Proton MailReviews 

This company (Proton)is nothing more than a thief, I Paid for two different email addresses, total of $95 dollars and some change. Wrote down the important pass codes to both addresses, just in case you’re locked out! I was locked out,I tried to use them both, could not, typed in the special codes, didn’t work! Wouldn’t you know it, a company based outside of the U.S. can’t figure out how to reimburse me! It’s been over three months and yet still no reimbursement! The funny thing is, they sent me an email recognizing the two paid accounts, a month ago and still haven’t reimbursed me! So I’m doing this review to inform everyone across the world…..Do Not Even Attempt To Become A Paid Member With This Company, You Will Find Yourself In The Same Situation! Proton Mail Is Horrible And Must Be Ran By The Switzerland Mafia…..
Ticket Number 4331897 These People Are Con Artist , Liars and Thieves! Do not trust a damn thing they say! I just received an email from these a-holes stating my refunds were sent! They were never sent, just got of the phone with my bank! It doesn’t take 4 months to reimburse funds, this is 2026 Not 1526! I have already resigned myself to the fact that these thieves are who they showed they were! DO NOT DEAL WITH THIS COMPANY AT ANY LEVEL! You Will Regret It

My email account with Proton Mail was terminated without warning, quote: "This account has been suspended due to a possible violation of the guidelines.". I didn't violate any guidelines. All I wanted is stay anonymous.
Now I can no longer access services that were tied to that email address.
I sent an appeal to Proton Mail which was rejected:
"in order to protect our interests, we will be unable to assist you in reinstating your account."

STAY AWAY!

As generally advertised, good email Services , zero downtime, good storage capacity but you must install several account recovery features otherwise you'll lose your account and they will not help you to get it back for security reasons
Edit- they recently deactivated an account I had for 30 days claiming I had not logged in for one year. After discussing it with them I believe it was an attempt to force that free account into a paid account. When I attempted to create a new account for my son they put me through a series of support emails and account denials which all could have been avoided if I had opened a paid account instead of a free account. Further evidence of a hidden policy of forcing paid accounts.

Love that it’s privacy focused. VPN + email combo is convenient. Swiss based is a plus

These are red flags for me:

(1) You cannot remove the forced "Sent by Proton Email" footnote in outgoing emails. To get rid of it, you need a paid subscription (the Unlimited at least). Removing the ad costs them nothing, and forcing it on free users doesn't align with their "privacy first" claim.

(2) Their pricing uses figures like $3.99 or $9.99, which feels manipulative and overly corporate for a company that values transparency and openness. Why not just $4 or $10?

Overall, Tuta seems like a better alternative.

I bought this product on subscription knowing that I could cancel within a month and get my first payment back. I cancelled it within 40 minutes and wrote to customer service. It’s a week later and have received only a vague and late reply which didn’t referr to a refund even though this was clearly stated in my email . Still waiting for the money. Steer clear.

Concerning your response, share my file number (4403411) how and to whom? I cannot reply to this thread, as you know I am sure.

Stopped receiving emails out of the blue. No replies from "customer service" its not a reliable email service.

I am very surprised to see so many negative reviews. I am sure there were genuine reasons for them. I have been using Proton Mail for over 6 years with paid subscription, including other Proton applications, never had a single issue to complain about. Very satisfied with all the functionality and services.

I' ve been using Proton Mail for a few weeks now. Importing all history from my 2 Gmail accounts worked like a charm (some emails initially seemed to be missing, but that was just because Proton groups emails into conversations differently from Gmail). It has to be noted that all your email addresses appear into a unified inbox, there's no easy way to split them - which may be fine or not according to your personal preferences.

Features are definitely not as good as in Gmail - one striking example is how tedious it is to search the body of emails (and it seems it can't be done at all in the mobile app?!). There are some annoying bugs and some UX choices are questionable. Customer support is willing to help, but you have to insist and it takes several exchanges of messages before they actually start working on your problem.

The Proton Authenticator app is really good, better than Google's IMO, and exporting + importing accounts into it was a breeze.

Overall, despite its many flaws, I think I'll stick with Proton for the commitment to privacy and the European storage locations (I wouldn't feel comfortable relying on the US these days). The fact that the Proton company is owned by a foundation and that they open up their source code makes me trust their ethics - that's for sure better than just having "Don't be evil" as a motto.

In October 2025, after a third instance of my Proton email service not consistently sending or receiving emails, I asked ProtonMail to cancel my account and send me a refund.

I was assigned Maja, who offered “2 extra months in the form of credits” if I gave them a “chance to resolve” the issue. I explained that reliability was more important than anything else, and that I wanted to end my ties to ProtonMail as quickly as possible.

A new customer support agent, Ana-Marija, responded and stated that she would “proceed with the downgrade.” However, what she concealed was that the “downgrade” was not a refund, but months of “credits” – something I had already declined.

Three weeks later, I noticed I never received my refund, so I contacted Ana-Marija and asked for assistance in finishing my request. What followed was infuriating back-and-forth email exchanges which defied European Commission standards (which they are affiliated) as well as US Consumer Laws (where I am located).

ProtonMail customer representatives would ask me to provide proof of one thing or another under the auspices that, if I did so, they would “reconsider the refund” for me. So, each and every time, I would spend the energy and resources to dig up the information and proof they requested, only for them to not “reconsider the refund” as they promised.

After enough back-and-forth, my case was assigned a third customer service rep, Supervisor “Marija” (who is not the same person as Ana-Marija). Rather than reading the earlier email exchanges I had had with Ana-Marija, Marija had me re-explain the circumstances of the case.

At Marija’s request, I re-explained my customer service ticket concerns, but explained that I was not interested in troubleshooting the issue, especially if a refund was not actually available. I engaged with Marija as a good-faith effort, but expressed that I believed the situation was at a point where it was inappropriate for us to continue dialogue without a third-party representative mediating the exchange, as it felt like they were intentionally disregarding the information I was sending at their request.

Despite my request for communication to stop, ProtonMail continued engaging with me, specifically with a new customer service rep named Ivan who reached out to me after I believed the conversation had finished. Ivan contradicted each of the customer service reps I’d already dealt with, and talked to me as if I was the one who contacted him to continue pursuing a refund. I responded by explicitly explaining that I felt like the communication had risen to the level of harassment.

To summarize:

- Despite Proton’s terms of service explicitly referring to the possibility of a refund “at the discretion” of the company, customer service reps would deny the possibility of a refund. After I acknowledged this, they (Maja, then Ana-Marija, then supervisor Marija, and finally Ivan) would but then bring up that they had the authority to offer a refund if I troubleshot with them. I would do so in good faith, only to find that they had no intention to offer this refund, and after providing the info they requested, they would revert back to stating they could not violate “Proton’s refund policy.” As such, they received free IT troubleshooting by deceiving me into engaging with them and by having me track down the information they needed. I am not happy that a “discretionary refund” was being wielded as a carrot in front of me when there was ultimately no intention of ever granting me the refund. I worked for free for Proton’s customer support agents.

- When it became clear that ProtonMail had no intent to grant the refund, I requested no more contact from them without being afforded a third-party present. Despite this, Proton continued emailing me on multiple occasions (specifically Marija and Ivan).

- I requested a chargeback from my credit card and filed a BBB report, where they already have an outstanding "F" rating there.

***************************

FEB 5 UPDATE - BUSINESS RESPONSE:
"Hello. Can you please share your ticket number with us here so we can look into your case?"

FEB 5 UPDATE - MY RESPONSE
Hi, no thanks.
First of all, it is unsafe to put ticket numbers across the Internet.
Secondly, did you read my complaint? I don't know how many times or how many different ways I need to say this: I do not want to talk to you without a neutral third party intermediary present, and it is inappropriate for you to keep pushing to speak with me.
I currently have an open case against you with the BBB; please respond to their inquiries, which you have not done yet. I will not be speaking to you "privately" anymore.

I just received an email from Proton: "We're donating $1.27 million"... Start by restoring (or refunding) the customers who lost their subscriptions by trying to delete your email address... and without any technical know-how worthy of an IT professional.

As a sole email user, I find the current and past plans inflexible. My limited use of email and lack of interest in other products or a second account for a family member puts me at a disadvantage. I’m forced to purchase unnecessary features and products to access the writing tools (Mail Assistance) I’d like. This inflexibility makes me hesitant to continue using Protonmail. While I’ve never been unhappy with the service, paying for something I don’t use and need is unacceptable. Using my latest MacBook, I’ve found workarounds for AI proofreading, but the question remains: why pay for a higher plan if I don’t need more than half the features?

I've been a user of Proton's suite of products for a few years now, I first created my account about four years ago. While Proton isn't perfect and some of their products could use quite a bit of work (looking at you, Drive), it has always been reliable and Proton is transparent when it comes to issues.

Just today, I decided to upgrade to Visionary while it was still an option, and even though it was quite a high price, what I got was certainly worth it.

In any case, i don't like put only one star but ..

Protonmail is the dumbest email service in the world

If two people access their email from the same IP address, both email address are automatically blocked and unusable.

You might say that's impossible, but yes, they're that stupid.

Not creating multiple email addresses from the same IP address would have been a good idea, but not allowing two different people to connect via the same IP address? You have to be seriously delusional, and profoundly so, if I may add.

How can such nonsensical behavior be used in a business ?

Some people at ProtonMail should be fired.

Not always the cheapest option for the services they provide, and some things definitely need to improve.

But negativity aside, I've never had any issues with their customer service. They have been super helpful and friendly. And in a world where more and more personal information is available for anyone to see without your consent, the privacy first aproach of Proton is top-notch and a welcome change.
Yes there isn't the integration like with Google but I know my data stays my data.
Stop been the product and become the Customer

Recently made the switch to Proton Mail and Drive (partly to decouple from US-based Gmail and Outlook). So far so good. The system feels slick, fast, easy to manage. The free tier is very limited so upgraded so I can also use our family domain name. The apps are reasonable on iPhone (iPad less so). The only caveat on MacOS is you need to use the "Proton Bridge" app if you want to continue using Mail (or other email app) to work with the encryption. The Drive app works very well though. Only downside was a massive lack of e-mail and username availability, probably too late to the party. A few more domain extensions would help!

I purchased the Proton Pass Plus plan because it advertised secure document storage. Unfortunately this feature is hit or miss as I have found the product remains unreliable. While some documents load correctly, many others display as garbled text or trigger "document does not exist" errors, despite the document being present. I am reliant on secure documents and paid for the Plus plan to be able to use this feature. The software is still very poor quality and full of bugs.


I only used it for 3 days and requested a refund, but it was refused just because I had been refunded for Proton Pass several months back when I tried it for the first time, only because they stated a 30 days money back guarantee if you’re unhappy with the product. Any exception to this has to be clearly stated on the advert and not buried in a T&C document, as that’s misleading. The product is not mature enough so I requested a refund. At the time I had to email several times in order to be finally refunded.

I should have learnt my lesson, but this time I gave them the benefit of the doubt as they had advertised several additional new feature that I wanted to use, so I gave them a second shot as I genuinely wanted to use their product.

The software simply does not work as intended. It’s as simple as that. I am not wasting my time with technical support and raising bug reports. The feature advertised has to work every time and should have been fully tested before releasing it to the public.

Under merchant agreements with card issuers, there is an obligation to provide the service as described. Because the software does not function as marketed, I am entitled to a refund regardless of internal terms and conditions and I have proceeded with the chargeback process at a cost to Proton and my card provider will be refunding me.

I will no longer be using or ever recommending your products or services again.

I'm shocked at the negative reviews on here. I've used Proton Mail for the last five years and have had the pleasure of seeing how they have developed the app during this time. Was/is it as feature rich as gmail? no. but if I wanted Gmail I'd use Gmail.

It was easy for us to setup a family account with multiple email aliases and allocate storage between the members. One family member also has a custom domain that was easy to setup and use and we've encountered no issues with it. My father-in-law is in infosec, and places a lot of trust into Proton Mail's servers and privacy policies.

I have encountered some issues with the Android mobile app, but the app is still marked as "beta", and updates bring more and more fixes.

I'm also quite happy with their other offerings (VPN, calendar, authenticator) and appreciate being able to handle things under my one account across multiple devices (mac, linux, android)

My experience with Proton email service has been very shaky. It started off good however now none of my email messages are being delivered and when I reach out to customer service there is no response. Even sent many "test" messages from another email and still no deliver of messages. Doesnt make sense

What a shame they don't deliver. I was really hoping to support an EU-based, privacy-centric organisation.

A litany of bugs across products and devices. The iOS app's notification count has been broken for months (no progress on the bug report), and the email list (in the iOS app) is absolutely useless displaying only the first few characters of the sender and subject. I have 78 identical rows for emails from GitHub, giving me no idea what they even are.

And now, my own events are inexplicably disappearing from my calendar with no way to recover them.

Customer service are similarly useless, often requesting information provided in the original report.

A waste of €100.