Proton

It's totally worth it, in my experience. I've been using ProtonVPN on all my devices for years now, which was the main service that got me on Proton. Every year that I stick with them, they give me 10 GB of extra storage space in Proton Drive.

I wasn't sold on their mail, until I learned I can create unlimited aliases for websites. So for creating an Amazon account, it might generate an email like "amazon-vagueness438@passmail.net", which will forward to my Proton inbox. Anytime I get an email sent to that address that's NOT from Amazon, I know they sold my info, and I can close the alias anytime to end all junk mail going through it.

I just retired from the US military a couple years ago, and it's been rather nice because our govt computers are so locked down, we weren't allowed to bring any electronic devices into our offices, for fear that someone might steal classified information. Also, our computers were locked down so you couldn't just install anything on them. You had to go through the IT guys to install things. That was my job in the military; I was the IT guy.

Now that I'm retired, I can actually use third party programs like Proton Pass to make complex passwords for everything. I couldn't use it in the military. We had to use unique, complicated passwords for every individual account, and we couldn't write them down. I'm super grateful for Proton Pass. It's my first password manager, so I can't compare it to others, like Bitwarden.

I'm not a huge fan of their calendar yet. I've been using Google and Microsoft Outlook's calendars for years now, and I like that I can make my calendar events different colors, so I can differentiate between types of events real quick. I just logged into Proton's calendar and was met with a pop-up stating that I can now use colors. So maybe I'll adjust to using it.

I'm trying to de-Google myself right now, and Proton Unlimited is giving me the options I need to remove myself completely from Google's stranglehold. So far, I'm proudly advocating it for all my friends and family, even if you just use the free account.

I use Proton VPN (lowest paid tier) to stream German television. Works great for me. I get the occasional stutter, but my Internet isn't the best. I also get that when viewing local content.

I feel like its pretty great. The additional VPN connections are nice and you can set it up on your router too.

SimpleLogin is the biggest benefit from the email options for sure. Unlimited aliases plus you can setup unique domains which then allow you to make email addresses up on the fly.

Drive now syncing with photos on smart phones is super nice. Also awesome to be able to share files from Drive to anyone. You can set passwords and/or time frames for the link access too.

I'm staying with Bitwarden + Aegis as it seems like too much of my data in one place using Pass for passwords and 2FA.

Calendar is cool, nice knowing it's setup with zero-knowledge encryption. You can also share events with folks that use any calendar.

With the Standard Notes news, I'm hoping this will result in having some of the bells and whistles that Standard Notes gives paying customers. But I haven't found anything regarding this so far.

All in all, it's worth the price for sure. All security focused with the ability to make it the backbone of your online privacy too.

I have the business plan, which is basically unlimited with more domains. Ask away if you have specific questions.

• I don't use the VPN often but it has been fine every time I used it
• The greatly increased Drive storage was a must for me
• I also needed extra domains
• The Pass browser extension is nice because it can generate email aliases directly from any webpage
• I'm not sure if the other plans have this, but I get SimpleLogin included for "free"

It works as advertised, I'd say. The Email service works fine, no issue to date.

The VPN has the same issues as others, meaning some sites block some servers entirely, and others force captcha after captcha at you. There also was the problem with missing portforwarding options in the app (at least on Linux), but that is fixed now. Overall it works fine, never had too much of a problem with it, at most had to switch servers if my connection got blocked from the site.

The calendar is a calendar, end of sentence.

Proton pass is a bit weird. They don't offer any desktop app, you can only use the website or the browser plugin. There is no benefit I could think of over bitwarden and I'd even recommend bitwarden more than proton for password management. But it does work without problems.

No idea about proton drive. Last time I used it you had to manually upload each item into the online safe. But from a quick look it seems like there is a desktop app now that offers automatic backups/uploads.

For me it's worth it since even the recent news articles show that they keep their privacy promises. But I also got the money to spare for it. You could get all functionalities for less money and to about the same level of privacy, but it takes more effort and time. It's for you to decide if the convenience is worth it.

Try out the free versions of the apps and decide whether you would pay for at least two of them.

Since I already use other alternatives like Bitwarden for many of Proton's services, I'm only using Proton Mail and I can't justify subscribing to Proton Unlimited until they release a Linux desktop client for Proton Drive.

I find it has been good, reliable and consistent. Apps are slow to release, but that is ok if that is whar they need to ensure it isn't a buggy mess. Just hoping they will implement online account integration for GNOME desktop at some point, then it would be full google replacement for me

it is, but don't use their VPN, it's vulnerable to tunnelvision

iVPN and Mullvad are the only two I'm aware of that are immune to tunnelvision

Gives you premium access to all of their services, pretty neat