Proton has updated its logos and plan prices for Mail and VPN
Proton AG has updated its services under a unified design. The logos for all the company's services have been updated with a modern design. The icons look very similar to Google's style. And as expected, Protonmail.com now redirects to Proton.me, which is the brand's new identity.
Aesthetic improvements aside, there are some important changes to the services that it offers. Your email addresses @protonmail.com, @pm.me, @protonmail.ch, and custom domains remain the same.
Proton's new plans
We won't be discussing the free tier because it hasn't gained much. But, I should mention that free users can claim a free [email protected] email address for free until June 8th. If you missed the previous opportunity, go and get your free alias now.
Let's take a look at the pricing and features of the paid plans. All users who were subscribed to a plan before May 25th 2022, have been upgraded to a new Proton plan that best matches the old plan, without an increase in the fee. This includes a bump in the cloud storage space as well.
The thing is, Proton is applying a special discount for old users, to allow them to renew at the old rates. If a user decides to switch to a different plan, they will have to give up on this special discount. e.g. if you want to upgrade from Plus to Unlimited, you will lose your discount.
Proton Visionary and Lifetime Subscribers are getting a special upgrade, they get 3000 GB of storage space, that's right 3TB, on Proton Drive. You can use up to 100 email addresses on the service. That's a great reward for supporting Proton.
There are 2 new plans from the company: Proton Unlimited and Proton Business. So in total, there are 4 tiers: Proton Free, Proton Mail Plus, Proton Unlimited and Proton Visionary.
Proton Mail Plus
This is the basic premium plan offered by Proton, and it costs the same as before, with the prices starting at $4.99 a month, and goes up to $47.88 for one year ($3.99/month), or $83.76 for two years ($3.49/month). But the Mail Plus plan offers more benefits than before. Users get 15GB of storage space (shared across Proton's services) which is an extra 10GB on top of the 5GB they had earlier.
ProtonMail Plus allows subscribers to use up to 10 email addresses (previously 5), access to Proton Drive, and Proton Calendar and Bridge. Catch-all, which collects emails from all addresses in your domain, is now available for Proton Plus users, this was previously locked in the Professional plan.
Proton Unlimited
Proton's Unlimited plan offers the best of both worlds for Mail and VPN users. It grants 15 email addresses, Proton Drive, Calendar, Bridge, and all the bonuses from the premium VPN plan. It supports 1700 servers in 60+ countries, and no restrictions such as P2P downloads. To top it all, it also gives users a whopping 500GB of cloud storage. The prices for Proton Unlimited start at $11.99/month, $119.88 for one year ($9.99/month), or $191.76 for two years ($7.99/month).
Proton Business plans are essentially the same as the personal Mail Plus and Unlimited plans, but allows adding more users and are hence more expensive.
Proton Professional, Family and Visionary Plans
ProtonMail Professional plans have been migrated to Proton Business Essentials. This also means that there is a bigger gap between the prices of the Mail Plus and Unlimited plans, so it is in a way an increase in the prices. Refer to my previous article for screenshots of the old plans and their prices.
Proton Visionary plans are no longer available for purchase. ProtonMail has also discontinued its family plan. If you want to include more users in your plan, you'll have to go for the Business Plan, which is quite expensive on a per-user basis. Speaking of which, add-ons are no longer available for personal plans, if you want to customize your plan, you need to opt for a Business plan.
Proton VPN plan prices for new subscribers
Proton has scrapped its ProtonVPN Basic plan. Let's say a user is just interested in the VPN service, (not the email), they can no longer subscribe to ProtonVPN for $5 a month. But wait, it does show $5 a month, doesn't it? Not really, that option is only valid for a year's subscription, as in it costs $5/month annually, you'll have to pay the full amount for 12 months,
The new starter plan for the VPN service costs $9.99 a month. That looks like a 100% price hike, but it is just the old ProtonVPN Plus plan being rebranded as the basic tier. Take a look at Mullvad VPN for example, they still offer VPN services at $5 a month.
Interestingly, users who were on ProtonVPN Basic plans have been upgraded to Unlimited, so they get to pay $5 a month for Mail and VPN. But those who were on Mail Plus and VPN Plus bundle, say they have to pay $12 for the same features. So, there's definitely a bit of inconsistency with regard to the plan upgrades.
You can read Proton's article to learn more about the pricing. The website's design is a bit too bright and colorful for my liking.
Are you happy with Proton's new prices? What you think about the new design?
https://restoreprivacy.com/protonmail-logs-users/
As I said in the previous article, no change in price for me to continue using the Plus plan email account that I have had since 2018 ($4 a month with annual billing). I’m happy with the service, it has worked very well using their Proton Bridge application to sync with Outlook where I permanently save items and also the Android app for when I’m away from the computer.
As to the new design I’m only concerned with the long awaited re-designed Android app that is supposed to be rolling out soon. It will finally have a dark mode option which I’ve found to be very helpful for aging eyes.
The new re-designed Proton Mail 3.0 Android app is now available directly from Proton (link below) if you do not use or want Google Play (which still appears to be rolling out in stages to only some users). The install/upgrade was quick and it retained all my existing settings. I really like the re-design, it looks and feels modern now. The fonts are larger and easier to read especially in dark mode. It also now automatically saves a composed email to the drafts folder (and gives an option to move it to trash), a long requested feature.
https://protonapps.com/protonmail-android
Is this a legit link? I can’t find it through the main Proton website.
Yes it is legit. It’s an older link to their apps before the re-design (https://protonapps.com). Below is the link to the new webpage where you can download the same APK file (under “Android app” and “download the app (APK) directly here”).
https://proton.me/mail/download
Thanks, Mothy.
Originally, I didn’t like the old layout with the dull blue colors, but now I actually miss it. The old colors, while dull and hard to read were somewhat more professional. The new purple is not very pleasing at all. It’s looks all childish and posh, like it is aimed at teenagers.
At least the only good thing is they still have theme support and you can choose from a few selected by them and the one I use is Legacy, which is the old colors or I can make my own or copy-paste one from somewhere, which is the only good thing.
Agreed. They have fallen in with numerous other sites that seem to think that adults want to work in an environment designed by children, for children.
Exactly my thoughts. The old Proton Mail worked great. I use Pale Moon and it was perfect on that browser. Now, the new Proton mail does not work on it. My address book will not come up. I have to use Firefox and the mail just is not as professional looking anymore. Like a kid designed it. Ah well, give him a trophy. Now trying Swisscows mail…not bad so far. easy import of addresses.
I have no complaints. I had the VPN+ service, and now get an excellent email deal for 8 bucks. In the link provided by Ashwin leading to Reddit I came across this comment.
” The best is for people to look at what they are getting and what they are paying and if it’s better than it was before then they have come out of the deal on top. Try not to look at what others ended up with because there will always be someone who got off a bit luckier than you. They can’t make exceptions for one person because then they will have to make exceptions for everyone. I am just glad that they have us a heads up that things were going to change.”
It’s easy for me to agree with it, as I came out ahead; but even if I had not, I still had everything I felt I needed. As such, I’d like to think I’d not complain much (if at all). If you get a better deal switching plans, then switch plans.
As for people paranoid about tracking, there is (in my opinion) a serious tradeoff in terms of effort re rewards after a certain point. As for “trusting”; I trust if “they” want to find you, “they” will.
Full disclosure, I live in NYC so where ‘n’ hell do you think I’m gonna hide. :-)
How to trust company who hand clients over to government “services” on their request.
I would like to ask plomiq and Clairvaux, what good would it do for the Swiss Police to get a copy of someones encrypted emails? According to Proton, 1-even they can’t get decrypt someone’s emails. 2-their software is open to 3rd party inspection.
@ Piomiq
That’s exactly why you should trust it. If it did not “hand clients over to government services”, it would be a group of gangsters, not a company. You seem to have a very remote sense of what the law is.
And by the way, Proton does not “hand clients”, and it’s not to “government services”. They transmit the data of customers suspect of crimes, they give it to the Swiss police and Swiss courts, and they only do that when they receive a valid Swiss court order.
A whole category of people seem to think that Proton, and similar companies, are mafia groups devoted to help criminals evade the law. I don’t know where they got that notion, except in their sick, perverted, communist minds. Proton never claimed such a thing, and neither did its competitors.
In fact, they explicitely say the contrary.
You do realize that the “customer suspect of crimes” in this case was a student truanting, right?
A student that illegally occupied a building
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88njdg/protonmail-under-fire-for-sharing-clactivist-data-with-french-authorities
I’m now getting 43 times as much space and far more options for less money. I’m not sure how that works, it’s probably the first time in ten years I’ve gotten more for less from a tech company, but I’m not going to complain. Hope they don’t give too much free stuff away and end up broke.
there’s no better way to make me automatically distrust a company or web service than a soulless corporate redesign that only exists to train talentless graphic design interns and “increase brand recognition” or whatever. granted, protonmail is already part of the cern-cia/nsa apparatus and i already don’t trust them one bit, but still
Come on Ashwin, you can do better than yet another press release disguised as an article.
I’m unsure why you think Proton is worth this attention.
It’s not marked as a promo so why is this considered Ghacks worthy?
This is not a PR or a promo article, I don’t write those.
I’ve just compared the plans, pointed out the price hike in Proton VPN’s starter plan (recommended a rival service), and also mentioned their absurd upgrade for Mail Plus and VPN Plus users.
@Ashwin
I think anyone reading this would consider it very much a promo for Proton.
Where are the criticisms/negatives of using Proton? There’s enough in the comments to at least mention them. And I don’t just mean the pricing structure.
Mail Plus basically gives what a free Google account gives, 15 GB of cloud space etc. I always wondered how it would cost if Google asked money for their free stuff instead of data. I think I got my answer to that, 4 euros per month.
> I always wondered how it would cost if Google asked money for their free stuff instead of data.
They don’t have to, it is financed with your private data being sold to advertisers.
[https://www.ghacks.net/2017/06/23/google-wont-read-gmail-emails-anymore-for-advertisement/]
Do you believe them after this? I would not. Fool me once (shame on you), fool me twice (shame on me).
I know Frankel, but I always wondered how it would cost me to money from my pocket instead of my data. I don’t think Proton is overcharging with these prices, so got my answer…. 4 euros a month.
>We won’t be discussing the free tier because it hasn’t gained much. But, I should mention that free users can claim a free [email protected] email address for free until June 8th. If you missed the previous opportunity, go and get your free alias now.
I’m sorry, but @proton.me is not what an email alias is. An email alias is the portions preceding the @
After the @ its the email domain, so really is get you free email domain, not aliases. KTHX.
If you’re going to nitpick, better get your facts right. An alias is not the part of an email address left of @. It’s a complete email address, which is subordinate to another address, the inbox of which it uses.
Within your email account, you could have several aliases on top of your main email address. You could use them exactly like your main address. All your different addresses would use the same inbox of your email account.
Or, you could subscibe to an alias provider and remailer such as Anonaddy, which allows you to create an infinite number of email addresses called aliases, which all redirect to your main email account at your regular provider. This being an anti-spam measure.
As a longstanding customer, I’m using Proton Unlimited for 11.99 $/month now and in my opinion, the services are worth every penny. ?
be me
broke college student
watch proton start and grow and remove visionary plans
still broke me cant buy anything
cry
@Uwe
Worth every penny if you believe in Tesonet’s business model, I guess.
@Iron Heart
Is Tesonet’s business model worse than that of Google or Microsoft?
@Iron Heart
Don’t know what you mean. I’m not aware of Tesonet or their business models.