marcopol

They were hit by a DDoS that was so big it's suspected to be a nation state. Under those circumstances, their ISP and hosting provider didn't really give then a choice and basically forced them to pay the ransom, which you can read about here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/05/proto...

The magnitude of the attack would have killed most services, but ProtonMail managed to mitigate the attack and went as far as becoming their own ISP to prevent getting in this situation in the future.

My two cents on this making them a pretty rare company.

ProtonMail's mission is to keep your emails secure and they are relentlessly working to enforce and evolve this goal.

Giving the history of the team, coming from CERN and highly educated in MIT, Harvard and Stanford, I would not bet for a better company in the encryption space to survive better than them.

I don't understand your point related the pricing table. They are 100% community backed, started from a crowdfunding and they are surviving in an industry where email is considered free due to the other players in the market making profits with ads and data exploitation. It's normal for PM to limit the free account because it's based on a freemium model. The limitations, however, do not affect your experience and they offer you the same quality of security as the paid accounts.

Which in my opinion is pretty sweet. You should just check it out and see how it "feels" :) I pay for it but this is my choice because I support the mission and I want them to succeed.

Cheers,

Where did you email them? They're known to have one of the best support out there.

Yes, they don't. Check their statement on the new Swiss law here:

https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law/

Actually, they are not. They are excepted from the law as they are not big telecommunications providers in Switzerland. ProtonVPN is not storing logs and you can see the 2017 update on their blog here: https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law/

Below snip from blog:

"In the months since the law was first introduced, we have had repeated contact with the Swiss government and held a meeting at our office together with legal counsel and members of the PTSS. In our meetings, we discussed the practical challenges of implementing such a law, and helped to advise policy makers on the most sensible implementation. We appreciate that the Swiss government has recognized the leading role that Proton Technologies AG plays in developing the cybersecurity tools of the future, along with the role that we play in the economic re-orientation of Geneva, and Switzerland as a whole towards the high tech sector, and sought a meeting with us to discuss how to ensure both security and privacy in the digital age. As a participant in these discussions, we can confirm unequivocally that upon implementation, the provisions regarding data retention introduced by the BÜPF will exempt companies like ProtonMail and ProtonVPN which are not major telecommunications operators. This is in addition to the points in the article below, which still hold."

You can test the Plus account by signing up for the Free plan on the Windows client. You have 7 days Plus ProtonVPN trial https://protonvpn.com/

They updated the blog post here: https://protonmail.com/blog/swiss-surveillance-law/ Doesn't apply to ProtonMail and ProtonVpn.

That is incorrect. ProtonMail has iOS, Android and Webmail.

It allows integration with IMAP-enabled third-party email clients (like Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Outlook) through an application now in closed beta only for paying ProtonMail users. You can learn more about it here: https://protonmail.com/bridge/

cheers