Proton will increase the prices of premium plans for new subscribers of ProtonMail and VPN
Proton AG has announced that it is making some changes to its services. The company published an article about it a few days ago, but has since replaced it with a different version.
I compared both articles to gather the important information from them.
What are the upcoming changes to ProtonMail?
Proton wants to update its services with a uniform design to represent its brand. This "visual identity" will include new logos and colors by which users will recognize Proton's services. The unified service will be accessible from the Proton.me domain. The company is shifting to it to highlight the fact that it offers more than just mail services, it has ProtonDrive, Calendar, VPN, etc. It's quite similar to what Google does with its suite of web apps.
While your ProtonMail address will remain the same, any official communication including newsletters, notifications, password reset messages that you receive from the company will use the @proton.me domain instead of @protonmail.com. So don't be alarmed thinking you got a mail from a user who is impersonating the brand. Mails from Proton are always starred to indicate it is sent by the company.
The original article indicated that Proton will redirect users who access Protonmail.com, mail.protonmail.com, calendar.protonmail.com, etc., to their respective Proton.me domains. This will only affect new user sessions, i.e., users who are already logged in to their accounts will remain on the .com domain. ProtonVPN will also remain at protonvpn.com for now, but it too will be updated in the future. The unified service will allow users to add events in your mails to your calendar, and files that you have stored in Proton Drive can be sent as attachments simply by linking to them.
And now, for the important changes regarding the Premium subscription plans.
Upcoming changes to Proton Plans
After listening to feedback from users, Proton says that it will not change the prices of the plans for existing subscribers. It is worth mentioning that the original announcement caused a bit of confusion, as it did not mention whether this price hike would affect renewals, but the updated post has confirmed that existing subscribers can renew their plan at the current prices. This basically confirms that new users will have to pay a higher fee than the current rates.
The original article also mentioned that Proton users who subscribe to ProtonMail and ProtonVPN will be automatically updated to a new bundle that also includes Proton Drive and Proton Calendar, and that this upgrade will be free of charge. But that statement has been removed in the new article, it now reads "all plans will be upgraded to provide more storage and features for our existing subscribers". This probably includes Drive and Calendar.
Here are the current prices of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN for reference.
I didn't save a screenshot of the original announcement or the page itself to web archive, but my RSS reader saved an offline copy of the contents. I used the text from it to upload the text to a privacy-friendly paste bin site. You can read it, and compare it with the current post on Proton's site. It's important because the new article seems to lack some information.
Proton intends to roll out the updates to its services this week, but has not revealed its new premium plan prices yet.
What's your take on this? Will you lock in to the current prices by subscribing to a plan now?
I doubt I will change anything. I have a free email account, which is fine for me as a single individual with simple needs. I have a paid (annual) VPN plan, which is also fine for me should certain governments wish to block access to things.
That are about five times too expensive for email.
+1
Ok, this has trouble written all over it. They will 100% guaranteed cripple the free version somehow too. Gonna delete my proton account now, haven’t really found it useful in any way so no biggie. Greed.. GREED everywhere.
I have setup a free VPN account, but could not log in. I set another account but this one also would not let be log in to may account.
Setting up these accounts showed I had an account setup.
Choosing all motorcycles, choosing all trains to log in only flashes back to the choosing the ver. page. Never can log in!
Proton can do any thing they wish to, I have given up trying to log in to Proton free VPN account.
I got a subscription in black Friday. Prices were somewhat reasonable, but increasing the already expensive default price is not a good idea IMO.
No change for me as I will continue with the Plus plan email account that I have had since 2018 (switched from Gmail to get away from Five Eyes surveillance). I’ve been happy with the service and had no problems using Proton Bridge with Outlook and the Android app. So it’s been well worth the cost ($4 a month with annual billing). My only wish is they finally rollout the re-designed Android app that they have been working on for a while so I can take advantage of dark mode. It is the only app left on my smartphone yet that does not support dark mode (which I’ve found to be very helpful for aging eyes).
Might as well buy your own host with a cpanel.
Saw that coming. And the service still won’t be trustworthy at a higher price.
I have used proton mail for a few years. I have found it to be a easy to use and reliable email. As of this moment there are two versions. old and new. I have tried and tried to get things to work in the new version without success. My address book does not work, font sizes keep changing, other little things. the old version is great…well done and everything works. the new version interface looks like it was made by a kid….silly stuff, overlapping and obscured things, unworkable things, small writing area. sad to see them putting out a “new” version that is just a shadow of its former version. I test run both versions at the same time in the same browser with the same settings, so its not the browser. again, sad and i have been a fan for a long time. The old version will stop working soon.
Same issues as clas, above. I can only get Protonmail to function with old version of the interface, which they are going to close. No, the problem is not my browser, etc.
This product is not reliable enough to be a contender.
Woah, I just got bumped up from 12gb of space to 500gb. Game changer.
Even more space today – 520gb. Guess they are going to start competing with Google drive and Onedrive?
And it looks like my price was reduced by a couple of bucks per month.
Well, seems the actually lowered the prices, and bumped up the stuff included within the plans. Catch-all “alias” for custom domain is also included in the first paid plan, which is great for those who were hesitating migration of domain’s email there.