I didn’t quit Gmail. Almost nobody does. Any review that pretends people switch email providers cold turkey is selling you something.
What I did do is sign up for Proton Mail about six months ago and slowly shift my email so that the things I actually care about don’t live in Google’s servers anymore. This is a review of how that’s been going.
Why I started using Proton Mail
The story most privacy review sites tell goes something like this: wake up one day, realize Big Tech is evil, switch everything. That’s not how it worked for me, and I doubt it’s how it works for most people.
What actually happened was less dramatic. I read enough about how Big Tech companies have historically handled user data. The internal access issues. The mishandled records. The corporate scandals that surface every year or two. At some point I stopped feeling good about every email I’d ever sent or received sitting in a Google datacenter, indexed for ad targeting and potentially readable by an unknown number of employees and contractors.
The discomfort wasn’t really about ads. Ads I can live with. It was about the asymmetry. Google reads my email. I have no idea what they do with that information. They could change their policies at any time. And the trove of correspondence I’d accumulated over a decade of using Gmail represented something I’d never consciously consented to being readable by a company whose business model isn’t aligned with my privacy.
So I didn’t quit Gmail. I signed up for Proton Mail and started moving the email that mattered.
What Proton Mail actually is
Proton Mail is an end-to-end encrypted email service based in Switzerland. It’s run by a company called Proton AG, started in 2014 by researchers connected to CERN.
The technical claims that matter:
- End-to-end encryption. Emails between Proton Mail users are encrypted in a way that Proton themselves cannot read. Emails to non-Proton users can optionally be password-protected.
- Zero-access architecture. Proton designed their servers so that even they cannot read your stored emails. Your inbox is encrypted with keys only you have.
- Swiss jurisdiction. Switzerland has relatively strong privacy laws, including specific email privacy protections under Swiss telecommunications law.
- Open-source clients. The apps you use to read your mail are open-source and have been independently audited.
- No third-party tracking. Proton doesn’t scan your emails for ad targeting. They don’t run ads and they can’t read your emails anyway.
The trade-off for all of this is that Proton can’t search inside your encrypted emails server-side. That’s a real usability cost. I’ll get to it.
Six months in: what’s been good
Setup was easier than I expected
The signup is straightforward. Pick a username, pick a password, you’re done. The Proton Mail interface looks like what you’d expect a modern webmail to look like. Not stripped-down, not weird, just a sensible inbox.
I went with a paid Proton Mail subscription rather than the free tier. The paid plan gets you custom domain support, more storage, more aliases, and removes the daily message-sending limits. For around five euros a month it’s hard to argue with.
It does what email should do, without fuss
Six months in, I’ve had no real issues. No outages I noticed. No emails lost. No weird sync problems across devices. The Mac, web, and iOS apps stay in sync the way Gmail does. Read on one device, read on another.
This sounds like faint praise. “It works like email is supposed to work.” But I’ve used encrypted communication tools before that didn’t, and being able to forget about reliability is genuinely a feature.
The interface is calm
Gmail’s interface has accumulated features over the years until it looks like a Christmas tree. Tabs for Promotions and Updates. AI-suggested reply chips. Smart Compose autocompleting your sentences. Sidebar widgets for Calendar and Tasks and Meet and Spaces. Plus whatever Google added last week.
Proton Mail is, by comparison, quiet. There’s an inbox. There are folders. There’s a settings page. The defaults are sane. You can change things if you want; you don’t have to.
No ads in the interface
Worth pointing out because Gmail’s “Promotions” tab effectively turns part of your inbox into ad real estate. Proton has no ads, no sponsored emails injected into your inbox, and no upsells in the interface beyond a discreet note about upgrading to higher tiers.
Encrypted email between Proton users is automatic
If I email another Proton user, the message is end-to-end encrypted by default. No setup. No “do you want to encrypt this” prompts. It happens silently. You’d be surprised how many people I correspond with regularly turned out to also have Proton accounts.
Aliases are useful
Paid Proton plans include support for email aliases. These are additional email addresses that route to your main inbox. I use them for signing up for things where I don’t want to give out my main address. If an alias starts getting spam, I can disable just that alias without affecting anything else.
Gmail technically supports something similar via plus-addressing (yourname+target@gmail.com), but it’s trivially defeatable by spammers who just strip the plus suffix. Proton’s aliases are real separate addresses.
What’s not as good as Gmail
An honest review has to cover the trade-offs. There are some.
Search is the biggest one
Because your emails are encrypted on Proton’s servers, Proton can’t index the contents of your messages for fast server-side search the way Gmail can. To search inside your emails, Proton has to download them and search them locally on your device.
In practice, Proton has solved this by offering an opt-in feature that builds a search index on your local device. Once it’s built, search works fine. But it’s slower than Gmail’s instant server-side search, and on a new device the index has to be built from scratch. That can take a while with a large mailbox.
If you live in your email search bar, this matters. If you mostly just scroll your inbox like a normal person, it doesn’t.
Importing from Gmail works but takes patience
Proton has an Easy Switch tool that imports your Gmail messages, contacts, and calendar. It works. It also takes time. Depending on how much mail you have, the import can run for hours or days in the background. I didn’t bother importing everything. I just started forwarding important threads from Gmail to my Proton address.
Mobile experience is good but not Gmail-level polished
Gmail has had a decade of investment in mobile UX. Proton’s mobile apps are competent and have improved a lot, but if you’re used to Gmail’s swipe gestures, smart categorization, and instant search, the Proton mobile app feels a half-step behind. It’s not bad. It’s not Gmail.
Google Calendar and Contacts integration
If you’re deep into the Google ecosystem, using Google Calendar with shared calendars across many people, using Google Contacts as your contact graph, switching to Proton doesn’t replace that. Proton has Proton Calendar and Proton Contacts, but the social graph of who shares calendars with you doesn’t come with you.
This is the single biggest reason most people don’t fully switch. I haven’t tried to switch fully for exactly this reason. I keep a Google account for the things that need to be in Google’s ecosystem (calendar sharing, certain accounts that don’t accept non-mainstream email providers, YouTube history). I use Proton for everything that should be private.
The hybrid approach: why I didn’t quit Gmail
If you read privacy forums, you’ll see a lot of “I quit Big Tech!” energy. The reality is that quitting Gmail completely is hard and unnecessary for most people. What works is being intentional about what kinds of email go where.
My split, six months in:
- Proton Mail: personal correspondence, financial accounts, health-related communications, anything sensitive, anything I’d be uncomfortable having indexed for ads
- Gmail: shopping receipts, newsletters, sign-ups for services that won’t accept non-mainstream addresses, work-related ecosystem stuff that needs Google Workspace
This is the realistic way to use Proton Mail. You don’t have to be all-or-nothing. The privacy benefit comes from moving the sensitive email out of Google’s reach. It doesn’t require achieving total ecosystem purity.
Free vs paid: which to start with
Proton Mail’s free tier gives you:
- One email address at @proton.me
- 1 GB of storage (small)
- Up to 150 messages per day
- Three folders and labels
- Basic features only
It’s enough to try the service and see if you like it. For real long-term use, the paid plans are where Proton becomes useful:
- Mail Plus. Custom domains, 15 GB storage, 10 aliases, unlimited folders
- Proton Unlimited. Bundles Mail, VPN, Drive, Pass, and Calendar at one price. This is what most people who go all-in end up on.
If you’re already paying for a VPN and a password manager separately, Proton Unlimited often works out cheaper than buying everything individually. I’ll cover the Proton ecosystem more fully in a separate review.
Who should consider Proton Mail
- Anyone uncomfortable with Google reading their personal email
- Anyone who already uses Proton VPN and wants ecosystem consistency
- Journalists, lawyers, doctors, or anyone handling correspondence subject to confidentiality expectations
- People who want a clean, ad-free email interface
- Anyone who values Swiss jurisdiction for personal data
- People shopping for an email provider whose business model isn’t built on reading their mail
Who probably shouldn’t bother
- People who live inside Google Workspace at work and don’t want to maintain two email systems
- Heavy email-search users with massive archives who need instant server-side search
- People who genuinely don’t care about email privacy and won’t get value from the encryption. No judgment, it’s a legitimate preference.
- People who think encrypted email will hide criminal activity from law enforcement. It won’t, and that’s not what it’s for.
How to try Proton Mail without committing
- Sign up for a free account at proton.me/mail
- Use it for two weeks as a secondary address for sign-ups, financial accounts, or anything privacy-sensitive
- If you find yourself reaching for the Proton inbox more often than Gmail for these things, consider upgrading to a paid plan
- If you’ve decided you want full ecosystem coverage (VPN, Drive, Pass, Calendar), look at Proton Unlimited
There’s no need to commit to “leaving” anything. Just sign up, use it, see if it improves your situation. Most people who try it for a month end up keeping it for at least some of their email.
The honest bottom line
Proton Mail is good. After six months I have nothing meaningful to complain about and several things I genuinely prefer over Gmail. The encryption is real. The Swiss jurisdiction matters. The interface is calm. The ecosystem (VPN, Drive, Calendar, Pass) is increasingly compelling as Proton builds it out.
The realistic recommendation isn’t “switch from Gmail to Proton Mail.” It’s “open a Proton Mail account, move the email that matters there, and let the rest of your inbox migrate over time as it makes sense.” That’s what I did. That’s what most Proton Mail users I know do. It works.
If you’re interested in the broader Proton ecosystem, I’ll cover Proton Unlimited in a separate review. For now, if you want a privacy-focused email account that doesn’t require restructuring your entire digital life, Proton Mail is the easiest credible choice.
This review reflects my personal use of Proton Mail over the past six months. See my Affiliate Disclosure for how this site earns money. See my methodology for how I evaluate privacy tools. For VPN recommendations, start with my Mullvad review.