1. This is a nice feature, and you should expidite it through beta ASAP, but it's no replacement for open protocols which have been standard for decades and are supported on every other email provider ever.

2. The proprietary bridge which only supports paid users and communicates with protonmail over a proprietary API. Give me a break.

3. "Open sourcing soon" isn't the same as "open source". Until you fulfill this promise it's not worth anything.

Also, while I have a Protonmail rep on the line, your mail server sends invalid Message-ID headers. I sent an email about this to [email protected], is that box monitored?

1. The web client export been live since May IIRC, the support page just hasn't been updated yet. The main issue with that is that very few people want to export their encrypted blobs, they naturally want the plaintext. So we need a decryption layer on the client, hence the client-side tools.

2. I don't see the issue with the API. Yes, we developed a separate API, because IMAP is several decades old, ridiculously inefficient, and wasn't designed with encryption in mind. The paid restriction may be lifted once we complete certain infrastructure, one major reason it's there that we were concerned about bandwidth.

3. I agree, and we're pushing as hard as we can for this. The latest mobile releases were the first ones on our latest API, so that will help. That said, the web client IS open source and anyone can use that locally and see exactly how the client-server interaction is handled in our API.

Yes, it's monitored. I was notified of this problem today and will look into it.

1. This is understandable.

2. Your criticism of IMAP is awfully convenient when it allows you to design a platform which has vendor lock-in. IMAP might not be designed for encryption but people have been using it for PGP since the start and it's worked fine. Every other email provider does fine with the bandwidth. You're a terrible email provider if your bandwidth constraints don't even allow for IMAP. Having an API is fine, but it's no replacement for open and standard protocols.

3. Excellent. You'll still hear me criticize Protonmail for this until the promise is fulfilled, though. You don't need the software to be perfect to make it open source, you know.

>Yes, it's monitored. I was notified of this problem today and will look into it.

Thanks!

2. As said in 1, we have export now via multiple avenues. Some are paid, but the import/export tool certainly won't be for the general release and the bridge status may change too. It's taken a little while but there's no vendor lock-in and it has nothing to do with the protocol the tools use to talk to the server.

3. True, but part of open-sourcing is people building stuff to interface with the API and I don't want people building stuff on obsolete interfaces which might further delay dropping support for them.

2. The IMAP/SMTP bridge being proprietary and paid-only is really the biggest grievance I have with Protonmail. It's so mind-bogglingly unacceptable. I could forgive your servers not speaking IMAP/SMTP if the bridge wasn't like this. You should fix this and you should fix it yesterday.

3. People can reverse engineer it today and do the same thing. People have done this. You should just open it up already.

2. Can the community build an OSS bridge themselves or is it the use of your API that requires a paid acct?

I've been developing such a thing, mainly for git-send-email and CardDAV sync: https://github.com/emersion/hydroxide

A bit of both, though the API restriction will be relaxed soon. We'd much prefer to open-source the bridge and have the community contribute there though. Hopefully we can get there soon.