That’s a dealbreaker for me.

    • impersonator@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      This is not to counter your point (I agree they should probably offer a client to sync files on Linux), but rclone recently added (beta) support for proton drive, so you might want to check that out if you’re still using it.

  • pianoplant@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 years ago

    By default just did a video (piped link) on this and I 100% agree with him. The killer feature is simplelogin. Being able to use a different alias email for every single account I use is absolutely amazing.

    • DeadNinja@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 years ago

      I used to subscribe to Simplelogin as well - but lately I have been seeing sites/merchants who do not accept the Simplelogin email domains as valid, and I have to put in my personal gmail ID to proceed (e.g. the restaurant POS system “Toasttab”).

    • Atemu@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      There are other such services such as addy.io but SimpleLogin is a lot better integrated IME. Addy for example can be quite janky; adding a big message up top of the email and such.

      There’s also the fact that you only need to trust a single entity for email if you use SL + ProtonMail.

  • PuppyOSAndCoffee@lemmy.ml
    2·
    3 years ago

    Honestly, I think it boils down to our ecosystems. There are other mail + calendar providers out there. When children are involved, I think it’s worth a few bucks to get a custom DNS, a privacy-focused email/calendar provider, and give children the space to grow up in a world that collects as little metadata as possible.

  • tyrant@lemmy.world
    2·
    3 years ago

    For what is worth I haven’t been able to get the storage sync to work, the VPN app isn’t as simple/fast/as easy as mullvad, proton has little support for Linux. I use proton because it works with portmaster but I’m not a huge fan of it.

  • beSyl@slrpnk.net
    2·
    3 years ago

    I think they are unnecessarily expensive for email. I would rather go with tutanota. I don’t like having all my eggs in one basket. Calendar/email/contacts in one provider and VPN service in another is the way to go, in my opinion.

  • Haphazard9479@lemm.ee
    1·
    3 years ago

    There’s usually a black friday sale. I use simple login with the email service and its great. The vpn and calender are solid as well.

      • solitude@lemmy.one
        1·
        3 years ago

        If you live in a location that has Amazon, and they sell the Mullvad gift-card type voucher, this may be a good alternative option for payment. It has a code under a scratch-off type material on the back, & then you put the code into the Mullvad app for additional time. No way to tie my Amazon account to that gift card (with a random anonymous code under the scratch off) and then to my Mullvad account. The gift card is also discounted from their normal pricing.

    • solitude@lemmy.one
      1·
      3 years ago

      Just in case you don’t know, you should do an internet search for “nordvpn data breach.” I’m not saying you should switch, or that Nord is bad, but you should at least be aware that this situation occurred and it has been a consideration for a lot of privacy first type people ever since.

      • LazerDickMcCheese@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        3 years ago

        Yeah, I paid for a year’s worth of service, then found out. I’m cheap as hell so I’m gonna ride out my subscription, but I’m definitely switching…I just haven’t decided on the service yet

    • workerONE@lemmy.ml
      1·
      3 years ago

      So what if LastPass exists? They got hacked twice and covered it up. Proton pass auto fill works better than LastPass. Use what you want but why suggest a product shouldn’t exist because there is competition?

  • nyakojiru@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    1·
    3 years ago

    I was in te same situation as you . I had anonaddy (addy) , Bitwarden, Mullvad , and was using google drive for stuff I don’t care about privacy. The thing is that

    • Bitwarden : has more development than proton pass , but pass is great anyway and has all my needs even 2fa.
    • addy: has plenty of free things enough for me but started to find most of their domains are blocked to register a user. SimpleLogin from proton feels more developed and works flawesly with proton pass
    • Mullvad: is an execelent vpn , very simple , fast , cheap , but it has very few locations and mine particular one was missing, also it doesn’t have port forwarding . All these thins proton vpn have it.
    • cloud drive: I really needed something to store more sensitive data, proton drive now have a desktop client so it is perfect por my needs. If you sum all the services it will be like 8 or 9 dollars I think , and the benefits of the proton services integrations I think $13 is a win.
  • mertn@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 years ago

    Proton plus here too. I use the vpn, 500gb drive for backups, and have set up my own domain name email. I tried their password manager but didnt like it at all. I dont think it is ready yet.

    • beeb@lemm.ee
      1·
      3 years ago

      I use Proton Pass to generate aliases with the browser extension but otherwise use 1password which is much more mature and has great support on all platforms.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
    1·
    3 years ago

    I avoid them with a 10.5 ft pole. They offer a false sense of security and promote proprietary software. There are cheaper options available

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    1·
    3 years ago

    Proton Visionary for few years now, iirc paying about $200/y. Honestly I mostly just use for ProtonMail. Once or twice a month I use ProtonVPN but it’s rare. Same for calendar. I don’t use ProtonDrive as I prefer to rely on NextCloud on Webo, mostly due to rich document editing capabilities.

    Overall very happy with it but I admit one of the motivation for paying so much for Visionary was both to support the project AND to rely on my own domain. This way if for whatever reason Proton goes to shit, which I surely hope not, I can seamlessly switch to another provider, or self host, and nobody would notice the difference, no lock-in despite quality and trust.