Proton Mail Reviews 

I heard lots of good stuff about Proton, but I'm already fed up with the daily spam from Proton urging you to update to the relatively expensive paid version.

If you have the free version, there are lots of limitations; for example, you cannot download mails to your usual mail programme.

So you have to use Proton's app, but if you keep notifications on, you will receive notifications every time Proton spams you with promotional mails. There's no way to unsubscribe from the spam.

However, without notifications, I'll miss important mails from others.

I'm aware that Proton needs to earn to maintain and develop the system. But then be frank from the beginning and inform potential new users that your main aim is to have users pay for a relatively expensive version.

Or, offer a cheaper paid version rather than offer an annoying free version.

I'll probably delete my subscription again if the spam continues.

Absolute Rubbish, no real customer service and its not free. They even have a special auto reply entitled
Code for pissed off customers, but that's not working either. I only gave 1 star for being so unprofessional.

Update (23 December 2025):

2 refunds were made. One via PayPal and I’ve got notification whilst the 2nd one to my other credit card account went in without alert and only show it went when I checked today. I can confirm that the refund issue is now fully resolved but the overall experience in getting VPN Plus and getting a refund has been very disappointing.

"”””””””””"””””””””””””””””””””

Update (22 December 2025)
Proton support has claimed that my refund has been completed — however, they only refunded me £0.31 via PayPal, despite the fact that my Proton account had £30.62 in available credit as shown in my dashboard (I have a screenshot as proof).

This is incredibly misleading, especially as they responded to my Trustpilot review saying my payment was refunded — when in reality, it was only 1% of the amount. I’ve raised this again with their support team but still no resolution.

Very disappointed in how they handle support and billing. Will update again if this is resolved fairly.

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Original Review

I’ve been a paying customer of Proton Mail (Mail Plus) and recently tried to add Proton VPN Plus to my account. The upgrade process was confusing and misleading — I selected what appeared to be an option to add VPN Plus, but instead it simply extended my Mail Plus subscription, which I had already renewed.

Proton's support has been extremely rigid. Despite acknowledging that combining "Plus" plans isn't supported, they still allowed me to go through a purchase flow that offered no clear warning. Then they refused to correct the mistake, claiming subscription changes are "irreversible," even though their user interface caused the issue.

I was offered a strange workaround that doesn't even match the current interface — no “Explore Other Proton Plans” button exists where they said it would be. The system is clearly not user-friendly, and support agents are unable or unwilling to fix simple billing issues.

I expected more from a company that promotes transparency and privacy. This whole experience feels like the opposite of user-first design.

I’m still waiting for a proper resolution (case 4258864). Until then, I cannot recommend Proton to anyone looking for flexible, transparent services. Disappointing overall.

Touch wood, I haven’t had any bad experiences with Proton Mail or any other Proton service, it’s all been genuinely very good. Maybe i’m lucky or as this is all based around privacy maybe only people with complaints post? i say that because my experience is completely at odds with other posters. I think it’s an excellent set of services at a fair price.

Excellent ease of setup and flexible technology. One of the best in the jndustry and ready to become the leader.

Does not use reduces to control and abuse people like other platforms

They don't allow the deletion of sent items therefore filling your mail to the hilt and having to BUY their plan. Screw Proton mail!

If I could possibly give protonmail a zero star, yes I will. My email account with them which I used for my foreign exchange business got suspended since around 2022 and ever since I have sent couple of messages to them trying to know why my account got suspended and they said for suspicious activity which they could not give a concrete reason or evidence for. I never used my email or their service for anything criminal for them to suspend my email account since 2022 till date. I have important files in that account and have suffered loses tuning to over $10,000 because I am unable to have access to my proton email. This shows how unreliable their service is. Please do not rely on their email service for things important to you or rather you avoid them completely if you do not want to suffer the loses I have been through. I requested that they grant me a 24 hour access to my email even if they no longer want me to use their service anymore but they were unable to provide any solution to the issue. Please beware before you are the next victim and lose your digital property and unable to recover. PLEASE AVOID BY ALL MEANS POSSIBLE most especially if you use their email to sign up for any financial service, A WORD IS ENOUGH FOR THE WISE. DON'T SAY YOU WERE NEVER WARNED, YOU WILL DEFINITELY GET BURNED BY PROTONMAIL EMAIL SERVICE AND YOU COULD LOSE EVERY IMPORTANT DATA YOU HAVE TIED TO THEIR EMAIL SERVICE.

Here is the reference number for the complaints I lodged with protonmail about access to my email being restricted since over 2 years 4258529. People use your email service to register with things important to them such as with financial institutions. What do you think happens when they no longer have access to their email? You say that my email was restricted due to suspicious activity. I rarely ever used the email to send emails to anyone. All I did was use it to store more important data. I am willing to come in person to wherever your company is if need be or take this to court. Do you realize how much damage and loss you have put me through. I give you the right to post what suspicious activity you said I used the email for here and let the whole world see if truly I used the email for anything suspicious or criminal. Do you realize how much damage and loss you have put me through? I bet you don't.

Proton cancelled several functions without explanation. Support doesn't seem able to remedy complaints.
In particular, Proton Pass is grossly non-functioning and has had several sabotage-type bugs presumably made by disgruntled employees, and which makes that part of the Proton product unusable, plus lowers the confidence in Proton products. Would anyone use Proton for cryptocurrency after experiencing these bugs? I think not.

Otherwise, ProtonMail seems to function at the 4 of 5 star level.

*As it appears, the current intentionally made "bug" is due to the Proton subsidy, simplelogin, which has a negative economy and an obsolete product. Simplelogin is given freely to Proton customers, but totally disregards Proton's contracts and allegedly privacy clauses in order to try to make and defraud its existing customer base, and "annexed" Proton customers into buying its product twice or more by claiming that 2 forward mail addresses constitute unspecified bulk abusive behavior.

Proton should get rid of SimpleLogin as its business practices are clearly criminal, and its stated reason for leaving the USA for Switzerland is legal prosecution.

The support is incredibly slow or does not respond at all. I had to cancel my subscription within the 30day period because they cannot change the original name you registered with. First response it cannot be done. Then I wanted to cancel to then register with another name. It took 11 days to get it done!
This is my first experience with proton and not a good one. If they fix the support, they could be amazing.

I have suffered from a scammer using the Proton Mail platform to conduct ID theft against me. They have setup multiple online financial products using a Proton Mail address. As Proton cannot view a users mail they have not taken any action. Before this the fraudster was using the Microsoft platform and to the credit of Microsoft they closed down the account very quickly. Proton Mail seem happy for their platform to be used for Identity theft which is very worrying. The inaction is extremely worrying.

Update: Have reached out to the Abuse email address with a Police report and still it is mentioned "there is not enough evidence" to close the account down.

The product is honestly pretty great. The problem is the support. Customer service is very slack. I haven't run into this with a tech company maybe ever. It's very frustrating and feels very disrespectful.

We decided to try Proton Mail for our organization after reading many positive reviews and evaluating the service for several months. Unfortunately, our experience has been extremely disappointing.

After purchasing a full year of Proton Business licenses upfront, we immediately encountered multiple issues during onboarding — including missing features that were advertised as included, errors in the admin panel, and functionality that simply did not work as expected.

However, the most concerning part has been the complete lack of support. We submitted support tickets and have not received any response. Even after sending a formal refund request, we still have not received a single reply or acknowledgment from Proton. For a paid business service, this level of silence is unacceptable.

Proton might be fine for casual personal use, but based on our experience, it is not ready for organizations that require stability, consistent support, and features that work as advertised.

We cannot recommend Proton Business at this time.

UPDATE - Please read Protons pathetic response and then see the original title. Despite my complaint clearly stating it concerned 1 single email, they are still referring to "spamming" and "bulk signups". So I told the truth and Proton pathetically and blatantly lied, they didn't even go to the effort to have it make basic sense. This is the lack of concern and respect it truly holds for users.

Think about that before you hand over your money and then if you want to anyway, look at how many poor experiences there are trying and failing to get a refund.
Regardless, let this be a lesson to all, Proton cannot be trusted and they will not learn, change or improve until people stop giving them their money.
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Proton states a single, 1 off email sent, to a government agency, that they were expecting, is the same as "bulk emails", "Bulk sign ups", "spamming", "third party service registers" & "subscription emails".
Does that make sense to you? Because it doesn't to me.

Among other things, Proton said "Our system flagged an unusual increase in third-party service registration emails"
The fact - I sent one single solitary email not just one to a gov' agency, simply 1 in full total. Note also that my email had absolutely zero to do with any "third-party service" and or "registration".

At no point has Proton simply accepted they were wrong and acknowledged what they actually did.
The customer service response was repeatedly pitiful and my reasonable questions asked to Proton as a result have been ignored.
Shame on Proton but also particularly on "Shaw" & "Vince", 2 key Proton staff responsible.

Management either don't care or my escalation attempts were blocked by culpable staff.

Proton have refused to even explain clearly and properly how anyone including myself is actually supposed to avoid this issue in the future or how it is I was somehow meant to know it might happen prior to it occurring.

Are customers really asking too much to expect when Proton gets it wrong that they simply admit, accept and apologise. Look to improve their shortcomings rather then illogically deny reality.

Does this sound like an honourable company you can trust?
If it happened to you, would you trust them with your private information based only on them stating you should.

A company that vehemently refuses to simply admit wrong and apologise is not one I'm sure I'd want to be relying on, based only on their PR regarding privacy values.
When you need them most you may get a rude shock and find yourself all alone.

The tickets numbers relevant are (3686466), (3824143) & (3850704)

Protonmail did not apply my full $ 191 payment towards a 24 month cycle. Instead they applied a 12 month cycle and now want more money because the rates are higher for the one year cycle. After numerous emails, staff are rigid and lack common sense, only repeating same communications. They do not listen to reason and ignore all the previous communications to verify all the receipts and claims.
i have sent a copy the Bank Transfer amount of $ 191 for the two year cycle and they do not care. They will not correct it.
Request with Maja to go to higher authority did not happen and Request for Support were ignored.
They Auto-generated a new invoice and Unsubscribing was another process. They have swallowed any credits i had left over. Support does not pay any attention to the simplest of requests or communications and just keep repeating previous responses. Have downgraded to the free version.

1 week after I paid to upgrade my Free Proton Account, by clicking on the Black Friday advert sent to my Free Proton Account and communicating with my Free Proton Account. My Free Proton Account has not been upgraded, I been attempting to resolve this with their appalling Customer Service and either get no response, or bizzare response such as this, sent to my Free Proton Account
"Hi, Thank you for your email. I checked and can see that you have upgraded the following account - r*********@gmail.com.
Hope that clarifies.
Kind regards,
Ibro
Customer Support"

Very frustrating I obviously didn't pay to upgrade a GMail Account!!The Gmail account was my backup email address. I still can't access the upgrade that I paid for last week, I have asked Proton for a refund.

How hard can it be? Very poor Customer Service, Proton very happy to take your money but not supplying the product.

zero responses to my ticket and support. buyer beware tkt#4222757. will be going through my bank to get a refund.

Purchased a year of service through the Black Friday offer. My order ID is 14909586. Initially I was kind of skeptical about Proton and where they stood on the side of a safer internet but seeing now that they advertise this on their website I'm happy to be a customer. In all honesty I've been through a lot in life and have seen a lot of corporations more so recently side with abusers including game companies. I'm 100% for Proton if they believe in creating a safer internet free from abuse.

I picked ProtonMail because I thought it was more reliable and secure than other providers. It is probably more secure indeed. But I ended up losing all of my emails and passwords, which I cannot retrieve. And customer support has been extremely slow to answer, and then completely unable to help. It has been a very frustrating experience. I would advise you to stay away from Proton.

I agree with other reviews about the lack of support with Protonmail. You would expect a better service from a paid for service. I just expected a reply at the least. If they provide assistance I will then be confident to pay. My friend is interested in the outcome as he was interested in Proton Mail himself. I told him it has been a disappointing experience for me. Good communication is an important consideration.

I have been a Proton user for some time and every time I try and integrate my outlook account with Proton Mail despite downloading the bridge and other redundant items
I have ended up with 24K of messages in my inbox basically all my e mail is loaded into my inbox
I have contacted Proton help and this is about as useful as a chocolate tea pot
you get one e mail a day with basic rubbish of no use to the average user let alone a tec savvy user
so all in all it can not be relied on as an e mail client
So finally they ask me to contact them to late I have expunged the lot
I say again sad to say it is not a reliable e mail client the reviews say it all