ProtonMail is the Privacy-Focused Gmail Alternative You’ve Been Looking For

by Matt Hannon
Arts and Technology Editor
ProtonMail Link

Do you like Gmail but hate giving your private data to Google all the time? ProtonMail might be what you’re looking for. There are dozens of places online to easily get a free email address, but very few of them make keeping your messages safe their primary focus. ProtonMail is as easy to use as Gmail, but all of the messages that you send over the Internet are “end-to-end encrypted.” That means that only the computer (or phone) you send them from and the computer that receives your message can actually see what you wrote at all. Everything in between — even Proton, the company itself — has no way do decode and read your message. It will just see garbled letters and numbers.

Online privacy is still becoming more of a concern every day, mainly because many companies have programs that sift through your messages looking for little bits of data that they can sell to advertisers. Getting “hacked” is always a concern as well, but in reality that actually doesn’t happen too often. The thing that happens constantly is a company using your data in ways that you don’t really want them to — selling it to advertisers so you get spam and “targeted ads” that you’d rather not be getting. ProtonMail’s encryption and zero-ad policies ensure that you are not only more safe from hackers, but also more safe from companies that are just out to make a quick buck off of you.

How does it feel to use ProtonMail instead of Gmail? Not much different actually. It looks and feels very similar to all the other email programs out there — it just feels cleaner and a bit more minimal. There are no ads, and that feels awesome. It’s just as easy to compose emails, add multiple recipients, CC and BCC people, save drafts, and more.

What’s the catch? There are two actually, but they’re small.

The first is that, in order for your messages to be truly private, both you *and* the person you are sending your email to need to use ProtonMail or another service that supports the encryption. If they don’t, you can either send them the email anyway (but it won’t be encrypted once it gets to their email program), or you can send them a special link that they will need to use in order view the encrypted message.

The second catch is that the free version has a bit more limited storage space than in some other email programs — though it’s still probably plenty for most people. To get more storage and some extra features you’re going to have to pay a few bucks a month. Why? So that ProtonMail can exist without having to sell your data to advertisers. That’s why services like Gmail are free to you — Google funds the project by selling your data. For many people, a few bucks per month is a great price to eliminate annoying ads from your life and make sure all your data is safer.

ProtonMail’s free plan is for people who don’t need a lot of space to store emails, and they give you 500 megabytes for an email address that ends in @protonmail.com or @pm.me. For $5/mo you get 5,000 megabytes (5GB) of space instead, up to 5 email addresses, the ability to auto-respond to emails, and more. They also have privacy-focused Calendar, Contacts, and Storage apps included. A VPN service is available for an additional charge as well.

If you’re tired of your current email provider selling your data and are interested in trying something new, you can sign up for a free ProtonMail account here to give it a try.