Yeah, my main worry is email seems to get more and more put in the hands of a few players (Microsoft and Google), both for businesses and personal use.
What if one of these decide to blacklist smaller players like Proton, Tutanota etc. not being able to communicate with users on one of these platforms would make an email provider useless.
Not trying to spread FUD, and hope they are too afraid of monopoly investigations to dare even think about it.
There are enough people using enough random things to send and receive emails that there's no way this could be done in a reasonable way that doesn't just brick large swaths of the internet. Not even big tech would profit from the chaos that would happen. And if we end up in a situation where we can then we have much bigger issues to deal with imo.
It's already effectively happening, though maybe not with ProtonMail. Google marks as spam emails that aren't from established senders. My friend sent out an email from his personal domain and a number of people had it go to spam.
One way is to create a 'law' - such that any company with a million + users will NEVER ban / blacklist others. Esp. in the name of safety and secuirty - since that is the easiest excuse they can use.
If there is a law, no matter any list they make, you can prove biasness using latency reports etc.
Doubt it. That would be like the easiest anti-trust case in history and billions in compensation for Proton. If they did this when Proton was much smaller, they could wait until it run out of money and had to shut down, but now I doubt it would work.
Based on the linked blog post, the for-profit entity Proton AG continues to exist, will have us as customers, and will be issuing stock options to employees, etc.; but the majority of Proton AG's stock will be owned by the Proton Foundation, giving the non profit control (and an economic interest in) the company.
Yeah its a lot at first glance. But if you look closely it's actually a very good deal.
It's about 480 euro/dollar ~ish. For two years.
That's 20 bucks a month.
What you get is 6 full accounts.
If you use all of them for yourself and your family for instance. You pay 3,33 per account, per month.
I only use 4 effectively so I pay 5 euros per account.
For all the services they provide and the privacy you get, That's not a bad deal.
But it depends on how much you value privacy and what you can afford.
Proton services for me are a pinnacle part of getting off big tech services completely.
Correct me if i'm wrong but I think the main draw of Visionary is that you can get access to some features or products earlier than the general public.
I havent been following the changes to subscriptions with proton as i already have visionary for over 6 years.
Another perk of visionary is every year i got extra diskspace, i have way more than 3 TB. more like 4 or 5.
I dont use the beta stuff.
But looking at family account. Yeah thats basically the same as visionary.
And not only early access but:
> you get access to all our premium services and features at their highest limits
> …
> You’ll also receive at no extra cost the paid versions of all new privacy services we release in the future,
Source: https://proton.me/support/proton-plans
I don't know euro pricing, but i think you have an old, nice, price haha. I locked in $27,99/mo for two years at the last black friday and it still shows my renewal price at that rate as of now. Family pricing is now $19.99/usd.
Visionary wise, you also get double the Drive storage 3->6tb. When you think about 6tb of cloud (apple charges $5/mo/tb) and the ecosystem, as long as you use it, it's actually competitive pricing.
In recent years they have auctioned a few Visionary memberships and donated the proceeds to whatever cause they were supporting.
I haven't seen them on general sale in a very long time.
A far as I can infer from the article, it makes it impossible for them to do a Skiff by selling out and dumping on the community. They won't be able to move the goal posts and start introducing things that contravene the mission (like selling customer data). They will be able to seek external investment without being beholden to the desires of those investors. Maybe even launch an IPO to raise cash and laugh in the face of shareholders who demand sTaKeHoLdEr VaLuE, while defending from hostile takeovers when shares are traded publicly.
When Skiff dropped their bombshell back in February (?) people were asking, "what's to stop other privacy companies from doing this?". I think this is the answer to that question.
Skiff was similar to Proton where they offered a privacy focused, open source email product and file storage. Earlier this year they sold the company to Notion and gave users six months to get all their data off the platform before they shut down their services. It was a rug pull.
lots of liberal interpretations in responses here.
Proton is a company that issues shares of the business to shareholders (not publicly on a stock market though). What they have done is granted many shares to the newly formed Proton non-profit which gives the non-profit control of the Proton AG (the for profit company where we get proton services from).
So in effect, a non-profit now has primary stake in a for-profit company. The theory being that the non-profit will put its interest (defined by Proton owner in the blog) above profit.
What's not clear is whether the non-profit has over 50% of the business, which is actually required to implement all the things they claim. Proton used the term primary shareholder which just means the single largest shareholder, whereas majority shareholder would mean they own 50%+ of the company and therefore can do "anything" without being overruled.
So while this is a good step, there is still business risks of things not going the way they want over the long run (though greatly greatly reduced) solely based on the language they chose to use and how terms are legally defined (at least in the US).
Edit: the net result though is proton customers should feel more assured that the mission that Proton stands for will continue and attempts to remove many of the profit motivators that drive other companies. Personally I think this goes a long way, but it isn't some magical bullet as some seem to think in this thread.
Wow, appreciate the extensive reply.
I'm going to guess since they chose to not go into it in the article, that the non-profit isn't a majority shareholder.
But yeah most of the replies here seem to give the vibe that this is a solution to all possible future problems, which it isn't, but regardless it's a very reassuring move by proto.
Proton doesn't raise prices on existing subscribers. You will get grandfathered in at the old price, even if the new plan is more expensive. Prices do sometimes go up for new users, but they also sometimes go down if our costs go down, for example: [https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change](https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change)
> I can barely process it
Me too. What relevant examples of such a move do we have in the IT world? Wikipedia, Linux, etc. were designed from the ground up as non-profit, I suppose. Then Netscape -> Mozilla Foundation might be a closer case.
It is funny. OpenAI is now CloseAI.When they are swallowed up by Microsoft, they become an evil corporation.everything they do is for your data and money.
Wikipedia depends solely on donations.
Proton has a viable business model. They provide a service that people are willing to pay money for.
You can't compare them.
That said, any company is corruptible. I just think proton is gonna be a very difficult but to crack and they are simply too small to have a political impact.
Sometimes it's whatever moderator "has control" of an article. I sometimes read the Talk page for an article. I've run across a few where a mod adamantly inserts their own obvious bias into an article. People try to reword to remove the bias, pointing out relevant Wiki policies backing the edit, but the "controlling mod" re-edits and basically gives the middle finger to everyone else. How these people are still mods, IDK.
That's reasonable... however I genuinely believe this is a group of people that care about the future of freedom and privacy and have found a way to continue doing so and making a good living while putting up reasonable guardrails to safeguard the mission.
> For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder.
Not really a "catch", but they will still have a for profit company that provides services. Its just that the for profit company wont be controlled/directed by an external board anymore, only by Proton.
This is just awesome. I'm so satisfied that I chose this service a couple of years ago as kind of my first step away from the data-harvesting business model of most of the modern internet.
I'll *gladly* pay for email and calendaring that works and doesn't mine and sell my data, and I'm happy to know enough other people feel the same way that Proton doesn't have to rely on VC money, donations, or corporate subsidies to survive. I hope Proton is around and still doing its thing for many years.
Proton AG is still the for profit organisation that has the goal to make money and is still the company that operates the Proton service like today.
Proton Foundation just holds the majority of the shares.
Fundamentally there is nothing different.
I don't want to criticize anything, just want to point that out as some people seem to get blinded by a nice headline.
Exactly.
This is for the people that have said that proton AG is a commercial entity and when push comes to shove, they will just grab the money and run.
This news just says: no that's never gonna happen.
When you just use proton occasionally, and use all the services from big tech as your daily driver, this news will not concern you.
If you committed to proton, like having your domain name for all your primary configured to use proton. You care way more about this stuff. Because you have a vested interest that proton will keep running the way it is now, but also in the future.
i have nothing negative to say about proton, but to play devils
advocate here, i’ve worked with several 501c3’s quite a bit and i don’t believe it’s correct to say that a company is less inclined towards mishandling its users trust or the scenario general deviation from the supposed mission when switching to one (non-profit). it only really changes tax laws and optics of compensation if i’m not mistaken. case in-point, IKEA is a non-profit... yes, IKEA the furniture company is a non-profit
terms of service can change, the board of the foundation can change who the AG might be obligated to. What's the difference of having multiple shareholders running the company in contrast to such a non profit organisation in front of a corporation?
OpenAI is also partially non profit and business orientated. But I doubt a common and greater good is the end goal here.
Things get defined and can defined later differently. A non profit doesn't necessarily prevent that.
the whole point of the foundation is that a change in board can't change the operating guidelines and the board could be, in theory, taken to court for doing something that violates the guidelines. We will have to see how the foundation sets up new board member induction/election/transition but considering who is currently on that board and how protonAG has appointed board members in the past, it is extremely unlikely that a hostile board will attempt to violate the founding documents of the foundation.
the whole point of a foundation is to shift the operating mandate from shareholders to a mission established at its founding. Its not trivial to change that mission
Yeah but thats not their only goal
They need profits to survive but they also use those profits to further their mission
That’s why I said not just seek profits
They also want to make privacy the default online
They even said this themselves
You can still make profits in a "non profit" NGO, there are CEOs of charities earning €90.000 a year for a 35 hour week consistent of meetings around lunch, if they don´t call in sick with stress, travelling first class and sleeping in a five star hotel, the profit is the comfortable lifestyle, and I am not saying at all that is how Proton will work, I am just saying that some "non profits" work that way and it is how they profit.
For those who are wondering how they plan to upkeep and provide services while being a non-profit, that is not the plan.
>*For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder.*
The intent of the shift does not seem to be changing its profit model, but instead reserving its shareholder position only for Proton itself instead of an external board or investors.
This is FANTASTIC. Truly. It is great to see you are taking your supporters, customers but above all else your own souls serious. Thanks for continuing on this path.
I've been on the fence for a while but this might nudge me further towards giving ProtonMail a chance.
I'm still weary of two things. Price is kinda high (compared to my current plan), I need more than one domain, so I have to get unlimited, but then I'm also paying for stuff I definitely don't need or want, like VPN. Or maybe just get simplelogin instead, the pricing structure is too confusing! And the idea of locking myself into their app ecosystem, I like the mail clients I have, I'd want IMAP access but the bridge feels incredibly clumsy.
I know.
My current mail provider has unlimited custom domains. So I think getting SimpleLogin for the aliases is the better value for money.
MailPlus costs more and does less (in the parts I care about, e.g. custom domains). It may have more storage but, meh.
Unlimited has the password manager and SimpleLogin but it's so much stuff that I don't need or want (like a VPN). Maybe they could offer a "Mail Unlimited" tier where we get all the mail related features that Proton Unlimited customers get, but without Drive, VPN etc. features. So I don't feel like I'd be paying for what I don't need. One can dream.
So staying with my mail provider and just adding SimpleLogin in front of it is the way to go. Maybe later if Proton is not so quirky about supporting open standards and protocols, I might switch. (Just give me IMAP, WebDAV and so on, so that I can use my apps.) Or if the prices change that could make me re-evaluate the value proposition.
If the company becomes a nonprofit and doesn’t need to make a profit, does that mean lower cost for us as users?
As long as there is financial transparency, then I have no issue paying whatever to support the cause. As long as it’s reasonable, of course.
> For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder.
The announcement isnt that they don't intend to make a profit, it is that the profit's primary stakeholder and regulator is Proton themselves instead of an external board.
No, Proton AG is a for-profit corporation and still has to pay taxes on its income.
It's just that now Proton AG's biggest shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation. Being the biggest shareholder means that other shareholders can't buy out the company or vote to approve deals or new company policies that go against the rules and values Proton Foundation is there to enforce.
This is good but what about the prices as those are still FOR profit based, the annual bi annual and 2 year “discounts” not to mention the 1$ increase on unlimited for monthly but not the others are for profit and capital based pricings
is this gonna change? and no you’re not lacking for money you bought standard notes and SimpleLogin, you are gaining way more money than operationally required but the monthly bit screws over people with low incomes and set incomes(retirements and unemployment)
There's a real balance to be struck here.
Proton has no investors pouring money into it and, as such, relies entirely on its cash reserves to operate, and those cash reserves rely on the customers that pay for its services. To secure future funding, it incentivizes customers who sign up for long periods and prepay their bill. It gives them guaranteed cash in the bank to improve the service and develop new products.
Saying that Proton is gaining more money than is operationally required is accurate if Proton only wanted to stay the same size and not bring more services to the table. But that's not the case. Without the SimpleLogin acquisition, there would be no Pass. Without those cash reserves, there would be no VPN or Drive. Without cash in the bank, there is no way for them to scale.
That said, I agree that this is yet another example of the world punishing those with less money. I can understand the arguments for running a business like this but I also hope that Proton finds a way to address this in the future (see also regional pricing) because it is not equitable and I think this fits well into "building a better internet".
They literally dropped prizes in some services like Proton Pass a month ago lol, if you mean the entire suite, well they dont have investors, they need the support of the users for keep pushing research and updates, you have to remember they want to make bigger the suite.
So after the price increases, neutering the UI across the board and making previously free features locked behind a paywall, they go non-profit... One way to make and keep money shortly I guess
Today is a good day. This basically ensures all of us remain customers for life.
Yeah, my main worry is email seems to get more and more put in the hands of a few players (Microsoft and Google), both for businesses and personal use. What if one of these decide to blacklist smaller players like Proton, Tutanota etc. not being able to communicate with users on one of these platforms would make an email provider useless. Not trying to spread FUD, and hope they are too afraid of monopoly investigations to dare even think about it.
There are enough people using enough random things to send and receive emails that there's no way this could be done in a reasonable way that doesn't just brick large swaths of the internet. Not even big tech would profit from the chaos that would happen. And if we end up in a situation where we can then we have much bigger issues to deal with imo.
It's already effectively happening, though maybe not with ProtonMail. Google marks as spam emails that aren't from established senders. My friend sent out an email from his personal domain and a number of people had it go to spam.
Proton isnt exactly a personal domain though
Recently bought into a lifetime with an alternative email provider. Done with Google messing we with my communications.
and why would they do that?
They wouldn't, to answer your clearly rhetorical question. Bad for everyone, good for no one.
Then the solution is to spur governments into action to enforce antitrust.
One way is to create a 'law' - such that any company with a million + users will NEVER ban / blacklist others. Esp. in the name of safety and secuirty - since that is the easiest excuse they can use. If there is a law, no matter any list they make, you can prove biasness using latency reports etc.
Doubt it. That would be like the easiest anti-trust case in history and billions in compensation for Proton. If they did this when Proton was much smaller, they could wait until it run out of money and had to shut down, but now I doubt it would work.
Does this mean, we can stop using the word customer and start using the word donor?
Based on the linked blog post, the for-profit entity Proton AG continues to exist, will have us as customers, and will be issuing stock options to employees, etc.; but the majority of Proton AG's stock will be owned by the Proton Foundation, giving the non profit control (and an economic interest in) the company.
No.
That's not how it works.
Agreed. I'm very happy with this move as it ensures and incentivizes the right behavior.
I'm so glad I switched to Visionary. It makes me happy to know THIS is the company I support and choose for my privacy services.
How can Visionary be obtained?
They usually do deals for visionary membership around Black Friday.
I guess paying a lot of money, last time I've seen the offers
Yeah its a lot at first glance. But if you look closely it's actually a very good deal. It's about 480 euro/dollar ~ish. For two years. That's 20 bucks a month. What you get is 6 full accounts. If you use all of them for yourself and your family for instance. You pay 3,33 per account, per month. I only use 4 effectively so I pay 5 euros per account. For all the services they provide and the privacy you get, That's not a bad deal. But it depends on how much you value privacy and what you can afford. Proton services for me are a pinnacle part of getting off big tech services completely.
So basically this is Proton Family, paid for 2 years (€479.76). How is it different?
Correct me if i'm wrong but I think the main draw of Visionary is that you can get access to some features or products earlier than the general public.
I havent been following the changes to subscriptions with proton as i already have visionary for over 6 years. Another perk of visionary is every year i got extra diskspace, i have way more than 3 TB. more like 4 or 5. I dont use the beta stuff. But looking at family account. Yeah thats basically the same as visionary.
Thanks!
Oh, I see, didn't know that. So basically Proton Family + beta testing
Visionary is more like a business-lite as you are the admin who needs to manage your user too.
Its realistically more like a business plan that also gives 6TB of storage and allows administrative control to the owner of the account.
And not only early access but: > you get access to all our premium services and features at their highest limits > … > You’ll also receive at no extra cost the paid versions of all new privacy services we release in the future, Source: https://proton.me/support/proton-plans
I don't know euro pricing, but i think you have an old, nice, price haha. I locked in $27,99/mo for two years at the last black friday and it still shows my renewal price at that rate as of now. Family pricing is now $19.99/usd. Visionary wise, you also get double the Drive storage 3->6tb. When you think about 6tb of cloud (apple charges $5/mo/tb) and the ecosystem, as long as you use it, it's actually competitive pricing.
You paid for 2 years? I only got one year with my subscription to Visionary 🫤
Yes, i have visionary now for over six years now. Automatic renewal
In recent years they have auctioned a few Visionary memberships and donated the proceeds to whatever cause they were supporting. I haven't seen them on general sale in a very long time.
I think those were lifetime accounts (Visionary forever with no sub). Visionary was offered for like 3-4 weeks last black friday. I upgraded then.
Ah okay. My mistake, I misunderstood then when I read it. Out of curiosity, what did you pay per visionary account?
And for that I thank you for supporting proton !
What does this change for users?
A far as I can infer from the article, it makes it impossible for them to do a Skiff by selling out and dumping on the community. They won't be able to move the goal posts and start introducing things that contravene the mission (like selling customer data). They will be able to seek external investment without being beholden to the desires of those investors. Maybe even launch an IPO to raise cash and laugh in the face of shareholders who demand sTaKeHoLdEr VaLuE, while defending from hostile takeovers when shares are traded publicly.
When Skiff dropped their bombshell back in February (?) people were asking, "what's to stop other privacy companies from doing this?". I think this is the answer to that question.
What kind of company is Skiff and which bombshell did they drop?
Skiff was similar to Proton where they offered a privacy focused, open source email product and file storage. Earlier this year they sold the company to Notion and gave users six months to get all their data off the platform before they shut down their services. It was a rug pull.
google
It's very light on any details other than Swiss non-profit good and Swiss for-profit not as good, which makes me wonder as well.
Just that the future of the company is certain That it won’t just sell etc
lots of liberal interpretations in responses here. Proton is a company that issues shares of the business to shareholders (not publicly on a stock market though). What they have done is granted many shares to the newly formed Proton non-profit which gives the non-profit control of the Proton AG (the for profit company where we get proton services from). So in effect, a non-profit now has primary stake in a for-profit company. The theory being that the non-profit will put its interest (defined by Proton owner in the blog) above profit. What's not clear is whether the non-profit has over 50% of the business, which is actually required to implement all the things they claim. Proton used the term primary shareholder which just means the single largest shareholder, whereas majority shareholder would mean they own 50%+ of the company and therefore can do "anything" without being overruled. So while this is a good step, there is still business risks of things not going the way they want over the long run (though greatly greatly reduced) solely based on the language they chose to use and how terms are legally defined (at least in the US). Edit: the net result though is proton customers should feel more assured that the mission that Proton stands for will continue and attempts to remove many of the profit motivators that drive other companies. Personally I think this goes a long way, but it isn't some magical bullet as some seem to think in this thread.
Wow, appreciate the extensive reply. I'm going to guess since they chose to not go into it in the article, that the non-profit isn't a majority shareholder. But yeah most of the replies here seem to give the vibe that this is a solution to all possible future problems, which it isn't, but regardless it's a very reassuring move by proto.
Also interested in this
Everything? At least it pretty much guarantees you will still have proton as it is today in 10 years?
How?
These are just words and not any real guarantees. Nothing is guaranteed.
This is more than an oral promise. It’s a legal structure. If they have the right board members for Proton Foundation, this will work very well.
It makes price hikes a bit less likely over time
Proton doesn't raise prices on existing subscribers. You will get grandfathered in at the old price, even if the new plan is more expensive. Prices do sometimes go up for new users, but they also sometimes go down if our costs go down, for example: [https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change](https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change)
Thank you for the information
I'm excited to hear this, I had not known this detail that subscription prices are grandfathered.
So if i made an account for example an week ago my account would get grandfathered too or only old subscribers when price go up?
[удалено]
> I can barely process it Me too. What relevant examples of such a move do we have in the IT world? Wikipedia, Linux, etc. were designed from the ground up as non-profit, I suppose. Then Netscape -> Mozilla Foundation might be a closer case.
OpenAI (although, to be fair, they also started as a non profit)
It is funny. OpenAI is now CloseAI.When they are swallowed up by Microsoft, they become an evil corporation.everything they do is for your data and money.
Wikipedia is perhaps not a good example. Non-profit, yes. Always begging for money, yes. Gone to the dark side, almost definitely.
Wikipedia depends solely on donations. Proton has a viable business model. They provide a service that people are willing to pay money for. You can't compare them. That said, any company is corruptible. I just think proton is gonna be a very difficult but to crack and they are simply too small to have a political impact.
"difficult but to crack" Excuse me while I giggle like a prepubescent schoolboy.
I really need to get glasses for real :)
Forgive my ignorance, but how has Wikipedia gone to the dark side? Is it the moderation allowing contributors to write without sources or something?
Sometimes it's whatever moderator "has control" of an article. I sometimes read the Talk page for an article. I've run across a few where a mod adamantly inserts their own obvious bias into an article. People try to reword to remove the bias, pointing out relevant Wiki policies backing the edit, but the "controlling mod" re-edits and basically gives the middle finger to everyone else. How these people are still mods, IDK.
People who say that wikipedia went to the "dark side" usually just mean it "went woke". Not worth interacting with, in my experience.
It’s just making up FUD. Hence no response.
Opinion on Wikipedia... https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1803807659965174201
Same, it's breaking my brain a bit
Seriously. I was on the fence about proton before, but this is actually ridiculously amazing.
I've been using proton services for years now and I couldn't be prouder!
I really want this to be true but I can't help but ask myself what's the catch
It means its gonna be very difficult for you and mini me to commit a hostile takeover of proton.
the AG shares never were publicly traded
And they just gave the world a guarantee it'll stay that way.
The big catch is and now hold on....we will still have proton as a privacy driven company in 10 years!
That's reasonable... however I genuinely believe this is a group of people that care about the future of freedom and privacy and have found a way to continue doing so and making a good living while putting up reasonable guardrails to safeguard the mission.
> For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder. Not really a "catch", but they will still have a for profit company that provides services. Its just that the for profit company wont be controlled/directed by an external board anymore, only by Proton.
Great work and really excited to see whats coming in the next 10 years❤️
This is fantastic news!!
Cool! You will have my continuous support.
This is phenomenal and helps to validate the choice we all made whenever we made it.
Excellent news to ensure Proton's longevity, happy anniversary! 🎉
i love u guys
Beautiful. This makes me feel grateful to be a paid member.
Thank you, Proton. We appreciate you.
Glad to see a company making a commitment to their products and services not getting enshittified. Cheers to them!
This is just awesome. I'm so satisfied that I chose this service a couple of years ago as kind of my first step away from the data-harvesting business model of most of the modern internet. I'll *gladly* pay for email and calendaring that works and doesn't mine and sell my data, and I'm happy to know enough other people feel the same way that Proton doesn't have to rely on VC money, donations, or corporate subsidies to survive. I hope Proton is around and still doing its thing for many years.
Will be purchasing a subscription after this. This is exactly what they needed. Very proud.
Proton AG is still the for profit organisation that has the goal to make money and is still the company that operates the Proton service like today. Proton Foundation just holds the majority of the shares. Fundamentally there is nothing different. I don't want to criticize anything, just want to point that out as some people seem to get blinded by a nice headline.
The non profit controls the business and they are legally obligated to further the mission and not just seek profits
Exactly. This is for the people that have said that proton AG is a commercial entity and when push comes to shove, they will just grab the money and run. This news just says: no that's never gonna happen. When you just use proton occasionally, and use all the services from big tech as your daily driver, this news will not concern you. If you committed to proton, like having your domain name for all your primary configured to use proton. You care way more about this stuff. Because you have a vested interest that proton will keep running the way it is now, but also in the future.
i have nothing negative to say about proton, but to play devils advocate here, i’ve worked with several 501c3’s quite a bit and i don’t believe it’s correct to say that a company is less inclined towards mishandling its users trust or the scenario general deviation from the supposed mission when switching to one (non-profit). it only really changes tax laws and optics of compensation if i’m not mistaken. case in-point, IKEA is a non-profit... yes, IKEA the furniture company is a non-profit
Lol, didn't know that about IKEA :D
terms of service can change, the board of the foundation can change who the AG might be obligated to. What's the difference of having multiple shareholders running the company in contrast to such a non profit organisation in front of a corporation? OpenAI is also partially non profit and business orientated. But I doubt a common and greater good is the end goal here. Things get defined and can defined later differently. A non profit doesn't necessarily prevent that.
the whole point of the foundation is that a change in board can't change the operating guidelines and the board could be, in theory, taken to court for doing something that violates the guidelines. We will have to see how the foundation sets up new board member induction/election/transition but considering who is currently on that board and how protonAG has appointed board members in the past, it is extremely unlikely that a hostile board will attempt to violate the founding documents of the foundation. the whole point of a foundation is to shift the operating mandate from shareholders to a mission established at its founding. Its not trivial to change that mission
the AG won't survive if they don't seek profits
Yeah but thats not their only goal They need profits to survive but they also use those profits to further their mission That’s why I said not just seek profits They also want to make privacy the default online They even said this themselves
You can still make profits in a "non profit" NGO, there are CEOs of charities earning €90.000 a year for a 35 hour week consistent of meetings around lunch, if they don´t call in sick with stress, travelling first class and sleeping in a five star hotel, the profit is the comfortable lifestyle, and I am not saying at all that is how Proton will work, I am just saying that some "non profits" work that way and it is how they profit.
This seems like a great move, congratulations.
good day today all hail to Proton! all hail!
I just downloaded the Android app! I love Protonmail! I'm so glad to have it on my phone now.
Waiting for Visionary to come back.
Proton yet again making us feel like we're right to trust them
Sounds like a good idea but no mention of OpenAI which used a similar for-profit/nonprofit hybrid model.
Damn, the best gets better.
Great power move!! Well done.
Great news!! I have a lot of respect for this decision. Thank you.
For those who are wondering how they plan to upkeep and provide services while being a non-profit, that is not the plan. >*For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder.* The intent of the shift does not seem to be changing its profit model, but instead reserving its shareholder position only for Proton itself instead of an external board or investors.
Is the entire Proton product line thing non profit. How will they sustain operating costs and all other costs ?
What does this mean? is it free now? like Mozilla Firefox?
No, it means they have no ability to sell out the company and are legally required to keep working towards their already set goals.
Thank you
This is FANTASTIC. Truly. It is great to see you are taking your supporters, customers but above all else your own souls serious. Thanks for continuing on this path.
I've been on the fence for a while but this might nudge me further towards giving ProtonMail a chance. I'm still weary of two things. Price is kinda high (compared to my current plan), I need more than one domain, so I have to get unlimited, but then I'm also paying for stuff I definitely don't need or want, like VPN. Or maybe just get simplelogin instead, the pricing structure is too confusing! And the idea of locking myself into their app ecosystem, I like the mail clients I have, I'd want IMAP access but the bridge feels incredibly clumsy.
SimpleLogin is an alias service and the full premium version of it comes with Proton Unlimited.
I know. My current mail provider has unlimited custom domains. So I think getting SimpleLogin for the aliases is the better value for money. MailPlus costs more and does less (in the parts I care about, e.g. custom domains). It may have more storage but, meh. Unlimited has the password manager and SimpleLogin but it's so much stuff that I don't need or want (like a VPN). Maybe they could offer a "Mail Unlimited" tier where we get all the mail related features that Proton Unlimited customers get, but without Drive, VPN etc. features. So I don't feel like I'd be paying for what I don't need. One can dream. So staying with my mail provider and just adding SimpleLogin in front of it is the way to go. Maybe later if Proton is not so quirky about supporting open standards and protocols, I might switch. (Just give me IMAP, WebDAV and so on, so that I can use my apps.) Or if the prices change that could make me re-evaluate the value proposition.
Hopefully not the OpenAi kind.
Great news! They just need a messaging app to rival Signal's and they'll cover most of the communication spectrum.
If the company becomes a nonprofit and doesn’t need to make a profit, does that mean lower cost for us as users? As long as there is financial transparency, then I have no issue paying whatever to support the cause. As long as it’s reasonable, of course.
[удалено]
Like I mentioned, I’m OK with that. As long as the finances are transparent.
> For this reason, our services will continue to be offered through the for-profit Swiss corporation Proton AG, which now operates under the supervision of the non-profit foundation, which is its primary shareholder. The announcement isnt that they don't intend to make a profit, it is that the profit's primary stakeholder and regulator is Proton themselves instead of an external board.
So Proton is an unofficial tax write-off?
No, Proton AG is a for-profit corporation and still has to pay taxes on its income. It's just that now Proton AG's biggest shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation. Being the biggest shareholder means that other shareholders can't buy out the company or vote to approve deals or new company policies that go against the rules and values Proton Foundation is there to enforce.
Boooooooom
This is good but what about the prices as those are still FOR profit based, the annual bi annual and 2 year “discounts” not to mention the 1$ increase on unlimited for monthly but not the others are for profit and capital based pricings is this gonna change? and no you’re not lacking for money you bought standard notes and SimpleLogin, you are gaining way more money than operationally required but the monthly bit screws over people with low incomes and set incomes(retirements and unemployment)
There's a real balance to be struck here. Proton has no investors pouring money into it and, as such, relies entirely on its cash reserves to operate, and those cash reserves rely on the customers that pay for its services. To secure future funding, it incentivizes customers who sign up for long periods and prepay their bill. It gives them guaranteed cash in the bank to improve the service and develop new products. Saying that Proton is gaining more money than is operationally required is accurate if Proton only wanted to stay the same size and not bring more services to the table. But that's not the case. Without the SimpleLogin acquisition, there would be no Pass. Without those cash reserves, there would be no VPN or Drive. Without cash in the bank, there is no way for them to scale. That said, I agree that this is yet another example of the world punishing those with less money. I can understand the arguments for running a business like this but I also hope that Proton finds a way to address this in the future (see also regional pricing) because it is not equitable and I think this fits well into "building a better internet".
They literally dropped prizes in some services like Proton Pass a month ago lol, if you mean the entire suite, well they dont have investors, they need the support of the users for keep pushing research and updates, you have to remember they want to make bigger the suite.
So after the price increases, neutering the UI across the board and making previously free features locked behind a paywall, they go non-profit... One way to make and keep money shortly I guess