A long-time Proton Mail user explains why they are leaving after having chosen the service for its promises of open source software, non-profit governance, end-to-end encryption, and a commitment to a better internet. The critique highlights that only client apps are public while server backends remain closed, undermining claims of full transparency and community-driven development. The touted non-profit structure is described as opaque: Proton AG is a Swiss for-profit operating under a Proton Foundation majority shareholder, which prevents independent financial scrutiny comparable to genuinely nonprofit projects. Marketing language around transparency and trust is called misleading.
Technical and product concerns compound the trust issues. End-to-end encryption is only automatic between Proton accounts; their “zero-access” and other explanatory pages are inconsistent and read like marketing copy. Standard email protocols (SMTP/IMAP/POP) send plaintext across systems unless users manage PGP/GPG keys themselves, so server-side encryption does not equal true E2EE. Proton’s growing product scope - Drive, Docs/Sheets, password manager, crypto wallet, conferencing and an LLM (Lumo) - is seen as diluting focus and introducing features the writer opposes, notably AI components. Taken together, opaque governance, overstated privacy claims, and product bloat prompted the decision to move away.
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