[littlecranky67]

Just migrated away my personal email (with custom domains) from Microsoft 365 to Proton, and boy, it is such a better experience.

M365 has become an intangible mess of a multitude of different admin dashboards redirecting you around and complicating things beyond comprehension. For the migration, I wanted to backup my entire email backlog. It took me two hours to finally get it connected to thunderbard via IMAP and do the backup. I was redirected from Docs pages to the M365 dashboard, M365 Exchange dashboard, Security dashboard and whatnot. I had to turn on 2FA which only worked afer enabling some hidden "Security defaults" until I finally could enable IMAP login, and then took several AI assisted attempt to get the server and credential details.

When I cancelled my subscription MS asks you to give a reason, and the first bullet point is "This product is too complicated to manage" - so they even know about the mess they created.

For now, Proton replaced my M365 subscription, bitwarden, and Kagi (I use protons LUMO AI, which uses different models in the backend and gives you unlimited requests). I didn't have a VPN plan before, now it is also included. The value proposition of Proton is unbeatable in itself, the privacy on top is just the icing on the cake.

[illiac786]

I agree with everything, just want to add a downside of proton which is often forgotten: there is no search. You cannot search your emails’ body (headers work, but keywords like “from:” still do not work for search), you cannot search the content of your files, etc.

It’s the price of end-to-end encryption.

The only workaround is synchronising everything locally and searching locally.

[kertoip_1]

But you still can use Thunderbird for that. I recommend it no matter what mail provider is used. Web interfaces are so heavy nowadays, compared to that, Thunderbird feels so fast.

[illiac786]

yes, so I can search my emails solely on my laptop if I install proton bridge and synchronize 50GB of emails. And in case you have ever tried to search 50GB of data with thunderbird, it’s slow.

I tried synchronising the data directly in the browser, without any email client and the search is mediocre and slow.

This is not a great experience for search.

But again, it’s not a critique of Proton, it’s just how it is with E2EE. At least it demonstrate they are really doing E2EE.

I still hope some time in the future homomorphic encryption will help, but I think we are at least a decade away from that.

[zelphirkalt]

Until some time ago they prevented users from using Thunderbird for Protonmail though. Well, good that now it is possible!

[zipy124]

You've been able to use it since 2017 on Windows and 2020 on Linux, so only about 8 and 5 years respectively.

[littlecranky67]

This is a problem of encrypted storage in general (and hopefully homomorphic encryption will solve that), but I knew this and for me that is a feature, not a bug. I use 2-step password auth (NOT 2FA) explicitly so no one can read my emails without my consent - not the provider, nor the government.

[illiac786]

Can you elaborate on how the second password improves the privacy/security posture? I might switch to it.

[desipenguin]

I am assuming that the second password is like decryption key. I have saved the second password as "mailbox password"

The way I interpreted is that first password is for the account, so verify I am who I say I am. But since the emails are encrypted, browser can't show my messages in human-readable form. Second/mailbox password decrypts it and shows the emails in human readable format.

This is just a guess.

I would love to hear about second password from other/more knowlegeable folks.

[illiac786]

ah, ok, but that’s not what this is for.

Proton does not have access to your email contents, no matter if you use one or two passwords. They do not have you password, neither the first one, nor the second one, they have a hash of it, to be able to verify you have types the correct password. Only the actual password (the first one or the second one) can decrypt email content. Decryption only happens in the browser (Or in the proton app).

Of course you need to trust them on this, it’s difficult to verify, but it as been audited multiple times.

The second password is an old vestige of the time where they couldn’t manage to use a single password for both authentication and decryption.

I use the second one as well, but I use it so I can use VPN on some common devices the family use as well, without having to enter the second password. So if the family device is lost or compromised, only my first proton password has ever been used on it.

[littlecranky67]

To add to my own post what made me switch from M365 away in the first place besides the admin madness:

- No catch-all (yes, I use my own domain just for me, and I want a catchall to my mailbox)

- Outlook 365 webinterface becoming buggy and shitty in so many ways

- I had 2 domains set up (one private, one business) but O365 would not display which email a given was used as target (just display my name), nor would it let me choose FROM which Email I want send/reply to a mail

- O365 required re-authentication every 24h or so, but I always keep the webinterface open in my tab 24/7

Additionally, I had a Bitwarden paid subscription and looking for another VPN subscription, plus a commercial AI subscription. Proton is has all of that in a one-package deal.

[reloadtak]

1. That's one mail flow rule.

2. Agreed

3. Yes, inbox rules could color these

4. Something must wrong in CA, this should not happen (if you don't want it to)

[desipenguin]

I have faced "O365 required re-authentication every 24h or so" in my previous job.

It was irritating.

I just assumed it was "IT policy" and accepted the inconvinience.

[waihtis]

MSFT is absolutely screwed, they have ruined every single product they have (OS, Azure, M365) through a combination of hiring subpar cheap devs and AI code slop, and their big strategic money squeeze bet on AI is about to be severely undercut by the market. There is very little of actual value left in the company, they're only held in place by the OS monopoly.

Whatever nostalgic love there has been for the company from the olden days has completely evaporated by now. It will take a decade for the OS competitor to emerge but once that happens, MSFT will hopefully die in the fiery blaze of death it completely deserves at this point.

This opinion comes fresh off of having to had to engage with their partner center "experience", where basic UI functions are broken beyond repair and simple form submissions have to go through three layers of subcontracted customer "support" which is best described as a broken telephone where you have to explain the problem repeatedly to an endless stack of support staff.

Not to mention Windows 11 BSODing every week and failing to make basic functions like bluetooth work on it.

This may seem dramatic but its an 100% true and accurate representation of how everything works with them these days.

[luma]

Absolutely screwed! Every single product they have - OS (dominant desktop and laptop OS by a wide margin), Azure - (gaining in second place, now 25% vs AWS 31%), M365 (also dominant, particularly in terms of revenue). None of these show any sign of going anywhere, and if anything, the numbers for cloud and M365 are trending up.

I could only wish my own business were this screwed.

[glimshe]

Their success is a big part of why the experience is so bad as they have to appeal to a common denominator.

At the same time, they also win on the little things that diehard opponents choose to ignore, like search that kind of works. I don't like Office 365 but I'm a paying customer because, after long research, I haven't found a competitor that meets all my requirements.

[hagbard_c]

> MSFT is absolutely screwed

Probably

> they have ruined every single product they have (OS, Azure, M365)

You forgot Github, the once-reliable and once-generally-fast but now pink-unicorn-bedraggled slow-as-molasses 'forge' site. Oh how they messed it up and am I ever glad I only ever used it as a mirror for my own repos.

How they manage to screw up just about every product they purchase remains a mystery to me but by ${deity} are they good at it.

[agobineau]

WPS office + HarmonyOS will likely become dominant

my experience of asian software development is they simply build enterprise for the users, how the users want it. rather than trying to shape consumer behaviour. in some ways it could be argued that it is less innovative, but when big orgs figure out a USD$500 laptop running WPS+Harmony + email client can replace msft enterprise contracts a lot of asia co's will never go back

culturally homogenous dev teams producing software for a culturally homogenous market is quite powerful. then outsiders will adapt. rather than winslop focus on support everything, localise to every market, hardware, whatever

i see future of:

HarmonyOS or MacOS for corps then misc tablet systems

this will acelerate with hardware shortages making unified OS+hardware product like huawei or macbook more competitive

[StrangeSound]

I really tried migrating to Proton, but unfortunately I found their suite not really fit for purpose and I had to request a refund.

- No search in Mail. You can use Bridge to pull your emails into something else, but this means it's no longer secure, and not really feasible for a non-techy partner!

- No search in Drive

- 3 domain limit for Mail(???)

- Drive sucks. No previewing files, viewing photos etc. due to missing docs suite

- No proper shared folders in Drive

- Pass is woeful at autocomplete

- Pass Aliases are independent of logins, so you end up with double entries for everything

- You can't sync the calendar with native apps, and the calendar doesn't show birthdays

- No contact sync

- Pass doesn't support SSH

- VPN lets you split tunnel by app on PC, app AND IP on Android, IP on the chrome extension. Some let you include, others exlcude. How hard is it to just allow exclude/include for hostnames?

There's tonnes more that I'm missing that I can't think of from the top of my head, but it seems like Proton have stretched themselves very thinly. What I would consider a lot of basic features are missing. One look at their UserVoice community shows a lot of frustration

I think it's probably best to pay for individual services that focus on one area. I ended up with Fastmail, 1Password, and Windscribe for example.

[littlecranky67]

Valid points. For me the no search is feature (due to everything being encrypted), not a bug. But this is an individual decision. I have a similar list after 2 years of using (and managing) my personal M365 subscription (Onedrive on macOS sucks, search on iOS is very slow, spotlight integration doesn't work etc.). I just wonder what you use now as an alternative, because it seems the perfect solution will not exist. For M365, they also just price hiked my subscription after one year to over 40% (and what would I do, migration takes day) and I just felt Microsoft holds me hostage. This is not solved in any way by moving to just another lock-in platform, but I trust proton more to value customers and not squeeze money out of me with that lock-in. At least I trust them more than Microsoft or Google.

[axelthegerman]

E2EE is definitely nice, however if you communicate with many people using other email providers your emails still end up there unencrypted

[StrangeSound]

Unfortunately we took the simple option and reverted back to Google. I was lucky that my wife even went along with my plan to migrate everything in the first place!

I'm considering self-hosting Immich to replace photos, but not sure when I'll tackle that and don't fancy having to use Tailscale all the time. No idea about a Drive replacement as yet!

[hahn-kev]

Wow, no search is a deal breaker. Might as well just delete my email, that's pretty secure.

[ikidd]

How would you search email on an E2EE server without pulling them local?

[pigeons]

Can't create mailing lists/groups.

[jimnotgym]

Does anyone know if the android app for ProtonMail works now? It became unusable a couple of years ago

[patresh]

I've had no issues with the app lately, but it's still missing the feature of building a local search index to do searches based on e-mail content, like the web client can do.

[LunaSea]

Have you seen any difference in email reception rates from Proton?

[littlecranky67]

Too early to say that (I used the holidays for the transition). With your custom domains you have to make sure everything is setup properly on the DNS side (MX records, SPF, DKIM/DMARC etc.) but the proton ui has checks and makes that really easy, when correctly setup all checks are displayed "green". If you have trouble of your outgoing mails to be accepted (or land in spam), I would advice making sure all is marked green for you too.