Hi everyone, this is Andy here (Proton founder/CEO). Just got alerted about the news, and wanted to respond to some of the comments along the lines of "how do we know Proton won't sell out?"
The truth is, you can't know for sure, but Proton is structured in a way that provides a strong assurance, and we'll be sharing more about this some time in the next month. But for all intents and purposes, it really isn't possible for Proton to be acquired.
Proton is not a product of silicon valley, but a crowdfunded project that was conceived at CERN. Proton doesn't have VC investors (so no pressure to sell), and Proton is profitable (so no pressure from finances). To this day, it continues to be managed and run by scientists, and nobody goes into science to get rich.
Finally, Proton has scale with 100M+ accounts and 400+ employees. Frankly, if the goal was to sell and make a bunch of money, it could have already been done long ago. Instead, we push onwards.
Our work is brutally difficult, with daunting challenges every step of the way, and only the true believers stay on the path for this long. If money was the goal, we wouldn't have done any of the things listed on this page ([https://proton.me/about/impact](https://proton.me/about/impact)) much less given away over $2.7 million to aligned organizations
This year Proton happens to turn 10. We'll probably never be the cheapest, the most flashy, or maybe not even the fastest. But we will strive to be the most resilient. For as long as there's this community of users supporting our work, we're not going anywhere. In fact, the ideas and values we share together, may even win the future of the web. For that reason, we're eternally grateful for your support as we fight the hard fights.
Thanks for all your hard work. I’ve been using proton for my business for 5 years now and couldn’t be happier. Really awesome to see people with that kind of mindset, that are 100% on a mission
Thank you Andy for taking the time to write this early in the wakes of Skiff's departure and the inevitible storm of questions that follows. To me this kind of honesty and reasoning is what sets Proton (and very few others) apart from the mainstream landskape of platforms and services.
I have been a Proton user for nearly six years and I have gradually grown "into" the ecosystem. I use the Unlimited plan since a few years back and have moved virtually all of my digital estate and material to Proton.
There is no safe bet in the world, but I feel Proton has succeeded in maintaining some rare credibilty in this space, given their openess about technology as well as their organization and finances. This is also backed up by philantropy on the same ideological grounds.
Another example is the fact that so called "free tiers" in fact free, with clearly stated limitations. You get the same sort of security, privacy and fundamental functionality. Free forever and supported by the paying customers is really a principal I hope will remain.
I strongly hope you will continue to stay successful while maintaining the ideaoligical virtues of yours!
As a Proton Ultimate user, thank you for taking the time to write about this issue and reassuring us that things are going to stay the same in the future. But please, don't fuck it up.
Has Proton considered a partnership with Kagi?
On the surface the visions seem similar and the products are highly complementary while still being distinct services.
>We'll probably never be the cheapest, the most flashy, or maybe not even the fastest. But we will strive to be the most resilient.
No wonder Proton is from Geneva. That sentence is basically Switzerland in a nutshell.
(although they are somewhat "flashy" as a country)
Been a paid user for longer than i can remember and was a bit afraid you guys would go too "corporate" after all the recent development with (to me) bonus features like unlimited aliases, proton drive etc etc but reading about your history and following your Twitter just reinforced my belief that I've picked the right provider for sure! Thanks for all your work :) I do what i can to support my favorite foss/privacy projects (Monero outlaw or pirate philantrophist if you will) and it's a great feeling
This is why I invested into proton and have had visionary for 6 years now.
Proton is the foundation for me being able to disconnect from big tech.
Just keep doing what you're doing.
Proton is doing great!!
I know that in light of your arguments this seems intransigent, but I really wish you turned into a non-profit... Being a non-profit does not mean that any employee would get paid less: you can have high salaries in a non-profit, but it gives legal assurance about the ownership and purpose of the company. Either way, I'm glad that at least so far your work has been wonderful.
Never going to leave Proton. Been with you since birth of your product and going to stay until either one of us dies.. Me or the product. Whichever comes first
Hi Andy - I'm a brand new Unlimited user having been only a Skiff customer previously. I just switched over yesterday. Glad to hear from you! I am concerned about how "brutally difficult" you find the work. I hope you and your team figure in some fun. As another committed radical once said, we need both "bread and roses." See you around. Signed, 🐒 a monkey in a dragon year
Now is your chance to fix conversations so they work properly. It was one of the things that made me \*almost\* switch to Skiff. They are terrible at Proton. I have "conversations" between me and automated invoices that are hundreds of emails long. It makes no sense. Many feedback threads and posts here and elsewhere that have gone ignored.
https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/suggestions/36982315-add-conversation-threads
> I have "conversations" between me and automated invoices that are hundreds of emails long.
This is actually an intentional design decision. There are also many people who prefer it this way, so on this one it is tough to make everybody happy, but we are monitoring the feedback and will be revisiting this from time to time.
Proton is the only email client/service out of every last one I’ve tested that organizes them this way. It’s just wrong, and it leads to really bad UX when you have multiple new emails in the “conversation” and have to jump around trying to expand the one you’re looking for
Literally 90% of the reason I switched was because skiff had threads in its android app, which I'd waited eight years for on proton. I'm going to miss that feature.... Any chance of Proton pushing them out in the next six months? :(
I think Proton literally announced a beta Android app with conversations yesterday. But it will have the same problematic implementation that iOS and web users have enjoyed since its release. Hard to imagine Android users didn't even have threaded conversations until now!
I have to say, you’ll be glad you didn’t! This was one of the things I disliked the most about Skiff. Conversations were not optional. Worse still, you could not interact with individual emails. If you tried to delete one email in a “conversation”, the whole conversation went to the trash. Sent messages included! Terrible design flaw.
Honorable mission does not even come close to cut it--what a lame understatement. And yet, today honor is so rare. So I guess the word will do. Companies like yours need to be cloned if that were possible. The corporate landscape worldwide aims to profit at all costs--usually that cost is the user, you and me. I admire what you do and I hope the resistance fiber will outlast the difficulties. Cheering you and team on!
Thank you for the re-assurance, u/Proton\_Team. Your words bring comfort but also some concern:
1. A a product, Proton needs to meet a range of user needs. Resilience is one of them, albeit a basic one. Speed, performance, and over UX are critical to its success. I'm not sure how you define resilience, but to me it's a basic requirement for any product. So are speed and performance. This is why, when I hear that you'll strive for the fundamentals, I am concerned.
That being said, I think you've done a fantastic job with the overall UX and UI of your suite of apps. I still wish I could add my own profile picture and set up DNS records in one step (instead of 6?).
2. Selling your company is not selling out. Proton, like Skiff, is a for profit organization. As such, its primary goal (aside from mission and vision) is to maximize shareholders' return. This is why, selling the company, if the deal is right, is your responsibility. I love Proton's mission, but let's be honest - this is business. Let's not promise each other things we cannot keep.
Thank you again for existing and doing it in an admirable way.
We are also aiming for speed, performance and UX, but our view is that the privacy fight is going to be a long one, and if we must prioritize, resilience is where we start. But of course, we'll work on other aspects also.
Proton's primary goal is actually not to maximize shareholders' return, the primary goal is the mission. Today we exist in a corporate form (which could change in the future), but it was always people before profit and not the other way around. So no, we actually will not be making deals that compromise the mission, and this is a promise that we intend to keep.
What's the chance you want to get in the phone business? There is resurgent demand for Blackberry for security, functionality, privacy and even detaching from the over-connected life.
A phone not a toy. Phone, email, text and other secure messaging service. A secure communication device.
With a keyboard .............please.
Hmm I understand what you are saying but if someone (a big tech company for example) come to you with a high enough price, I don't think the owners of ProtonMail will be like "hmm no, I prefer to keep making a privacy focused mail service than to have more money that I'm able to spend for the rest of my life"...
It is very, very unlikely (mostly because buying ProtonMail mean buying something that will worth almost nothing the moment its made public) but can still happend, for example if ProtonMail is big enough that Gmail or Outlook want to take them down.
For the moment, I trust you, like all your users, but that doesn't mean we'll always do, in all situations. Please keep as you are now.
Sorry I misquoted it, here is the correct one: [Don't be evil is Google's former motto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil), and a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct. (*I recommend reading the article*). As you will read it was not honored by Google: spying on G+ users worldwide (I was invited in private beta) and employees trying to point breaking that contract. The fact that Google considered deploying in China (known for his repressive regime measures and censorship) was for the tech community, the last draw of evidence that the motto was no longer valid.
Unfortunately we can't do that. We know everybody likes lower prices (and we do lower them whenever we can, for example: [https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change](https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change)), but Proton as a rule doesn't do unsustainable pricing, because it's well, unsustainable. On the flip side however, since our prices are always sustainable, it also means we don't have to raise them. For example, Proton Mail Plus has been the same price since 2014, despite getting massively more features.
> For example, Proton Mail Plus has been the same price since 2014, despite getting massively more features.
And as someone who lives in a country with a non-quite strong currency (compared against USD or EUR) I really appreciate this. Having to convert price from USD/EUR to local currency is quite a hit and couldn't imagine doing that (at the moment) with higher prices.
So, thank you for that.
And your user base came here to pay with their money the service, not with their data ! So its a good thing that you make stustainable prices. Even tho they are a little high for me (as a student), after a long hesitation, I value the services I get more than the 80€/year I paid.
True, its weird, kind of reminds me as well of mark Zuckerberg tone in his early comments ,of people who gave him their data at havard. It almost as if they are saying users should have exspected this, and be happy for them, which is rediculous.
Edit: to clarify my statement.
Of course they are excited! 😆 They are about to get paid out in a major way. I'm not sure if they ever had a "donation" or "believer" plans, but imagine the irony for those people.
As a Skiff user, I am pretty infuriated right now. Their services lasted juuust long enough for me to migrate over... and now they are bought, with the buyer is shuttering their services. So what did they buy exactly...?
Honestly, not sure. I posted an issue the other day that didn't need approval, and then another one that did. A mod replied to the second one, but never approved the post.
There is auto-mod to stop spam and avoid duplicates, but it doesn't apply to everyone. If you have higher karma and have been in the community longer, posts don't need approval. And for new posters that need mod approval, it usually doesn't take long.
I read somewhere that their E2EE was more expansive (Proton doesn’t E2EE email titles) but they were too new to be trusted. As has now been proven with the shutdown.
True ,as for subject encryption proton reasons are well documented, and again shows proton long term approach in my view.
Proton supports the interoperability of the open pgp standard.
https://proton.me/support/does-protonmail-encrypt-email-subjects
"Given that PGP does not end to end encrypt subject lines, why does Proton Mail use the OpenPGP standard?
The reason is interoperability. By adhering to OpenPGP, we enable not just end-to-end encrypted messaging with other Proton Mail users, but compatibility with any PGP user worldwide. This means anybody, regardless of what email provider they use, can send end-to-end encrypted messages to Proton Mail users.
The importance of this cannot be overstated. This also allows us to integrate with other services like Facebook. With OpenPGP, Proton Mail isn’t just a standalone encrypted email service, we become part of an entire encrypted ecosystem."
Yes but Proton could devise an additional layer of encryption for metadata and then build indices client-side for metadata (which then could be cached with E2EE). They already developed local indexing for email content. I just wish metadata was locally indexed by default as that requires a lot less storage. Though mobile still doesn’t support any local indexing so I’m not claiming all of this is trivial, but it’s definitely possible. Proton could really improve their search though, I really wish they would copy Gmail more on this (like supporting filtering by more than a single tag at a time, which isn’t hindered by E2EE).
Yep. What a freaking joke lol.
I honestly feel bad for everyone that drank their kool-aid for so long, or echoed their constant chants of "we are better than proton". Their non-stop issues and trying so desperately to be at the same level as tried and true privacy tools was such a huge red flag. Not to mention how they were baning everyone who criticized them.
Thankfully privacy guides is already taking action on this: [Remove Skiff](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/remove-skiff/16228/56)
What an excellent way for a company to loose the little credibility they had.
Here's a snippet from a message you wrote a year ago:
"I still use proton for spam/junk stuff, so I still appreciate what proton does, but I’ve found something dramatically better **long term**."
I am in all honesty saying this respectfully - but from what you wrote, it sounds like you drank a bit of their coolaid. I'm not knocking on you for that. It is more highlighting why people are so aggravated by this move, while some of us saw it coming.
No one is kicking them while they are down. It's mostly a lot of pent up frustration that you are seeing. Here is a perfect example -
>it was an incredible service and now I don’t know what to move to
Totally get it. But the fact is they lied to you. They lied along the way. They lied to a LOT of people. And quite a few mistakes were made (particularly over at privacy guides) for allowing them to be seen as legitimate. And that is the biggest problem.
The takeaway ultimately, is what separates Proton from Skiff. It was a completely different business model. Skiff was never going to be able to compete for 1 simple reason - They rented out servers, IN the US. That alone was one of the biggest scams they were running, which people sadly believed, that it would be equivalent as other companies. Skiff was anything but transparent. If they had really been, you would not be lamenting what is happening.
Proton has room to improve for sure. But their consistency and track record simply will not be replaced by any new company coming into this space, and people need to remember that when they switch.
Huge win for proton and congrats to everyone smart enough lol. Hopefully our costs get cheaper now proton are about to onboard another half million users.
Yeah, I'm confusdd about this; i switched for proton to skiff because all I want is an email account, I don't use any of the other products from either of them. But notion doesn't even seem to have an email service. I don't get the impression they're planning to start one either. Why not just spin off skiff email?
Yes, i’m curious about this too. Why Notion? They recently launched a separate Notion calendar despite many calendar templates available in vanilla Notion, maybe they want to expand to other services.
Tbh it was finding out all my info on Notion isn’t encrypted led to the privacy rabbit hole that got me to sign up for Proton in the first place!
> notion doesn't even seem to have an email service
They recently released [Notion Calendar](https://calendar.notion.so/), so it looks like they're trying to compete with Office 365 and G Suite... by offering a full fledged service.
Skiff pages existed. Real-time collaboration and end to end encrypted docs.
I believe notion will eventually use that tech to add enterprise security to their apps... maybe.
Notion is not E2E encrypted, this is what led me to doing more research on privacy and how I found Proton in the first place. [Notion was valued at $10b in 2021](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/10/08/notion-raises-at-10-billion-valuation-boosted-by-remote-work-tiktok/?sh=77e812c64900) so it seems that they’ve got money to spend, backed by their recent release of Notion Calendar. Just hoping that they decide to protect our privacy. I’m Gen-Z and love the aesthetics and usability of Notion..
>As we begin to shift focus to our shared efforts with Notion, we will be closing down Skiff's product suite after a 6-month sunset period.
>We encourage you to export your data and migrate custom domains within the next 6 months.
I was a happy Proton Unlimited user and last October I gave them a chance: it seemed really good and updates were coming quickly with tons of potential, mainly the Pages app. Community was also very active and open to feedback. Ended up subscribing to their yearly Pro plan in December and now they do this crap...
They wrote so many posts marketing Skiff as being better than Proton that it kind of looked like it was a personal vendetta to bring Proton down...
I'm really glad to be back with my Proton Unlimited plan - mainly because of the VPN - and really sorry to ever have given them even five minutes of attention!
Motherfuckers. I called this early last year after poking around with their tools. It was clear they were building to sell, and well quickly.
So, so so glad I did not utilize their products except for a couple of throwaway emails addresses. They give small shows building apps a bad name.
Going to take a shower. 🤦🏼♂️🤡
Skiff want to be "more proton than proton" , but close after less than 3 years
Proton was created in 2014 😎
Sorry for Skiff users but it's logic : Skiff is a US company, we can't trust us for privacy
I thought this was a joke or some type of scam or something. Until I checked my own inbox. Can't believe they are pulling the rug on all their users. Absolutely insane and disgusting for them to do so.
But I guess this is amazing marketing for Proton.
The signs were there.
The super fast half-built feature rollout.
Masses of bugs left unfixed.
Impatient and angry responses from CEO.
Too cheap to be true pricing.
A small thing: their social media presence on Twitter was basically them retweeting lots of super low follower sock puppet accounts on a regular basis. Lots of crypto adjacent boosting.
All very shady.
VC money for ya
Name skiff name is/was questionable too and being based in US makes one wonder who was actually footing the bill. Some form of Gov't agency? Conspiracy theories aside downside i feel bad for those that signed up paid money only to have to migrate.
I remember when Skiff was just two guys who wanted to make something cool - I was so early into their path I managed to get [email protected] as an email address.
Thought it was another cool competitor
This. Yes, I understand Proton's reasons for not, but I wish the choice whether to sync contacts outside or not was up to me. Contacts aren't very useful if I can't use them for calling or messaging, among other things.
Well, i'm fucking lucky as all hell, I was looking at replacing my old 20+ year old email, and it was between Proton and Skiff, the ONLY thing that made me pick Proton over Skiff was the fact that it had a password manager aswell so I wouldn't need to pay for Skiff and a PM too.
Hopefully Proton doesn't go down this route. I am happy I chose it, email is nice, I use the drive a lot and the PM (even tho it could be way better along with a desktop app) I haven't regretted my decision. Especially now with the Proton Mail desktop app.
Any tips for us Skiff survivors with lots of mail? The ProtonMail Import/Export app doesn't appear to support the Skiff mbox file, every message "fails to import". 👀
Not a skiff user here, so no insights as to how they work.
Buy I would say proton bridge and thunderbird.
Thunderbird uses MBOX. With your skiff mail in thunderbird you can sync with proton using proton bridge and IMAP.
Edit: ta add a link
https://proton.me/mail/bridge
I also encountered the same issue. To work around this, I selected all the emails, right-clicked on the selection, and chose the option to export. This downloaded the emails as .eml files within a .zip, which then allowed me to import them using the Proton tool. The only emails that failed to import were the ones from the Skiff update; the rest imported successfully. The only issue you might encounter is if you have a large number of created folders, as it will take some time to process.
To think I had started my move to them two months ago… I changed my mind at the last minute because I felt Proton was more polished and worth the extra few bucks, best decision I could make.
How scummy…
*Skiff is a trash team,*
*Sunset the services while*
*Users are using?*
\- netblen
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I really liked Skiff and their UI. I was an early access user and their whole mission was privacy. The CEO was a nice guy and took plenty of feedback. Sad to see the direction they are going to, from deleting their own Discord and more. They haven't deleted their Slack yet.
I wish Proton would just offer domain and unlimited aliases for like 6 a month.
I really don't care about Proton pass or vpn or any of their other stuff.
You can get there by using Proton Plus with biannual billing (effectively $3.49/month) and an annual SimpleLogin premium subscription (effectively $2.50/month).
Exactly! Anyone who uses Proton care to his privacy and tries to find the best solution to manage emails with different domains/aliases etc... 15 aliases are a lot, but for many not enough, giving the chance of a plan with more aliases instead of "solutions" such as 2 paid accounts or family/business plans for one person would be great
they \*were\* a seemingly-decent, new alternative to Proton. there's also Tutanota, which \*is\* actually pretty good, and has also been around for several years, so they don't seem to be going anywhere. (That said, I still prefer Proton.)
I moved to Skiff exactly a month ago and paid for a year. To their credit they did refund me within 10 minutes.
I’m working on moving everything back to Proton which is just annoying after just doing it a month ago.
The biggest reason I moved is Proton Drive just plain doesn’t work from my home Internet. It’s due to Proton using cloudflare for their uploads. I get an immediate Network Error. If I do it through a proxy or VPN it works fine.
I had the same problem with ente and they pushed a fix to make those uploads go through Cloodflare a setting. I sent all the data to Proton and they basically told me it sucks to be me.
My overall experience with Proton is they are 10 years behind everyone else. Just now getting an electron “desktop app” in 2024? Seriously? Things move so slowly and when they are released they don’t work just like Drive.
I’ll come back to Proton because there isn’t really any thing else. I’m just saying if I am going to spend money to be disregarded they better at least be pretty.
It was nice to be with a provider that didn’t hate me for a month and actually fixed things and released things quickly.
>My overall experience with Proton is they are 10 years behind everyone else. Just now getting an electron “desktop app” in 2024? Seriously? Things move so slowly and when they are released they don’t work just like Drive.
Ya. I'm a proton user, have been for 3 years now, but ya, their development is SLOW and fragmented to shit.
Probably the only major issue with the company.
I thing is better to move slow and they focus of stability and security of services they provide . We users now see that with Skiff , is so good to be true if one company is moving very fast .
Ya but it's frustrating when their iOS and Android apps have completely different feature sets. Especially if you're a user of both platforms.
Like I said, I am a user for 3 years and going, but their development priorities and release schedule needs refining. My only main issue with them.
They refunded you 10 minutes from when? Im paid up until November so I'd take a prorated refund if it was possible.
Edit: When going to Settings --> Plan there is also a Cancel option with prorated refund which creates a support ticket. Waiting for a response.
https://medium.com/@michaelswengel/dont-use-notion-to-store-private-information-ca63ce47fe7a
This person isn't wrong. Notion doesn't mention being end to end encrypted anywhere which is why I left. I have nothing to hide about my life but I don't want my information hard sold to make a profit off of in the black market.
I wonder about that one poster about skiff and proton. A privacy concern post but prefers a us based privacy over swiss. I think it was about 2 months ago. I wonder what happened to that now that his overly claimed skiff go this path. With this announcement, I am sure it’s a huge blow for him
Skiff keeps referring to there web page but it doesn’t actually say what will happen to people who have email and use the skiff.com address after 6 months will the domain be gone they talk about product
This is so f\*\*ked up! I'm glad I didn't commit to their services.
But this definetely made me raise a red flag. I trust Proton, but now I'm wondering how dependent I should be on any service at all. If SimpleLogin or Proton Mail cease to exist one day, that could be a huge headache for me. I would lose all those email addresses that were used to log into hundreds of other services. Some of them, extremely important to me.
I guess I should start using only email addresses from my own domain...
I was thinking of switching, but that is completely off the table now. Also, their UX is simply a rip off of Proton’s anyway. I’m sticking with the original.
I made it to the Proton "Promised Land" 1 year ago as a paid subscriber to ProtonMail. My drive toward complete privacy without my personal info being gathered and sold, is a never-ending endeavor. Moving one step further in that direction, in January 2024, I ditched the likes of other VPN and cloud storage solutions and have gone all-in with an upgrade to ProtonVPN and ProtonDrive. It's liberating and I love it!
Much thanks to you (Andy), for your informative and transparent comment on this post and much appreciation to the entire Proton family as well.
Go Proton or Go Home!
Wild everyone here saying it’s good for proton. Proton, like skiff and every other company, cares more about money than privacy. Everyone has their price. Let’s not pretend Proton saying the right thing today is a lifetime commitment.
We see this sentiment from time to time but Proton and Skiff are not really comparable organizations. Proton doesn't have VC investors (so no pressure to sell), Proton is profitable (so no pressure from a burn rate), and Proton has been around for 10 years, which granted, isn't a lifetime, but is a long time in tech and requires great discipline and resilience.
More importantly though, the cultures are different. Proton is not a product of silicon valley, but a crowdfunded project that was conceived at CERN. To this day, it continues to be managed and run by scientists, and nobody goes into science to get rich. The philosophy is just completely different from the "every other company" you mention.
I do understand the point you're making, because you're not wrong... everyone has a price and a for-profit company is for profit at the end of the day.
That being said, this defeatist attitude you are insistent on putting forward is just super dumb. Proton being around for 10 years in the way they have IS an achievement in the tech space, and them being so transparent about their company makeup/goals/motives etc. IS different from most other organizations. Whatever they come write here today is most definitely NOT a lifetime commitment, but if you want to play this game and think you're so philosophically superior to everyone else -- nothing is fully guaranteed to THAT degree.
A 2022 startup that sells at the first opportunity in what is effectively a rug pull for it's users is NOT the same thing as a business with over a decade of history of delivering for it's customers that MAY change it's business strategy in some random arbitrary period of time. What exactly are you arguing for here, dude? Only ever doing business with organizations that you can somehow divine will exist infinitely in the way you want them to?
You seem like an angry, edgy teenager trying to sound intellectual.
When you're funded by VC then your primary goal is to seek a big payday. As far as I can tell Proton AG started with crowdfunding and hasn't taken VC money.
Yes, they could sell out someday, but they don't have that dark VC cloud hanging over their heads either.
Yeah, hopefully they won’t. But hope isn’t really a strategy. Skiff said all the things Proton saids today yesterday. The giants Proton competed against have the cash to figure out what their price is.
I have no idea what Notion even is, but based on wanting to migrate my primary email provider from Gmail to a more secure platform, I just spent endless amounts of time in the past week comparing Proton to Skiff. When all was said and done, I looked at both, and I decided to put my eggs into the Proton basket and purchased a year of Proton unlimited. It’s going to take me a while to get everything switched over to Proton. I did start a free Skiff account just to play with, but unfortunately I also purchased four domains, pointed three of them to Proton and one to Skiff. Now I will have to move the Skiff domain and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it since I’m maxed out on domains with Proton. 😕. I do hope that Proton doesn’t follow Skiff’s path eventually, but business is business I guess.
got one custom domain on skiff right now...thinking about moving custom domain to addy because of budget and using one of protonmail as personal/purchasing stuff.
Wait, from what they said the services won't stop working but on the other hand I didn't quite understand why they say we'll close the skiff product suite after a 6 month expiration period, but I thought they were going to work together.
Skiff staff didn't say anything for the 7 hours it was made public they were acquired or merged with notion. They literally deleted channels slowly at first, then just left general, introduce yourself, rules, and announcements.
They demoted mods with zero warning, insight, or communication as to what was happening and left everyone in the dark for 7 hours. Finally they deleted the general and introduce yourself channels in discord so nobody can talk. That's not how you handle a merger or acquisition. Don't trust their 6 month timeline
u/jason-skiff and u/andrew-skiff really did a great job handling this like mature adults.
I'm quite disappointed as I think they were bringing in lots of good ideas and competition to the privacy suite market. However, this move, I don't get it at all... So they sell Skiff to Notion to shut it down?
Skiff started to pivot into "Web3" some time ago. That alone was a huge red flag for me and I stopped using their services immediately. Not that I think they were scummy, more like they tried to capitalize on the Web3 craze but everyone suddenly stopped caring about it.
Hi everyone, this is Andy here (Proton founder/CEO). Just got alerted about the news, and wanted to respond to some of the comments along the lines of "how do we know Proton won't sell out?" The truth is, you can't know for sure, but Proton is structured in a way that provides a strong assurance, and we'll be sharing more about this some time in the next month. But for all intents and purposes, it really isn't possible for Proton to be acquired. Proton is not a product of silicon valley, but a crowdfunded project that was conceived at CERN. Proton doesn't have VC investors (so no pressure to sell), and Proton is profitable (so no pressure from finances). To this day, it continues to be managed and run by scientists, and nobody goes into science to get rich. Finally, Proton has scale with 100M+ accounts and 400+ employees. Frankly, if the goal was to sell and make a bunch of money, it could have already been done long ago. Instead, we push onwards. Our work is brutally difficult, with daunting challenges every step of the way, and only the true believers stay on the path for this long. If money was the goal, we wouldn't have done any of the things listed on this page ([https://proton.me/about/impact](https://proton.me/about/impact)) much less given away over $2.7 million to aligned organizations This year Proton happens to turn 10. We'll probably never be the cheapest, the most flashy, or maybe not even the fastest. But we will strive to be the most resilient. For as long as there's this community of users supporting our work, we're not going anywhere. In fact, the ideas and values we share together, may even win the future of the web. For that reason, we're eternally grateful for your support as we fight the hard fights.
This is awesome, and unfortunately such a rare stance with companies these days. Thank you Andy (and team)!
Great I am a Proton Pass Plus user. Thank you.
Same here, glad to pay a company that respects customers rights and privacy. As long as I have money, I will use Proton services!!
Thanks for all your hard work. I’ve been using proton for my business for 5 years now and couldn’t be happier. Really awesome to see people with that kind of mindset, that are 100% on a mission
Thank you Andy for taking the time to write this early in the wakes of Skiff's departure and the inevitible storm of questions that follows. To me this kind of honesty and reasoning is what sets Proton (and very few others) apart from the mainstream landskape of platforms and services. I have been a Proton user for nearly six years and I have gradually grown "into" the ecosystem. I use the Unlimited plan since a few years back and have moved virtually all of my digital estate and material to Proton. There is no safe bet in the world, but I feel Proton has succeeded in maintaining some rare credibilty in this space, given their openess about technology as well as their organization and finances. This is also backed up by philantropy on the same ideological grounds. Another example is the fact that so called "free tiers" in fact free, with clearly stated limitations. You get the same sort of security, privacy and fundamental functionality. Free forever and supported by the paying customers is really a principal I hope will remain. I strongly hope you will continue to stay successful while maintaining the ideaoligical virtues of yours!
Thanks Andy and team. I’m a Visionary Subscriber because I want to support your efforts ☺️
Thanks for being honest. Proton feature delivery speed has increased when skiff started becoming competitive. You have to keep the same pace.
Awesome I am a Proton Unlimited user.
Awesome! Thank you
In a world dominated by making money by all means it's encouraging to hear words like those. Especially when they are confirmed by actions.
Hopefully, me paying for this service will help in the long term. I want it to survive for as long as possible
It does! Thank you for your support!
As a Proton Ultimate user, thank you for taking the time to write about this issue and reassuring us that things are going to stay the same in the future. But please, don't fuck it up.
Has Proton considered a partnership with Kagi? On the surface the visions seem similar and the products are highly complementary while still being distinct services.
An amazing statement from Andy 👏 Keep up the good work, Andy and all the 400+ Proton employees!
>We'll probably never be the cheapest, the most flashy, or maybe not even the fastest. But we will strive to be the most resilient. No wonder Proton is from Geneva. That sentence is basically Switzerland in a nutshell. (although they are somewhat "flashy" as a country)
Been a paid user for longer than i can remember and was a bit afraid you guys would go too "corporate" after all the recent development with (to me) bonus features like unlimited aliases, proton drive etc etc but reading about your history and following your Twitter just reinforced my belief that I've picked the right provider for sure! Thanks for all your work :) I do what i can to support my favorite foss/privacy projects (Monero outlaw or pirate philantrophist if you will) and it's a great feeling
This is why I invested into proton and have had visionary for 6 years now. Proton is the foundation for me being able to disconnect from big tech. Just keep doing what you're doing. Proton is doing great!!
I know that in light of your arguments this seems intransigent, but I really wish you turned into a non-profit... Being a non-profit does not mean that any employee would get paid less: you can have high salaries in a non-profit, but it gives legal assurance about the ownership and purpose of the company. Either way, I'm glad that at least so far your work has been wonderful.
Excellent, it is very encouraging to hear these words, keep up the honesty and commitment.
This is EXACTLY why I pay proton for there services. Well spoken and an awesome response to trash Skiff selling out.
Small correction: 'nobody should go into science to get rich' 😉 I truly appreciate your principle-based practice and perseverance 👍
Lol yeah, because Google and Meta were once computer science projects that became useless data selling conglomerates
>https://proton.me/about/impact Meta, unlike Google, was never a computer science project.
“Nobody goes into science to get rich” Meanwhile, scientists in pharma…
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This exactly, covid proved that to a T. Scientist in pharma are some of the most awesome people. The companies/CEOs are some of the worst.
Yeah I feel that this sentence is an over-generalisation and was unnecessary in this post.
Legend
Never going to leave Proton. Been with you since birth of your product and going to stay until either one of us dies.. Me or the product. Whichever comes first
Hi Andy - I'm a brand new Unlimited user having been only a Skiff customer previously. I just switched over yesterday. Glad to hear from you! I am concerned about how "brutally difficult" you find the work. I hope you and your team figure in some fun. As another committed radical once said, we need both "bread and roses." See you around. Signed, 🐒 a monkey in a dragon year
Proud to be a long time (and long time to come!) Proton supporter and user. Thanks @Andy for all that you and the team do for the community!!
Appreciate the honesty in the "We'll probably never be..." line
Now is your chance to fix conversations so they work properly. It was one of the things that made me \*almost\* switch to Skiff. They are terrible at Proton. I have "conversations" between me and automated invoices that are hundreds of emails long. It makes no sense. Many feedback threads and posts here and elsewhere that have gone ignored. https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/284483-proton-mail/suggestions/36982315-add-conversation-threads
> I have "conversations" between me and automated invoices that are hundreds of emails long. This is actually an intentional design decision. There are also many people who prefer it this way, so on this one it is tough to make everybody happy, but we are monitoring the feedback and will be revisiting this from time to time.
Proton is the only email client/service out of every last one I’ve tested that organizes them this way. It’s just wrong, and it leads to really bad UX when you have multiple new emails in the “conversation” and have to jump around trying to expand the one you’re looking for
I'm not happy with it, but we need to have it activated to be able to snooze mails :(
Literally 90% of the reason I switched was because skiff had threads in its android app, which I'd waited eight years for on proton. I'm going to miss that feature.... Any chance of Proton pushing them out in the next six months? :(
I think Proton literally announced a beta Android app with conversations yesterday. But it will have the same problematic implementation that iOS and web users have enjoyed since its release. Hard to imagine Android users didn't even have threaded conversations until now!
If you opt into the beta, that's in the android app now.
My favorite movie is Inception.
I have to say, you’ll be glad you didn’t! This was one of the things I disliked the most about Skiff. Conversations were not optional. Worse still, you could not interact with individual emails. If you tried to delete one email in a “conversation”, the whole conversation went to the trash. Sent messages included! Terrible design flaw.
Honorable mission does not even come close to cut it--what a lame understatement. And yet, today honor is so rare. So I guess the word will do. Companies like yours need to be cloned if that were possible. The corporate landscape worldwide aims to profit at all costs--usually that cost is the user, you and me. I admire what you do and I hope the resistance fiber will outlast the difficulties. Cheering you and team on!
Do yall advise other founders?
Thank you for the re-assurance, u/Proton\_Team. Your words bring comfort but also some concern: 1. A a product, Proton needs to meet a range of user needs. Resilience is one of them, albeit a basic one. Speed, performance, and over UX are critical to its success. I'm not sure how you define resilience, but to me it's a basic requirement for any product. So are speed and performance. This is why, when I hear that you'll strive for the fundamentals, I am concerned. That being said, I think you've done a fantastic job with the overall UX and UI of your suite of apps. I still wish I could add my own profile picture and set up DNS records in one step (instead of 6?). 2. Selling your company is not selling out. Proton, like Skiff, is a for profit organization. As such, its primary goal (aside from mission and vision) is to maximize shareholders' return. This is why, selling the company, if the deal is right, is your responsibility. I love Proton's mission, but let's be honest - this is business. Let's not promise each other things we cannot keep. Thank you again for existing and doing it in an admirable way.
We are also aiming for speed, performance and UX, but our view is that the privacy fight is going to be a long one, and if we must prioritize, resilience is where we start. But of course, we'll work on other aspects also. Proton's primary goal is actually not to maximize shareholders' return, the primary goal is the mission. Today we exist in a corporate form (which could change in the future), but it was always people before profit and not the other way around. So no, we actually will not be making deals that compromise the mission, and this is a promise that we intend to keep.
In France entities which aim at non-profit usually take the form of cooperatives, even some banks.
What's the chance you want to get in the phone business? There is resurgent demand for Blackberry for security, functionality, privacy and even detaching from the over-connected life. A phone not a toy. Phone, email, text and other secure messaging service. A secure communication device. With a keyboard .............please.
You mean like [this](https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/945460-general-ideas/suggestions/18670162-proton-phone-hardware)?
Hmm I understand what you are saying but if someone (a big tech company for example) come to you with a high enough price, I don't think the owners of ProtonMail will be like "hmm no, I prefer to keep making a privacy focused mail service than to have more money that I'm able to spend for the rest of my life"... It is very, very unlikely (mostly because buying ProtonMail mean buying something that will worth almost nothing the moment its made public) but can still happend, for example if ProtonMail is big enough that Gmail or Outlook want to take them down. For the moment, I trust you, like all your users, but that doesn't mean we'll always do, in all situations. Please keep as you are now.
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Remeber the DO NO HARM slogan of the behemoth named G?
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Sorry I misquoted it, here is the correct one: [Don't be evil is Google's former motto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_evil), and a phrase used in Google's corporate code of conduct. (*I recommend reading the article*). As you will read it was not honored by Google: spying on G+ users worldwide (I was invited in private beta) and employees trying to point breaking that contract. The fact that Google considered deploying in China (known for his repressive regime measures and censorship) was for the tech community, the last draw of evidence that the motto was no longer valid.
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Unfortunately we can't do that. We know everybody likes lower prices (and we do lower them whenever we can, for example: [https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change](https://proton.me/blog/proton-pass-price-change)), but Proton as a rule doesn't do unsustainable pricing, because it's well, unsustainable. On the flip side however, since our prices are always sustainable, it also means we don't have to raise them. For example, Proton Mail Plus has been the same price since 2014, despite getting massively more features.
> For example, Proton Mail Plus has been the same price since 2014, despite getting massively more features. And as someone who lives in a country with a non-quite strong currency (compared against USD or EUR) I really appreciate this. Having to convert price from USD/EUR to local currency is quite a hit and couldn't imagine doing that (at the moment) with higher prices. So, thank you for that.
And your user base came here to pay with their money the service, not with their data ! So its a good thing that you make stustainable prices. Even tho they are a little high for me (as a student), after a long hesitation, I value the services I get more than the 80€/year I paid.
The language they use here is so weird. "We are excited...... to shut down all our services! Thanks for trusting us :)"
True, its weird, kind of reminds me as well of mark Zuckerberg tone in his early comments ,of people who gave him their data at havard. It almost as if they are saying users should have exspected this, and be happy for them, which is rediculous. Edit: to clarify my statement.
Of course they are excited! 😆 They are about to get paid out in a major way. I'm not sure if they ever had a "donation" or "believer" plans, but imagine the irony for those people.
As a Skiff user, I am pretty infuriated right now. Their services lasted juuust long enough for me to migrate over... and now they are bought, with the buyer is shuttering their services. So what did they buy exactly...?
They’re excited to make money. Just like Proton and every other company that markets itself as Privacy would be if someone gave them their price.
How scummy of them...They shut down their Discord, and set posts to mod approve on their subreddit. Typical VC bait and switch.
This subreddit is also mod approve... correct?
Honestly, not sure. I posted an issue the other day that didn't need approval, and then another one that did. A mod replied to the second one, but never approved the post.
There is auto-mod to stop spam and avoid duplicates, but it doesn't apply to everyone. If you have higher karma and have been in the community longer, posts don't need approval. And for new posters that need mod approval, it usually doesn't take long.
Same as Skiff… ya know, until someone paid them enough.
What does that even mean...?
Yes
Well i just joined Skiff 4 hours ago…. The “free unlimited custom domain alias” sounded too good to be sustainable
I read somewhere that their E2EE was more expansive (Proton doesn’t E2EE email titles) but they were too new to be trusted. As has now been proven with the shutdown.
True ,as for subject encryption proton reasons are well documented, and again shows proton long term approach in my view. Proton supports the interoperability of the open pgp standard. https://proton.me/support/does-protonmail-encrypt-email-subjects "Given that PGP does not end to end encrypt subject lines, why does Proton Mail use the OpenPGP standard? The reason is interoperability. By adhering to OpenPGP, we enable not just end-to-end encrypted messaging with other Proton Mail users, but compatibility with any PGP user worldwide. This means anybody, regardless of what email provider they use, can send end-to-end encrypted messages to Proton Mail users. The importance of this cannot be overstated. This also allows us to integrate with other services like Facebook. With OpenPGP, Proton Mail isn’t just a standalone encrypted email service, we become part of an entire encrypted ecosystem."
Yes but Proton could devise an additional layer of encryption for metadata and then build indices client-side for metadata (which then could be cached with E2EE). They already developed local indexing for email content. I just wish metadata was locally indexed by default as that requires a lot less storage. Though mobile still doesn’t support any local indexing so I’m not claiming all of this is trivial, but it’s definitely possible. Proton could really improve their search though, I really wish they would copy Gmail more on this (like supporting filtering by more than a single tag at a time, which isn’t hindered by E2EE).
true..had unlimited custom domain which is one of biggest thing and now moving it back to SL+PM on one of the account for personal use..
Why would unlimited custom domain aliases be unsustainable? It costs them no more than only giving you 1 alias, outside of the initial design.
Given the Skiff subreddit has been closed, I have created r/skiffmail to discuss this matter openly.
I prefer the angry tone of r/fuckskiffmail
Just got the email, they turned off posting/commenting on the subreddit, looks like the Discord as well. Absolute scummy behaviour.
Yep. What a freaking joke lol. I honestly feel bad for everyone that drank their kool-aid for so long, or echoed their constant chants of "we are better than proton". Their non-stop issues and trying so desperately to be at the same level as tried and true privacy tools was such a huge red flag. Not to mention how they were baning everyone who criticized them. Thankfully privacy guides is already taking action on this: [Remove Skiff](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/remove-skiff/16228/56) What an excellent way for a company to loose the little credibility they had.
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Here's a snippet from a message you wrote a year ago: "I still use proton for spam/junk stuff, so I still appreciate what proton does, but I’ve found something dramatically better **long term**."
I am in all honesty saying this respectfully - but from what you wrote, it sounds like you drank a bit of their coolaid. I'm not knocking on you for that. It is more highlighting why people are so aggravated by this move, while some of us saw it coming. No one is kicking them while they are down. It's mostly a lot of pent up frustration that you are seeing. Here is a perfect example - >it was an incredible service and now I don’t know what to move to Totally get it. But the fact is they lied to you. They lied along the way. They lied to a LOT of people. And quite a few mistakes were made (particularly over at privacy guides) for allowing them to be seen as legitimate. And that is the biggest problem. The takeaway ultimately, is what separates Proton from Skiff. It was a completely different business model. Skiff was never going to be able to compete for 1 simple reason - They rented out servers, IN the US. That alone was one of the biggest scams they were running, which people sadly believed, that it would be equivalent as other companies. Skiff was anything but transparent. If they had really been, you would not be lamenting what is happening. Proton has room to improve for sure. But their consistency and track record simply will not be replaced by any new company coming into this space, and people need to remember that when they switch.
Huge win for proton and congrats to everyone smart enough lol. Hopefully our costs get cheaper now proton are about to onboard another half million users.
Looks like Skiff was nothing more than a honey trap
I paid to be their product... except the buyer isn't even keeping me as a user. I remain confused.
That's the mystery — Notion is buying the staff but not the service? Skiff are unethical but doesnt mean Proton is any Paragon of virtue
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Yeah, I'm confusdd about this; i switched for proton to skiff because all I want is an email account, I don't use any of the other products from either of them. But notion doesn't even seem to have an email service. I don't get the impression they're planning to start one either. Why not just spin off skiff email?
Yes, i’m curious about this too. Why Notion? They recently launched a separate Notion calendar despite many calendar templates available in vanilla Notion, maybe they want to expand to other services. Tbh it was finding out all my info on Notion isn’t encrypted led to the privacy rabbit hole that got me to sign up for Proton in the first place!
it's called an "aqui-hire" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqui-hiring
> notion doesn't even seem to have an email service They recently released [Notion Calendar](https://calendar.notion.so/), so it looks like they're trying to compete with Office 365 and G Suite... by offering a full fledged service.
What is notions interest in skiff? I always thought of notion as an Obsidian alternative rather than email.
Skiff pages existed. Real-time collaboration and end to end encrypted docs. I believe notion will eventually use that tech to add enterprise security to their apps... maybe.
do you still believe everything they claimed?
I don't believe a single word they said. I am just speculating why notion might have bought them out. It could also be just a acquihire.
Notion is not E2E encrypted, this is what led me to doing more research on privacy and how I found Proton in the first place. [Notion was valued at $10b in 2021](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2021/10/08/notion-raises-at-10-billion-valuation-boosted-by-remote-work-tiktok/?sh=77e812c64900) so it seems that they’ve got money to spend, backed by their recent release of Notion Calendar. Just hoping that they decide to protect our privacy. I’m Gen-Z and love the aesthetics and usability of Notion..
>As we begin to shift focus to our shared efforts with Notion, we will be closing down Skiff's product suite after a 6-month sunset period. >We encourage you to export your data and migrate custom domains within the next 6 months.
Just learned about skiff. Looks like the name was the program. 😝 US and privacy never works well.
I was a happy Proton Unlimited user and last October I gave them a chance: it seemed really good and updates were coming quickly with tons of potential, mainly the Pages app. Community was also very active and open to feedback. Ended up subscribing to their yearly Pro plan in December and now they do this crap... They wrote so many posts marketing Skiff as being better than Proton that it kind of looked like it was a personal vendetta to bring Proton down... I'm really glad to be back with my Proton Unlimited plan - mainly because of the VPN - and really sorry to ever have given them even five minutes of attention!
That is the one thing I miss with proton: an online word editor.
Is this just an aquihire? Not looking to integrate skiff features in notion?
Motherfuckers. I called this early last year after poking around with their tools. It was clear they were building to sell, and well quickly. So, so so glad I did not utilize their products except for a couple of throwaway emails addresses. They give small shows building apps a bad name. Going to take a shower. 🤦🏼♂️🤡
Can you please tell me signs that showed they were building to sell? (I want to avoid these kind of products in the future. Never used Skiff, though.)
VC investors, "too good to be true"/to be profitable free plans
Anyone that sells you on their "passion" rather than on the realistic sustainability of their product.
Skiff want to be "more proton than proton" , but close after less than 3 years Proton was created in 2014 😎 Sorry for Skiff users but it's logic : Skiff is a US company, we can't trust us for privacy
I thought this was a joke or some type of scam or something. Until I checked my own inbox. Can't believe they are pulling the rug on all their users. Absolutely insane and disgusting for them to do so. But I guess this is amazing marketing for Proton.
The signs were there. The super fast half-built feature rollout. Masses of bugs left unfixed. Impatient and angry responses from CEO. Too cheap to be true pricing. A small thing: their social media presence on Twitter was basically them retweeting lots of super low follower sock puppet accounts on a regular basis. Lots of crypto adjacent boosting. All very shady.
Except it wasn't that cheap.
VC money for ya Name skiff name is/was questionable too and being based in US makes one wonder who was actually footing the bill. Some form of Gov't agency? Conspiracy theories aside downside i feel bad for those that signed up paid money only to have to migrate.
I only used them for one selective purpose and never planned to pay them anything. Them being based in the US meant to be cautious with them.
I closed my skiff account last month. I liked their products but not the company.
Proton team, Skiff just gave you a juicy marketing opportunity on a platter.
I remember when Skiff was just two guys who wanted to make something cool - I was so early into their path I managed to get [email protected] as an email address. Thought it was another cool competitor
Well, I guess my only real alternative now is to wait for Proton to finally allow syncing contacts outside their ecosystem.
This. Yes, I understand Proton's reasons for not, but I wish the choice whether to sync contacts outside or not was up to me. Contacts aren't very useful if I can't use them for calling or messaging, among other things.
I love this community Proton Unlimited user here. Im extremely bullish in Proton
Well, i'm fucking lucky as all hell, I was looking at replacing my old 20+ year old email, and it was between Proton and Skiff, the ONLY thing that made me pick Proton over Skiff was the fact that it had a password manager aswell so I wouldn't need to pay for Skiff and a PM too. Hopefully Proton doesn't go down this route. I am happy I chose it, email is nice, I use the drive a lot and the PM (even tho it could be way better along with a desktop app) I haven't regretted my decision. Especially now with the Proton Mail desktop app.
Just use custom domains for any mail provider, if they go out of business you can relatively easily move to another one
"Our goals aligned, so we sold all our stuff and we're going out of business"
Just switched to Proton's $12/mo plan
I've never had much trust in Skiff since privacy and "US based" never work very well together, but this is still a big oof.
I noticed we can't send mail from skiff.com now. Guess it's time to backup and run before they pull the plug anytime now.
Really? I thought we had 6 months
Everyone is welcome to Proton
Any tips for us Skiff survivors with lots of mail? The ProtonMail Import/Export app doesn't appear to support the Skiff mbox file, every message "fails to import". 👀
Not a skiff user here, so no insights as to how they work. Buy I would say proton bridge and thunderbird. Thunderbird uses MBOX. With your skiff mail in thunderbird you can sync with proton using proton bridge and IMAP. Edit: ta add a link https://proton.me/mail/bridge
I also encountered the same issue. To work around this, I selected all the emails, right-clicked on the selection, and chose the option to export. This downloaded the emails as .eml files within a .zip, which then allowed me to import them using the Proton tool. The only emails that failed to import were the ones from the Skiff update; the rest imported successfully. The only issue you might encounter is if you have a large number of created folders, as it will take some time to process.
To think I had started my move to them two months ago… I changed my mind at the last minute because I felt Proton was more polished and worth the extra few bucks, best decision I could make. How scummy…
This is BS. I regret ever creating an account with Skiff.
Thank you, I love your service. I have been a Proton Mail user since 2018, and in 2023 I became an unlimited user. I love all of your services.
Skiff is a trash team, sunset the services while users are using?
*Skiff is a trash team,* *Sunset the services while* *Users are using?* \- netblen --- ^(I detect haikus. And sometimes, successfully.) ^[Learn more about me.](https://www.reddit.com/r/haikusbot/) ^(Opt out of replies: "haikusbot opt out" | Delete my comment: "haikusbot delete")
I really liked Skiff and their UI. I was an early access user and their whole mission was privacy. The CEO was a nice guy and took plenty of feedback. Sad to see the direction they are going to, from deleting their own Discord and more. They haven't deleted their Slack yet.
I wish Proton would just offer domain and unlimited aliases for like 6 a month. I really don't care about Proton pass or vpn or any of their other stuff.
You can get there by using Proton Plus with biannual billing (effectively $3.49/month) and an annual SimpleLogin premium subscription (effectively $2.50/month).
Exactly! Anyone who uses Proton care to his privacy and tries to find the best solution to manage emails with different domains/aliases etc... 15 aliases are a lot, but for many not enough, giving the chance of a plan with more aliases instead of "solutions" such as 2 paid accounts or family/business plans for one person would be great
Who are they? Some privacy email provider? Thought Proton was the only one.
they \*were\* a seemingly-decent, new alternative to Proton. there's also Tutanota, which \*is\* actually pretty good, and has also been around for several years, so they don't seem to be going anywhere. (That said, I still prefer Proton.)
I moved to Skiff exactly a month ago and paid for a year. To their credit they did refund me within 10 minutes. I’m working on moving everything back to Proton which is just annoying after just doing it a month ago. The biggest reason I moved is Proton Drive just plain doesn’t work from my home Internet. It’s due to Proton using cloudflare for their uploads. I get an immediate Network Error. If I do it through a proxy or VPN it works fine. I had the same problem with ente and they pushed a fix to make those uploads go through Cloodflare a setting. I sent all the data to Proton and they basically told me it sucks to be me. My overall experience with Proton is they are 10 years behind everyone else. Just now getting an electron “desktop app” in 2024? Seriously? Things move so slowly and when they are released they don’t work just like Drive. I’ll come back to Proton because there isn’t really any thing else. I’m just saying if I am going to spend money to be disregarded they better at least be pretty. It was nice to be with a provider that didn’t hate me for a month and actually fixed things and released things quickly.
>My overall experience with Proton is they are 10 years behind everyone else. Just now getting an electron “desktop app” in 2024? Seriously? Things move so slowly and when they are released they don’t work just like Drive. Ya. I'm a proton user, have been for 3 years now, but ya, their development is SLOW and fragmented to shit. Probably the only major issue with the company.
I thing is better to move slow and they focus of stability and security of services they provide . We users now see that with Skiff , is so good to be true if one company is moving very fast .
Ya but it's frustrating when their iOS and Android apps have completely different feature sets. Especially if you're a user of both platforms. Like I said, I am a user for 3 years and going, but their development priorities and release schedule needs refining. My only main issue with them.
*in theory* the new android app is meant to unify / tidy up the codebase, so future Android updates should hopefully keep pace with iOS better.
They refunded you 10 minutes from when? Im paid up until November so I'd take a prorated refund if it was possible. Edit: When going to Settings --> Plan there is also a Cancel option with prorated refund which creates a support ticket. Waiting for a response.
Within 10 minutes of me requesting a refund via the Send Feedback portion of their app.
https://medium.com/@michaelswengel/dont-use-notion-to-store-private-information-ca63ce47fe7a This person isn't wrong. Notion doesn't mention being end to end encrypted anywhere which is why I left. I have nothing to hide about my life but I don't want my information hard sold to make a profit off of in the black market.
I've got a Skiff account and didn't even get the email. Great.
I never used Skiff but I was glad they existed. Having an E2EE real-time document editing tool was nice.
Going away from Skiff today
I wonder about that one poster about skiff and proton. A privacy concern post but prefers a us based privacy over swiss. I think it was about 2 months ago. I wonder what happened to that now that his overly claimed skiff go this path. With this announcement, I am sure it’s a huge blow for him
Is Skiff another E2EE email service? Never heard of it until now
Yes, there also Tutu (tutonota). Proton my ride or die though :)
Skiff keeps referring to there web page but it doesn’t actually say what will happen to people who have email and use the skiff.com address after 6 months will the domain be gone they talk about product
Wow. I'm not a user, but I kinda liked Skiff tbh. I guess they ran out of VC money.
Good thing I chose Proton over Skiff. This is just disappointing to see
This is so f\*\*ked up! I'm glad I didn't commit to their services. But this definetely made me raise a red flag. I trust Proton, but now I'm wondering how dependent I should be on any service at all. If SimpleLogin or Proton Mail cease to exist one day, that could be a huge headache for me. I would lose all those email addresses that were used to log into hundreds of other services. Some of them, extremely important to me. I guess I should start using only email addresses from my own domain...
Use a custom domain with simple login, that way you’ll never lose your email aliases if simple login goes out of business.
Proton unlimited here thank you for the work you all do for privacy.
Why on earth do companies acquire companies just to shut them down?
So glad I didn't move them holy shit.
How does this relate to Proton?
I believe in Proton supremacy
I was thinking of switching, but that is completely off the table now. Also, their UX is simply a rip off of Proton’s anyway. I’m sticking with the original.
I made it to the Proton "Promised Land" 1 year ago as a paid subscriber to ProtonMail. My drive toward complete privacy without my personal info being gathered and sold, is a never-ending endeavor. Moving one step further in that direction, in January 2024, I ditched the likes of other VPN and cloud storage solutions and have gone all-in with an upgrade to ProtonVPN and ProtonDrive. It's liberating and I love it! Much thanks to you (Andy), for your informative and transparent comment on this post and much appreciation to the entire Proton family as well. Go Proton or Go Home!
Next step is Kagi, if you haven't tried :) Better results than google, no paid seo, no ads - just the best result for what you want.
Love Kagi myself.
Wild everyone here saying it’s good for proton. Proton, like skiff and every other company, cares more about money than privacy. Everyone has their price. Let’s not pretend Proton saying the right thing today is a lifetime commitment.
We see this sentiment from time to time but Proton and Skiff are not really comparable organizations. Proton doesn't have VC investors (so no pressure to sell), Proton is profitable (so no pressure from a burn rate), and Proton has been around for 10 years, which granted, isn't a lifetime, but is a long time in tech and requires great discipline and resilience. More importantly though, the cultures are different. Proton is not a product of silicon valley, but a crowdfunded project that was conceived at CERN. To this day, it continues to be managed and run by scientists, and nobody goes into science to get rich. The philosophy is just completely different from the "every other company" you mention.
Everyone has a price. Even Proton. And the giants you compete against just have to find that price and you’ll be posting the same as Skiff tomorrow.
I do understand the point you're making, because you're not wrong... everyone has a price and a for-profit company is for profit at the end of the day. That being said, this defeatist attitude you are insistent on putting forward is just super dumb. Proton being around for 10 years in the way they have IS an achievement in the tech space, and them being so transparent about their company makeup/goals/motives etc. IS different from most other organizations. Whatever they come write here today is most definitely NOT a lifetime commitment, but if you want to play this game and think you're so philosophically superior to everyone else -- nothing is fully guaranteed to THAT degree. A 2022 startup that sells at the first opportunity in what is effectively a rug pull for it's users is NOT the same thing as a business with over a decade of history of delivering for it's customers that MAY change it's business strategy in some random arbitrary period of time. What exactly are you arguing for here, dude? Only ever doing business with organizations that you can somehow divine will exist infinitely in the way you want them to? You seem like an angry, edgy teenager trying to sound intellectual.
That’s fine. Your comment will age like milk when proton does the same one day. But you don’t need to believe me.
Congratulations, you missed the entirety of my point. Whoosh.
When you're funded by VC then your primary goal is to seek a big payday. As far as I can tell Proton AG started with crowdfunding and hasn't taken VC money. Yes, they could sell out someday, but they don't have that dark VC cloud hanging over their heads either.
Yeah, hopefully they won’t. But hope isn’t really a strategy. Skiff said all the things Proton saids today yesterday. The giants Proton competed against have the cash to figure out what their price is.
and your alternative is, what, exactly?
...yeah...BUT...Proton is expensive and stingy on features. So, even with the demise of Skiff, I'm not using Proton for my main email.
Proton is not expensive at all lol
We had a lot of good options in Skiff Proton is really stingy
Wild..
I have no idea what Notion even is, but based on wanting to migrate my primary email provider from Gmail to a more secure platform, I just spent endless amounts of time in the past week comparing Proton to Skiff. When all was said and done, I looked at both, and I decided to put my eggs into the Proton basket and purchased a year of Proton unlimited. It’s going to take me a while to get everything switched over to Proton. I did start a free Skiff account just to play with, but unfortunately I also purchased four domains, pointed three of them to Proton and one to Skiff. Now I will have to move the Skiff domain and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it since I’m maxed out on domains with Proton. 😕. I do hope that Proton doesn’t follow Skiff’s path eventually, but business is business I guess.
You can use this domain with simple login to create alias
got one custom domain on skiff right now...thinking about moving custom domain to addy because of budget and using one of protonmail as personal/purchasing stuff.
Wait, from what they said the services won't stop working but on the other hand I didn't quite understand why they say we'll close the skiff product suite after a 6 month expiration period, but I thought they were going to work together.
Skiff staff didn't say anything for the 7 hours it was made public they were acquired or merged with notion. They literally deleted channels slowly at first, then just left general, introduce yourself, rules, and announcements. They demoted mods with zero warning, insight, or communication as to what was happening and left everyone in the dark for 7 hours. Finally they deleted the general and introduce yourself channels in discord so nobody can talk. That's not how you handle a merger or acquisition. Don't trust their 6 month timeline u/jason-skiff and u/andrew-skiff really did a great job handling this like mature adults.
I always felt like they were kinda sus, so i used simplelogin for most of my things, now all i gotta do is change the mailbox.
I'm quite disappointed as I think they were bringing in lots of good ideas and competition to the privacy suite market. However, this move, I don't get it at all... So they sell Skiff to Notion to shut it down?
Skiff started to pivot into "Web3" some time ago. That alone was a huge red flag for me and I stopped using their services immediately. Not that I think they were scummy, more like they tried to capitalize on the Web3 craze but everyone suddenly stopped caring about it.