ProtonMail, Calendar and Drive - A privacy focused alternative to Google?

#sponsored #ProtonMail #Privacy

This video is sponsored by ProtonMail.

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00:00 Intro
00:45 What is ProtonMail
02:07 Webmail vs Desktop Client
03:22 Webmail
05:51 Contacts
06:22 Calendar
07:44 Drive
08:17 Parting Thoughts

As you might have guessed, it's an email service, and an encrypted one at that. The company and its servers are located in Switzerland, their code is open source, they don't display any ads in your webmail, and they use end to end encryption.

ProtonMail is free to use, but your free account will limit you to 500Mb of storage and 150 emails per day, which might not be enough for some of you.
Their paid tier is 4€ per month, and that will net you 5 GB of storage, up to 1000 messages per day, labels and folders to sort your emails, setting up custom filters, the use of your own email domain name, and up to 5 email aliases.

Being an encrypted service, ProtonMail is better used in a webmail: you can't just type your credentials into any desktop email client, because these don't know how to encrypt or decrypt your emails.

You can still add your ProtonMail account to other clients on Linux, mac os, or windows, through the ProtonMail bridge. It's a simple app you can install on any OS, that will give you the credentials you need to enter in any client that support SMTP and IMAP. I tested it with Kmail, and it works perfectly fine, even though they only advertise support for Thunderbird on Linux.

The webmail is pretty simple to use, it doesn't try to revolutionize the way you handle email. You get your sidebar with folders on the left, your email list in the middle, and your message pane on the right. You can change this layout in the settings if you want, though, getting rid of the message panel, choosing to display more emails with a denser layout, and choosing between a small compose window, Gmail style, or a full screen composer.

You can select between 6 different themes. You can enable 2 factor authentication on your account.

In terms of more company oriented-features, ProtonMail supports email signatures, including pasting HTML signatures if you want to do that, or setting up an auto reply, if you're out of office.

ProtonMail also has an import assistant to get all your emails from Gmail, Yahoo mail, or another provider. I tried it with my own email address that's hosted by my domain name provider, and it worked beautifully.

ProtonMail also gives you access to Contacts, so you can get this nice auto-fill when writing an email. It will automatically create contacts from people you've sent emails to.

You can also create contact groups, and use them to send email to all the addresses in that group.

You can also batch import your contacts with a .csv file or through vcard. Contacts are encrypted as well, and can be exported, after they've been decrypted.

ProtonMail also has a calendar, accessible to all ProtonMail users. It can import events from ICS files, and you can create multiple calendars as you like.

They can also be shared outside of Proton, with 2 settings: limited view, or full view.

The calendar itself is pretty simple: drag across a time period to create an event, and fill in the details, including start and end date and time, name, location, the calendar you want to attach it to, and a description. You can mark events as taking the whole day, and it supports recurring events, if you click on the "More options" button, which will also let you add participants, and set reminders.

It's got a day, week and month view, and there's the nice touch of being able to see your calendar with another time zone.

## Drive

Now, for the paid users, there is also Proton Drive, which is a file storage service. It's still in beta, so I won't review it here fully, but let's just look at the features it already has.

It shares your storage space with the email account, and you can just drag and drop files to upload them. It's also fully end to end encrypted, and you can send fully encrypted links for any file you like.

[eliasdetrois]

I’ve been a ProtonMail user for almost two years now. As a student I stuck with the free plan and it’s been a great experience. Loads of improvements have implemented with each update, app and web version look nice and are very functional, storage space in free tier has been upgraded… very nice to use and extra peace of mind

[meowcula]

You're lucky you can wear white tops. Within seconds of me wearing one, I've spilled my tea on it.

[uiopuiop]

didn't protonmail have some kind of conflict of interest recently?

[IGqy]

Hey Nick, thanks for another good video. I use proton myself, also after this controversy with them handing in the data to the government as they were asked to do.
I think that there is a possibility that this issue has blown a bit out of proportion. Government regulation is much more accepted and integrated in europe than some other parts of the world, but so is the protection of the individual's rights. There are different mechanisms in Europe to protect an individual from government misconduct than there is in some other places (although some secrets services have more leeway than they should have).
I personally think don't think it was too much of an issue with them handing over the data - moreso i think it was an issue with the government asking for it as I understand it was regarding students wanting to protest (as I understand, it was a peaceful protest, yes?).
I think it could be a good idea to cover this issue in its own video, as it's interesting how much focus is on proton and not the government.
I have read through the conditions of using protonmail - i don't think anybody who has could be outraged by this situation.
As always, thank you for a good video.

[dafnelately]

I'm not in the same camp with the “but they gave information to the government” folk as any VPS they're using to host their private email instances would have to do the same, but I do feel like this video is lacking in criticism towards ProtonMail. Their development speed is horrible (Calendar was lacking for years) and their Tor implementation leaves a lot to be desired. On the other hand, it would have been nice to see an explanation about the caveat of their “encryption”, when it does or doesn't work, and how it's possible to do that manually for contacts outside ProtonMail. Also as others have said, you forgot a censor 😛

[timmerk]

Making this video must have been hard. I know contracts about sponsorships are often made quite a while before the video is released, so there was no way Nick could know about the controversy when they started to plan this video. I mean, I think ProtonMail is still an option if you don't view it as a magic silver bullet, but the timing of this video was a little bit unfortunate.

[PiiskaJesusFreak]

Have you compared Protonmail with Tutanota? If I recall correctly, the latter also encrypts the metadata, unlike Protonmail

[cakemnstr]

I've been using it for a while. The web versions are all pretty nice. I'd like a quicker way to import calendar events (currently you need to go into the settings) and I wish the mail client would remember the collapse status of folder in browser session storage
The mobile apps (I'm using android) aren't quite up to snuff. The mail app is kinda old looking and doesn't support conversation view, doesn't sync contacts to the OS and doesn't update notifications if you read emails on the web.
The calendar app looks nice but also lacks OS integration: no option to sync to OS calendar and it can only open .ics files that you got in your Protonmail account, not something downloaded elsewhere (the Google Calendar app can do that so it's possible).
They know about those deficiencies though so they'll hopefully be fixed soon. The webclient got a pretty major overhaul recently so they're definitely working actively on improvements.

[KuruGDI]

Linux user: Privacy is very important for me and the very reason why I switched to Linux!
The same Linux user: .*logs into google account*

[omnyabunga]

If you intent to blur out your mails, please check your video again. Your mails clearly shown on the video for seconds.

[bludragonproject]

Love Protonmail the whole system is awesome

[hootiebubbabuddhabelly]

I'm happy to pay for private webmail service. Which actually surprises me. I don't need much - and don't need offline email or anything "super-secret-squirrel" since I retired - I just don't want to feed the vermin. Plus it's nice to be able to encrypt and send a link outside protonmail so that someone outside can read and reply to sensitive information within the encrypted protonmail environment. I've only used it twice in 3 years but it sure is handy to have when you need it! You just want to remember to set an appropriate expiry date.

[MrChickenpoulet]

ive been using it for 2 years (1 year with the pro version). it's working well, I like the interface, unfortunately the mobile one does not handle dark mode (it seems)
dont know if it's worth paying it

[jaxxarmstrong]

Bold move to make an ad for a publically questioned company/services.

[zackwilloughby]

Considering they just gave info to the Swiss government so are they really private

[little_forest]

Since my work group is using a calendar via a google account, out of lack of free/cheap alternatives, I am most interested in the calendar feature, but I did not quite get what you said there in the end... "can" or "can't" you implement the protonMail calendar into a desktop app like thunderbird?

[MyReviews_karkan]

If I understand correctly, privacy/encryption is only achieved if both parties have protonmail. How is the encryption going to work if I send an email from my protonmail to someone who uses regular Gmail?

[altrogeruvah]

I'd also really love a video on Tutanota please!

[Michael]

Hi. I have a question. Does proton mail have a feature where I can transfer all my contacts from Hotmail over to Protonmail, or do I have to do it all manually? Thanks!

[arcbarkzap]

Proton Drive needs Nextcloud integration.