Calvin Wankhede / Android Authority
Privateness appears to grow to be an even bigger deal yearly as an growing variety of individuals aren’t cool with their information changing into a commodity. Proton Mail purports to supply extra privateness than Gmail — in contrast to Google, even the Proton staff can’t check out your inbox. As such, privacy-conscious customers ought to wish to flock to Proton Mail, proper? We have been interested by discovering out, so we polled our readers.
For Android Authority‘s Calvin Wankhede, it wasn’t that easy. He tried switching from Gmail to Proton Mail for higher privateness however discovered the trade-offs too irritating. Proton’s end-to-end encryption solely works if each events use it, which continues to be comparatively unusual. The Android app additionally lacks normal options like formatting and swipe navigation. With simply 1GB of free storage and key options locked behind a paywall, Calvin determined it wasn’t well worth the trouble. He’s now again to utilizing Gmail.
Calvin included our ballot in his article, so let’s discover out should you agreed with him.
Would you utilize Proton Mail as an alternative of Gmail?
The chart above suggests that you simply’d be extra accepting of the trade-offs than Calvin. Round 73% of you stated you’ll use Proton Mail as an alternative of Gmail, with greater than half of these individuals saying that they’d even pay for it. Lower than 27% of you stated you have been pleased with Gmail.
One actually fascinating factor about these outcomes is that when considered one of our staff members affords their opinion on a services or products after which provides a ballot, our readers not often disagree within the total response. It reveals what a hot-button difficulty privateness is in 2025, and Google would possibly wish to take word.
Google would possibly wish to take word.
For full context, we additionally included the ballot in a extra impartial article on the problem. Nonetheless, in Calvin’s piece, a number of individuals pushed again within the feedback part. One recurring theme was frustration with what readers noticed as a misunderstanding of end-to-end encryption. Barry identified, “You complain that each events want Proton… then say [you use] Sign or WhatsApp,” which additionally requires each events to make use of the identical app for encryption.
In Calvin’s protection, a big distinction is that you would be able to’t ship a Sign or WhatsApp message to a different messaging service, so you already know something you ship is to somebody with the identical encryption protocols. That’s not the case with electronic mail.
Different commenters highlighted sensible causes for sticking with Proton. One consumer stated their $3.99/month Proton bundle over 30 months secured them for electronic mail, VPN, and cloud storage, which they felt was a “fairly aggressive worth.” One other described the Proton suite as a sensible enterprise funding, particularly when consolidating a number of privateness providers into one subscription. Nonetheless, a couple of agreed with the article’s conclusions, citing related frustrations or restricted use instances for encrypted electronic mail.
