Proton Mail Reviews 

I am a free user and my experience with ProtonMail support has been frustrating mainly because of response times and lack of updates.

My accounts were suspended by the automated anti abuse system after I created accounts while migrating from Gmail for my game accounts. I contacted support immediately and, to their credit, the anti abuse team did reply and offered a resolution: they were willing to restore only one account. I accepted that offer and provided the account I wanted restored.

However, after that point, communication basically stopped. I waited about a week without any further reply or update on my ticket. Because of the silence, I became worried that my case was stuck or no longer being processed.

I understand that free users may not receive priority support, and I appreciate that support did offer some form of resolution. But long periods without updates, especially after a case seems close to completion, make the process stressful and unclear.

My main criticism is not the decision itself, but the lack of follow up and communication.

ProtonMail deserve to get rated low by everyone here, this is the last time i ever gonna use this service, so good bye.

I love their service, especially the integration with SimpleLogin, but something I HATE is that their email client for windows doesn't apply a dark mode for the email body.
I also hate that they focus on launching random services that nobody wants, instead of fixing/improving the existing ones.

can't attach images to emails. i have hyperfast internet and regardless of whether i use proton in my browser, on my phone or the mac app, simple images spend 8-10 minutes attaching to an email and then i get a notification saying request timed out.

staggeringly dreadful for an email service that i pay for. do not under any circumstances pay for protonmail. i complained about this last year and they still haven't fixed it. i will be cancelling my subscription and using gmail instead. atrocious value for money

I used to use Protonmail for three purposes: filter out nuisance emails to a separate inbox from my personal, mask my identity due to my personal email's domain, and as a backup in case I am to lose access to my personal. Protonmail has now chosen to fail all points.

Let's start with the crux of this problem: my account was terminated without warning. I had logged in less than a year ago to access an email sent to this inbox, I had no warnings sent to my backup in case, you know, I may have been having issues with the email? No, instead, I am not told of any of this, and I suddenly have account errors on various services.

Next, the customer service is poor, insanely poor. When reaching out, they do not have a time frame for when they respond. My own job is to be a customer support representative, and we respond to tickets with a quick acknowledgement and any details in minutes. Anything that takes longer, and we let the customer know. Proton has chosen the path of an automated response and no hours or days they will reply in. Utterly pathetic and a waste of time.

Now, I have to go fix every account that uses this backup. Never using this service for my new email if they dare decide that their incompetence is my fault. Unacceptable.

Lost my device and couldn't locate the password I used for the account so I did a password reset. now my old emails are encrypted and because the recovery methods are "use a prior device or remember your old password or upload a recovery key/file" i now cannot access my old emails. these are not regular person methods of recovery. if you're looking for user friendly, Proton ain't it.

Avoid this company like the plague, they completely ignore your UK Statutory rights, if you complain they never read the complaint just blindly state their company policy, even though it’s illegal. Currently disputing with my bank, hope they charge them an enormous chargeback fee. AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

Originally, I chose ProtonMail because of its FOSS web client, sieve support, the capability to contact support personnel, and that its UserVoice instance provided a way to vote on feature requests.

I intend to leave Proton Mail, because I see no way to acquire server-side IMAP credentials, for AOSP e-mail clients, which I require, to respond to mail on Proton's servers, via different providers. Bridge may provide this for desktop OSes, but that's useless 50 % of the time, because I'm not always at a laptop.

Although I don't utilise their other services, this is also true for Contacts and Calendar, which offer no CardDAV or CalDAV.

Additionally, their ZenDesk instance's web interface has been disabled, rendering accessing ticket information incredibly difficult without e-mail account access.

Pro:
- Mail is securely encrypted end-to-end.

- Incredible good customer service that replies to mail mostly within 24 hours. In my case, the replies are always clear and straight to the point.

Cons:
- Can only be used with Proton Mail. No import feature of other mail accounts.
Only emails from your other mail accounts can be imported, but not the accounts themselves.
So, users need to make a new Proton Mail account and inform all users of their current mail account of their new Proton Mail account.
If possible with your former mail accounts, you could automatically forward all email to your new Proton Mail account.
With internet accounts of companies, private data can be updated by the account holders themselves, but for others it depends on the people and companies themselves whether they change the new mail address with the old one in their database.
Hence, if people change to Proton Mail and automatically forwarding isn't possible, they still have to check their previous mail app on a daily basis for a long time because we don't know who still has our old mail address. What if someone wants to contact us after many years? We wouldn't receive their mail because we switched to Proton Mail.
If automatically forwarding is possible, we still have to keep the subscription with the previous email account and should never unsubscribe. Otherwise we would miss email.
Suppose people use Yahoo Mail or other paid accounts. They have to pay the subscription for many years to come if they want to receive emails sent to their previous mail account.
Of course, this doesn't work and doesn't make sense either. Why should we throw away our current default mail address?
This is asking for problems!
Even if Proton Mail is more secure than the former mail, it doesn't make sense to delete that account!

- The Proton Mail app only supports two subfolders of each folder. A third subfolder isn't possible.
Eg. Study (main folder) - name of institution (subfolder 1) - name of department (subfolder 2). That's it.
For sure, you want to list subfolders of 'name of department' with people's names and other information.
This is also asking for problems because it's normal to organize mail in subfolders, especially for companies.

- Secure mail sounds fine but is end-to-end encryption really important for mainstream users?
Cloud storage should be end-to-end encrypted, but email???
If we read the negative feedback it's clear that many people still don't understand the importance of 2FA and passkey security.
If people lose the key, there's no way to get into the account. It will be locked for always.
Proton has end-to-end encryption by default for its mail. But, I'm pretty sure that most people don't know the cons of end-to-end encryption. That's that they lose access if they lose the key!
End-to-end encryption of mail is only important for business users but not for mainstream users.
Currently, Microsoft is in the spotlight for closing accounts on request of the US government. This has nothing to do with end-to-end encryption but with government legislation.
So, it's much more important that users can be certain that their mail accounts won't be closed by the company.
Closing on request of certain governments is only applicable to certain business users.
In this regard, I see end-to-end encryption of mail accounts for mainstream users more of a marketing strategy than a real need.
The danger of losing the 2FA key or passkey is more important than end-to-end encryption.
I would advice to use email from a company which would't close your mail account if you haven't used it for a certain period and that doesn't has the danger of losing the access key.

To summarize:
Don't be too focused on end-to-end encryption of mail accounts unless you need it for your business and you understand the danger of losing the access key!
Concerning the Proton Mail app it's strange that such a well-known and reputable company has such a bad mail app.
The omissions of this mail app are not something nobody needs but default features that already existed 25 years ago with free mail accounts and free mail apps.

I have had an email with proton for 2 years which cost me a small fortune. Somehow my password was changed and I couldn’t log in to my account. After sending proton multiple emails with proof of my account they wanted me to send them my credit card details from an unsecured gmail account to which I refused so I now cannot access my account AT ALL ANYMORE!!! What a waste of money !!! I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS PROTON MAIL AT ALL

I have reason to believe that half $1 million has been stolen from my interactive brokers account. I’ve been locked out of Proton Mail which is an email. I had to align with interactive brokers because Google had locked me out of my Gmail. I believe that Google and Apple have then prevented me from accessing my Proton Mail and I believe that Proton Mail has not gone out of its way to help me. My proton. Apple ID is still secure but of course the Gmail which is the one tied to interactive brokers was let loose from my devices. It doesn’t appear under my Apple ID. Interactive brokers is exactly named because for mind they are interactive and that anyone can access your account that $500,000 of ungeared money better be there I received in total $1.6 million at the start of 2025 most of it’s been stolen now I’m a form of police officer for the New South Wales police registered number 30954 and also the Australian federal police AGS13413 in 2012. I took in a transgender 23 year-old who won the queen of the night the following year with Victoria Martin was and is if she’s not dead hearing impaired she won the queen of the night and was selling her garments after I allowed her to complete her sewing course in fashion I facilitated that by helping her out she just lost her father in a car accident. But it was my money hungry ex-wife who I left in 2010 after uncle was accused of a trip by murder and convicted. She stated ties to the mob. I think it might be true because of 2017. It triggered the deaths of my parents who both died in 2023 I had an apprehended violence order taken out of me simply because I had taken in a transgender person who was hearing impaired. No allegation was put to me. My father was a bail court magistrate and issued apprehend violence orders during the week for Western Sydney opportunities retirement 2007 Kevin Andrew Dover born 19th of March 1944. This triggered their deaths in 2023 trigger after trigger after trigger. My death is what they want now and my health is terrible. I need to get to a hospital, but I’m shunned by all of the society in Australia and my brother will he had a brain injury at 10 months under the corrupt NDIS and there are four or five Solicitors aligned against us a big Bank and a broken notice the dark arm.

Do not use THEY ERASE EVERYTHING without consent and without informing you. So I went to check on my mail, even though I had not gone on they can see regular mail coming through. But because I have not gone and physically opened it in the app. I go there today to find a receipt to a message stating due to inactivity we have erased everything. This has to be the worse email service I have ever came across. I DO NOT RECOMMEND.

1. I discovered that Proton wasn't trusted by the Review site I used. I was allocated a reward for having done a lot of online reviews. But it took 8 months to get it paid. The payments were cancelled 7 times. When I asked about this the review site said that their integrity checking wasn't happy with claims coming from Proton email accounts. When I claimed through a different email provider the reward was paid in a couple of weeks.
2. I use Proton Free at the moment. I started to get messages that my mail box was full. So I deleted various things. I got the total down to an acceptable limit, so I thought. But overnight my total jumped to a level higher than it was before. I contacted the Proton help people and they suggested other places to look for things to delete. I did as they suggested. The total has now dropped to a very low level. But I have now lost data which I would have preferred to keep. I feel the false high memory signal was meant to prompt me to sign up for a paying account. I am very disappointed.
3. I contacted their help people and they said my messages weren't completely lost because they had a mechanism to retrieve them. They agreed to do so and later emailed that they had done so. They didn't retrieve them so I guess that's 200M gone.
Update
Just got response on here to provide ticket number publicly. I don't think that's an appropriate suggestion.

Update May 15, 2026

See what these scammers do? Do they even read people's reviews?

They ask for a support ticket! When I explicitly said that after we wrote to their support, we received no confirmation and no ticket at all!

To Proton: you are scammers, you took over our business email, and we will sue the hell out of you. You will pay a lot for what you did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Proton.me is a fraud. There is no doubt about it.

We had a professional-sounding email address for secure communication with high-profile clients globally. We are a European company. Then, suddenly, one day, we lost access to our email.

We submitted a complaint through Proton’s contact form, but received no confirmation and no support ticket.

We then contacted Proton directly at their abuse email address and received a standard reply about a supposed policy violation. We asked them to clarify what happened and why our access had been blocked, but they gave us no further explanation.

We have not violated Proton’s policies in any way. Our email was used strictly for business communication.

This was a fraudulent email takeover by Proton in order to access our communications.

Proton is a scam. Do not trust them, and under no circumstances should you use their services for serious business.

I have screenshots of:

- the failed email login attempt
- the request submitted to Proton through their contact form
- the email sent directly to their email address
- their standard reply
- our second letter to them
- the absence of any further response from Proton

I've been using Proton for a few years now, and it's been nice and stable. I'm primarily using Mail Plus for the custom domains it offers.

2 weeks ago I paid once again for my $4.99 subscription on Google Play. And? I didn't receive any subscription in app. My account then proceeded to get converted to a free account.

So I paid, but Proton's backend didn't pick up my purchase.

I contacted support but they took 2 days to reply

As a consequence:

I've lost a client that I was communicating with from my business email.

After support refunded me, I paid for Mail Plus on the web version from my laptop. Little did I know that I would need to re-setup ALL of the DNS records for my custom domain.

So even after I managed to pay, my emails with custom domain were returning 500s to email senders

This caused me to get debounced by my payment gateway provider and now I'm trying to convince them to unblock my email because there was an error. Which is now slowing down my business because I dont know if they will unblock my email or not and I cannot proceed without a payment gateway.

I did re-setup my DNS from scratch but it's safe to say this is my last month as a paid user. Going to be switching to EVIL google because they, at least, can properly handle payments.

I am a legacy Proton Business customer with a paid two-year subscription and a grandfathered lifetime discount. When Proton launched Workspace Standard, Business Suite customers were migrated automatically at no cost. Legacy Business customers like me were not — despite having functionally identical product access. The only difference between the two plans was price. The customers who paid less got treated worse.
I made eight formal, documented escalation requests over several weeks asking to be routed to someone with authority to address a business-level policy question. Every request was absorbed by the support tier and never executed. I explicitly requested escalation to the Proton Foundation and executive leadership no fewer than eight times. Every request was acknowledged and ignored.
I located Proton's enterprise email address and sent a detailed inquiry describing my professional background and a potential 50-seat Workspace deployment worth between $7,794 and $11,994 per year. I gave their enterprise team six full business days to respond.
They said nothing.
The financial difference that triggered this entire situation was approximately $6 per year — $11 over the remaining 22 months of my paid subscription. Proton chose to ignore a potential $11,994 annual contract rather than bridge an $11 gap for a loyal legacy customer.
Proton's own marketing states they "put people ahead of profits" and have "never raised prices on existing customers." Their treatment of legacy Business customers during the Workspace migration contradicts both claims.
The support agents — Jeff, Joanne, and team lead Marija — acted in good faith within their authority. The failure is structural. Proton has no functional path from a legacy customer to anyone with commercial authority. If you are considering Proton for business use, go in with your eyes open.
********
Update — May 14, 2026
Proton responded to this review with: "As we have escalated your request to the Enterprise team as per your request..."
For context: enterprise@protonmail[dot]com went silent for six full business days. What produced a response was not my request — it was a Reddit thread with 4,700 views. The escalation wasn't granted. It was forced.
That response came through the same Zendesk support tier, referencing a CC to Proton's Head of Inbound Sales — a position that is currently vacant. Proton is actively recruiting to fill it.
No one with commercial authority has made contact. The rating stands.

I signed up for an email address. I last logged in about a week ago. I tried to log in today and I got an error message that my account was locked for suspicious activity. Seeing that I haven’t sent an email from it yet, and I’m not doing anything on their list of things that could cause it, I’m really annoyed. I was going to use it as my new go-to email but not now. I put in a “help” ticket to “explain why I think the account was locked in error” and it’s beyond useless. If their AI bots locked my account for no reason I can’t see them unlocking it. Seriously go elsewhere for email. I’m glad I didn’t lose anything important.

I went to login to my email account as per usual to check my mail but was prevented from doing so on this occasion. My email accounts were ALL being hijacked by google despite Proton's media reputation for being THE number one PRIVACY provider. In order to access my emails my only option was to sign in to my google account via google mail!!! by downloading Proton's App! What's the flippin point of so called enhanced encryption if it's totally reliant on google's mandatory gmail sign in anti privacy monitoring apparatus that's incongruous with privacy?!!! My Proton email accounts should have NOTHING to do with google as a conduit! I was unable to access my emails for several days until I could figure out a way to bypass the compromise which I did NOT appreciate!!! Proton is out of order for doing this!!! What the hell! This is so disconcerting.

Proton has no online customer service and no phone customer service. If you run into an issue, you have to send them an email. In 3-4 days they will respond with an email. If that doesn't solve your problem, start all over again.
They have worst customer service and user experience. Avoid.

Update, May 7, 2026

No, I will not share my ticket number publicly. You can find it in your system by the number of my email accounts you blocked: three.

I contacted your support, but I got no answers. You haven’t explained why, after receiving a complaint against one of my email accounts, you also blocked all the others. There was NO VIOLATION of your policy. You simply blocked my email accounts without any reason or proof.

I have screenshots, and I have the ticket number if I need to escalate this. But yes, you blocked my three email accounts without reason. That’s why I will suggest everywhere that people NOT use your services, ever.

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Be extremely careful before trusting Proton Mail with anything important.

I know it may not be 100% accurate to call Proton Mail a scam, but after what happened to me, it feels painfully close.

One day, they simply blocked several of my accounts. No clear explanation. No warning. Nothing. Just gone.

I lost all my correspondence across multiple Proton accounts in a single day.

When I contacted them, they mentioned some complaint against one of my email addresses. But that raises even more questions. Can someone just complain about a Proton email and have it blocked? And even if that were true, why were my other accounts blocked too?

I asked, but I received no real answer.

So here is my warning: Proton Mail may be fine as a throwaway email service, but I would never trust it with anything serious: personal history, business, or anything else you cannot afford to lose. If you don’t want to lose your emails — don’t use Proton Mail. Never. Ever.

If you still want to use it — don’t. They will block you randomly at some point.

Because I lost years of messages in one day.

No explanation. No accountability.

Just gone.

Yeah, and I have a strong suspicion that they have access to your email content.

Locked out of the account without any valid explanation ; unable to recover the account for several days ; poor customer support ; never using it again ; ticket number 4717059