Proton Services

[mid_gen]

Been using Proton VPN for a while....and doing some stuff that requires building a few websites/domains I need some better email hosting than the stuff that comes with my reseller account. As it happens my Office 365 sub has expired, and although I didn't use Office, I do use Onedrive heavily.

I noticed Proton do Proton Unlimited, which gives you VPN, mail with 3 custom domains, Proton Drive (their OneDrive equivalent), and their password manager. Seems a pretty good deal and everything I need.

But....is Proton Drive any good? I tried iCloud Drive but it sucks really bad. OneDrive works really well across macOS/windows/iPhone/android......

 

[mid_gen]

Not much help but I always find it bizarre how people say OneDrive works really well with MacOS it’s horrid. IIRC proton drive does the job, I haven’t used it personally.

This man has not tried using iCloud Drive on Windows. It does not work, so completely useless!

I use it and love it, just make sure to use the 30% off offer going rather than the 20% they have on the website.

Good to know! I only want it for document syncing, so not fussed about big photo libraries (I self host Immich for that).

 

[mid_gen]

Yep completely agree, Google drive is the best out of them all, not perfect but the best of them all for me.

I just really not get on with Google products at all. consumer Gmail is tolerable but their business products and drive etc I can’t stand.

Think I will bite the bullet and go Proton. I really need some decent email hosting for a couple of my domains and getting that through a decent interface plus the vpn, drive, etc all for one price is pretty compelling, assuming the drive works ok.

 

[mid_gen]

Well I bit the bullet and went with the full Proton package. Been using Drive a couple of weeks and it's all fine so far, syncing perfectly across my MBA, two windows machines, iPhone. Nice to uninstall iCloud Drive and OneDrive and get rid of those nags.

Migrated my domains web hosting over to Proton Mail too which does a nice job of consolidating everything into one mailbox with a decent web UI and phone client.

 

[mid_gen]

Nice and always great when people report back. Are proton an established company/business?

Yes they’ve been around a while, their original product was their privacy focused Proton Mail service (they are Swiss-based, no access to your data, E2E encrypted, no ads), but have branched out since.

Kinda tempted to forward my gmail to the proton mail inbox as well and just have the one client. Although I’m definitely keeping my Gmail as I much prefer using Oauth logins to maintaining separate user/passwords for everything.

 

[mid_gen]

Well I've like my experience with Proton so much so far, I'm slowly migrating my key digital services to it.

I switch frequently between MacOS, Windows, Linux, and while most things Apple make kinda works with Windows, and most Windows things work kinda ok with Mac/iOS, none of them work equally well across all of them. What I like I about Proton is that it's platform agnostic and works equally well on everything.

I'm now using Drive for my document sharing/backup.

Mail for my hosting all my custom domains (all the custom domains coming into a unified inbox, tagged by destination, nice UI, I like).

VPN for.....security

Pass as my password manager.

Authenticator as my 2FA generator...although it's going to take a while to migrate all my accounts....will chip away at it.

All with one Proton account which I have tightly secured with Yubikey hardware keys.

I might give their Docs and Sheets a whirl for the odd document. Maybe use Calendar for my business.....

 

[mid_gen]

Rename thread to general Proton services.

So have discovered now that Proton Pass will handle the 2FA side of things, and much better. So you have the Proton Pass app on your phone, and installed as a browser extension. You have Proton Pass already store the password for your login, then you enable 2FA, open the entry for that site in Proton Pass, edit it, and you can use your camera to snap the QR code to link the TOTP to the login. Now when you access a site using 2FA codes, not only will Proton Pass fill your secure password for you, it will also popup the OTP code automatically when you get prompted, rather than having to dig your phone out and open the authenticator.

Definitely nicer than having separate authenticator app, although as with all these things you need to make bloody sure your master accouunt isn't compromised. I've now enabled Proton Sentinel on my account which basically puts stricter controls on login, more auditing, stricter challenges for logins etc. Also stops you using insecure 2FA methods like SMS.