Why I Switched From Gmail To Proton Mail

I’ve been using Gmail forever. As in, prior to it ever going public. Back when you had to have an invite to get in. Luckily, I knew someone that had gotten in via a Google employee, and they were able to invite me very early on as well. It’s done what I’ve wanted and needed it to do. But now, I’m leaving it behind for greener pastures.

The burning questions here are as follows. Why am I leaving Gmail and why am I doing it after 20 years and what email platform will I be switching to?

As the title states, I’ve made the switch to Proton Mail for a few reasons which I’ll describe below. Not only that, I’ve switched from using a free email service to now using a paid email service.

Let’s start off with why I decided I wanted to switch from Gmail at all, since I had been using it for 20+ years, which likely means I have a lot of important stuff stored there.

First and foremost, I wanted to start taking my privacy a bit more serious. I’m not trying to go all die-hard here and hide everything from the entirety of the internet, as I simply don’t have the time nor the patience for that. But I want to try and move away from getting served ads and recommended stuff a bit more than what I was. Gmail uses your email to serve you ads and information based on the contents of your email. This means it’s not encrypted as we all know. Proton is end to end encrypted, which means Proton themselves can’t even read your email. In return, this means you don’t get ads or served recommendations based on what’s in your emails.

The second reason I’m leaving Gmail after 20+ years, is just that. I’ve had the same email for that long, and as a blogger, my email address is everywhere. I want to change that, but it’s pretty difficult to do with an established email such as my Gmail account. So what better way to do this than to start over and start with a new service that has some really nice features such as Proton.

So what is it about Proton that drew me in, and more-so, to a paid version of Proton when I could have switched to a free version? First is all the features you get.

With the free version, you certainly get some nice features. However, for me the number one thing on this list is the amount of storage. 1GB of storage simply isn’t enough for me, and that’s without importing any of my old emails from Gmail over to my Proton account. I purposely didn’t transfer anything over as my Gmail account isn’t going anywhere, so I know I can quickly access it if I absolutely need something from the past 20 years.

The 500GB of storage is more my speed. However, I’ve actually got a family plan with my wife now, so we have 3TB of space to share between us, so I’m more than good on space.

The second biggest thing that I wanted the paid plan for was the labels/folders feature. I use a lot of labels as I keep my email very well organized. I can tell you, it’s all because of my OCD, but hey, that’s a completely different article from this one!

The third feature and certainly is quickly becoming my favorite feature of Proton Mail, is the hide-my-email aliases. This allows me to go purchase something from a website I don’t frequent and use an alias email address so that they don’t have my actual email address and then spam me with their newsletters, special offers, you forgot this in your cart type stuff. If I start getting any of those, I simply delete the alias and nothing else arrives in my inbox from them. Super simple and super efficient.

I also like that with a paid Proton plan, you get access to Proton VPN, Proton Drive, Proton Pass and Proton Calendar. For me, I don’t care much about the calendar since I’ve never really used calendar stuff within my personal accounts. I was already using Proton VPN, so now I get that bundled in and save a bit of money and have access to more things and more features as you see above.

This paid plan gives me access to Proton Drive, which in turn allows me to stop using Google Drive as well and put everything I want into Proton Drive. Simply put, it’s a nice little added bonus. It’s a very similar situation for Proton Pass, which is Proton’s password manager, that happens to work very well. And because I get that for free with my paid Proton plan, I’ve decided to leave Bitwarden behind since I was paying for that as well. Now, everything is bundled into one and makes life so much easier.

To me, having all of these options, features and apps available are super nice, even if it is paid for. That alone is something I thought I’d never be doing, paying for email. But as stated in the beginning, I’m trying to take my privacy a bit more serious and I feel Proton allows me to do just that. It’s not full blown by any means, but I feel for me, it’s a great start and this will likely lead to other things that I’ll start doing.

One question I’m sure all of you have is, how is the overall service of Proton, especially on the email side? I can say that it feels no different than Gmail as far as the speed of receiving/sending emails, getting notifications for emails and just the user of the features itself. It simply works and it works great.

What’s more is, Proton Mail is available on Android, iOS and the web. Proton Pass, Proton Drive, Proton Calendar and Proton VPN are available on all of those platforms as well. This makes it easy to use all of the services no matter what device or platforms you choose to use.

One last thing that I have discovered about Proton Mail, is how active they are on Mastodon. While I don’t use Twitter/X, it can be difficult to find large companies like this on Mastodon. Proton Mail has an official account there that’s verified, and often responds very quickly and with full information and details. Find them here: Proton Mail on Mastodon.

If you’re looking to make the switch to Proton, feel free to let me know. I can send you an invite code to “refer a friend” and you’ll get one month of Mail Plus for free from Proton. Kind of a hard deal to pass up if you ask me as it allows you to give it a try and see if it’s for you or not. You can read more details here: Refer A Friend.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and do not represent any official endorsement by Proton or its subsidiaries.

Image Credits: Proton Mail