[davidee]

I've been using proton for a year after migrating from Rackspace and I'm done. Not because of this article, but I might as well pile on:

1. I use a custom domain.

Turns out that there are two competing features, not-at-all documented. If you use a catch-all, like I do, AND use specific addresses for sending, the two are incompatible to some degree. Which is bonkers.

Example: with a catchall I can create any address I want (and I do). Some store wants an email for a big discount, cool, here's a throwaway. Buying something online, here's a throwaway.

Now sometimes, I need to reply using that throwaway. Turns out in Proton, this triggers a gotcha. As soon as I add the throwaway email to my list of email addresses for sending, I enter a world with a limit of 10 max.

That's fine, I can disable them right?

Nope, it turns out if I disable them in order to add aothers, Proton blocks those addresses *even though I have a catch-all*. WHAT?? Worse, if I try to delete the addresses, Proton will also delete the associated messages in my Inbox/folders. Excuse me?

2. What really pushed me away: Search.

Whatever proton is using under the hood is easily the worst search experience I've ever had from a mail product, and I use Thunderbird on my work machine.

Notable: Proton Bridge. I get why, but it's just terrible.

So many rough edges. Just not worth it.

[thejoeflow]

Isn't the search bad because they can't search email contents? As long as the term is somewhere in the metadata (title, sender email, sender name) it seems to work ok.

I agree though that the user experience isn't great because of this limitation. You kind of have to remember what the title of the email was for what you're looking for. Searching for "flight ticket" results in mixed success

[sabellito]

They can search contents. You have to activate local indexing in the search UI itself.

[devnullbrain]

The indexing needs to be refreshed almost every time I use it.

[sabellito]

That's weird, I never had to do that. Android and firefox web.

[willis936]

I want to emphasize just how bad bridge is. It's so bad that they nuked the issues section on the repo. They didn't lock it, they removed all record of issues. I found out when trying to click on a useful/familiar issue that was cached by a search engine. Proton says to talk to their support directly, but that is a totally different solution for a totally different problem. The fact that they deleted public history of comments really flares my unsubscribe feelings.

https://github.com/ProtonMail/proton-bridge

As for the "why is bridge bad / why were you searching for issues": keeping it logged in on a headless server is an exercise in pain. It will latch onto whatever keyring it feels like then fail to integrate. Okay, capitulate and do it through the GUI. That works until the token expires. So you're expected to log in every few days for email backups? I only have so many weekend hours I am willing to waste troubleshooting with an llm before I say "fuck it, I'm going somewhere else".

[cowpig]

They are actively hostile to their customers. Author's experience is just the Proton experience. It was so when they were tiny, it is the same now

Ultimately you have to trust the company that offers you E2E encryption. I don't know why anyone would trust this company given the way they interact with people.

[amatecha]

Yeah, even when you turn on "enable local cache of emails", the search is still terrible.

What's pretty surprising to me is that for everything they say about privacy etc., getting Mail Plus gives you nothing better than a free user in terms of VPN options. That was the case in their previous set of plans, too - I've been paying for Proton for some years now, at a cost of like $100-150/yr, and only ever had the same level of VPN offering from them as a free user, which is pretty lame.

[mark_l_watson]

Absolutely you give up a lot of convenience of searching email content. After using it twice, I stopped using their Bridge and instead on my laptop set search to download and index locally. On mobile I live with just searching metadata, like subject lines.

The good news is that you use your own domain and there are a lot of good alternatives that support search of content for you where you can use your domain, like Apple Mail, FastMail, etc.

[Throwaway838333]

I agree this is bad UX, but you can send from throwaway emails by setting new contacts for said email in simplelogin, which as someone else comented, you get for free with proton, linked to your account. It handles your catchall.

[bl4ckneon]

You also get simplelogin for free, give that a try. Will probably fix your first issue

[chanux]

Does SimpleLogin only support ProtonMail addresses? This was my impression the last I tried and hence moved on instead of fighting it.

[Citizen8396]

No.

[kamyarg]

I have the exact same workflow as you.

icloud works great.

Was thinking of proton but reading your comment has changed my mind, good catch-all custom domain support is a must for me.

[ink_13]

What are you going to do instead? I am very close to moving from a 20-year-old GMail address to a custom domain and was planning to use Proton as the email host.

[matheusmoreira]

I was in your shoes a few years ago. Just move already. Don't worry about it. Get your own domain and point the MX records at literally any email service out there. If you don't like it you can just switch later. Just start using your own domain as soon as possible.

It really is life changing. When you have your own domain switching email services is risk free since your addresses don't change. You can literally try out all the email services out there.

For the record I'm a happy Proton customer. They seem to be the only ones who still care about PGP. I even interacted with them here on HN a few times.

[norgie]

I've been reasonably happy with Runbox. Decent features, pricing, and servers in Norway. The webmail isn't great, but I don't really use it. If you must have encryption, I think the only option is Tuta.

[nomadiccoder]

Fastmail is worth considering. Ive used it for several years and it just works.

[microtonal]

Downside is that their main servers are in the US, which may be problematic these days if you are from outside the US.

I just moved away from Fastmail after 10+ years for this reason.

[blibble]

as of this week, I've been going through the rigmarole of self-hosting my own email (again), for the same reason as you

any avoidable dependency on the US has become a red line

don't forget to tell fastmail that the reason you're leaving is because they host in the US!

(I also told them if they open a DC outside the reach of the US regime: I be happy to become a customer again)

[whiterock]

Out of curiosity: Where did you migrate to?

[microtonal]

Proton. There are some other good alternatives. But since the rest of the family was also using Fastmail, I needed a solution that was user-friendly enough. Besides that, Proton Drive also made it possible to finally move away from our Dropbox Family subscription.

[blazarquasar]

I’ve been very happy with mailbox.org. The proton mail bridge was a huge pain point for me.

[eigencoder]

Last year I started self-hosting and went with [MXRoute](https://mxroute.com/). It was pretty easy to switch and I really like their pricing model.

[Tenemo]

I' migrated to purelymail.com around 2 years ago and. Reaaally cheap, easy to set up and without any bloat whatsoever. The webpage might look sketchy at first, but don't judge a book by its cover :)

[chanux]

I use migadu.com for setting up email for my domains. I have very low usage and their pricing model is just perfect for me.

[kamyarg]

icloud mail support custom domains.

I am using them.

Sending an email from catch-all covered email is not a big issues also, create use, delete and it still works.

I am slowly transitioning to icloud from gmail, was thinking of proton but reading the above comment made me change my mind, good custom domain support is a must for me.

[stilldavid]

Seconding fastmail.

I have a catch-all and can reply from any address I please. If I reply from an email sent to [e-mail] it even auto populates the "from" address for me with "retailer", or I can choose to reply from one of my named accounts. It's really slick.

[EasyMark]

I think the big downside for a lot of people is that it's hosted in the USA where the government is definitely headed in an autocratic direction that is abusive of most countries who don't comply to rantings from an orange madman. Definitely a huge downside.

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

Love this too. I just wish they were more privacy-friendly.

[jedahan]

I do the same for years and had no idea that disabled emails are blocked, is that documented anywhere? Will have to switch if so.

[alex1138]

fastmail just automatically works with delta.chat and I presume similar tools

It requires an app password, but not a bridge you need to download

[lunarboy]

Agreed on both of these. Proton search is so dogshit.

Re: the custom domain catch all reply, this is a bit annoying but there js a workaround. I made a SendGrid account which allows me like 100 sends per month, and I can reply in Thunderbird via SendGrid as any email account. Annoying to boot up Thunderbird, and I haven't found a way to do this on my iPhone, but I don't need ti reply from a throwaway frequently so it's sufficient for now.