I really liked Proton and I tried really hard to get into it’s ecosystem, but thet keep prioritizing new products instead of focusing on the already stablished ones, or giving support to Linux. I don’t really need e2e encryption for my mail but I get why they work with it and it is a nice bonus for me, on the other hand the side effects are a constant friction point and they do not offer an e2e way, I would really want to have another mail or calendar app but I cant.
They products evolve very little over time, even for a “small” company (not that small anymore, not big, but they do have some resources). They release a product, and the updates are late, small or non critical. I get in some way why they work like this, but it is another friction point for me.
And they are expensive, I really get they are a business and that what they offer isnt cheap, but at least for me, the price is more of what I expect from their service. They try to conceal this by offering a package of services that you may or may not need, and its cool to have some of these services at your disposal if you need them, but I am paying for them and most of the time I don’t use them becuase they are barebone or because I don’t need them that much.
For me, the point of no return was this black friday’s sale, they shrink the offer by prorating it to your current cycling bill. If you are a free user you wont notice this, but if you are a paying customer and you want an upgrade (mine was from ultimate to duo), they will cut the offer to fit in your current cycling bill, the offer is still exactly the same and its not a bad discount, but instead of giving you the full year of the offer they will offer the discounted price until your next billing period, so if you were to renew with them in a couple of months you barely will get a discount because they will discount for only those two month, then they will charge you full price.
Sorry for the rant, I’m switching to Mailfence and keeping SimpleLogin, anyone has feedback from Mailfence?
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn’t great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don’t promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
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It’s quite common to see in privacy communties a post panning the preferred option then suggesting something new and asking folk about it. It can be a way to get folk aware and talking of your product. It’s subtle atroturfing, but you do see it.
Organically, you’d usually ask what folk use instead.
If it were an ad, I’d expect the question in the subject line and the product name earlier in the post. As posted, the subject makes it about proton mail (useful if you’re targeting people leaving PM, but wouldn’t it make more sense to target people fed up with gmail?) and the question didn’t come until the end (well past were most people probably stopped reading the post).
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, just that the OP’s post wouldn’t be a good ad. Your comment, however, is short and still manages to knock a competitor to proton as being an known while pointing out that you’re happy with it. Makes for a much better ad.
Astroturfing is designed not to look like an ad. It’s supposed to look like grassroots support for a product. Legitimising it for the audience. Strategically, it’s effective. “Privacy market leader is bad for x, y and z, what do you think of competitor?”. It’s classic marketing of “here is problem, here is solution”. Just subtle.
Most people here are probably off gmail or close to it. Best way to make inroads is work your way into a niche which Proton, Tuta, Mailbox did to great effect. As I say, I don’t trash the tried and tested options including rival products of Proton. This is email though, usually you want to put data in hands of companies you trust. Its the reason folk running from google, yahoo, outlook. Being careful and skeptical is good.