Post by @markotway@mastodonapp.uk
So here’s the thing. My entire life is on Proton: email, calendar, documents, VPN, all my passwords, all my ID, all my important data.
My annual subscription is up at the end of January.
If they don’t oust Andy Yen by then, I’m out. The question is where?
Infomaniak seems to offer most of what Proton does but they also use AI.
What other options are there? I’m seeing people suggesting email alternatives. But I need a whole lot more than that.
@clacksee
I started using proton about five years ago. I was tempted by their password manager, etc., but then got nervous about all eggs in one basket.
Mailbox and runbox are my shortlist. Passwords are covered by keepassxc, need to pick a VPN. Bit of a deadline, my account renews next week...
@mikerspencer
Ooh, yikes. At least I have time to decide. If I were in your shoes, I’d switch to monthly renewal and tell @protonprivacy why your doing it and that you’ll move if they don’t lose the dead weight.
@clacksee
Good shout on monthly, I hadn't thought of that as an option.
It's not going to be quick as I've a few addresses to migrate...
@protonprivacy
@mikerspencer @protonprivacy
Yeah, same. I have two main email accounts but I’ve also got a gazillion aliases. I thought I was being so clever setting those up. But now they’re going to complicate moving.
@clacksee @mikerspencer @protonprivacy for the love of {$deity}, please get yourself a domain and use that for email, so your provider becomes agnostic and irrelevant. Then you can switch at will simply.
@markotway @mikerspencer
Yep. Just done that. Doesn’t solve everything. But does make some things easier.
@clacksee @mikerspencer @protonprivacy I saw someone this week who switched all their emails to Proton as part of their de-Google project, and had updated all their banks, contacts etc with the new email addresses, and then the Proton CEO news dropped and they were like "OMG, I can't go through that again". Their own domain would have made it trivial.
@markotway @mikerspencer
Not trivial. The changing of the email bit might be trivial (unless you use email aliases). But if you use Proton for everything, it’s still a significant undertaking.
@clacksee @markotway @mikerspencer for what it's worth, I originally de-Googled onto Proton mail but then de-Protoned the last time Andy did something stupid and landed on Fastmail. I setup a domain when I went to Proton so the initial migration to update all of my accounts was a pain, but the second migration was actually trivial. And most email providers offer options to migrate so it's usually a matter of clicking a few buttons and voila, you're good to go.
@clacksee @markotway @mikerspencer I should also say that my original migration onto Proton was done over the course of months. I started with my most critical accounts (financials, socials, etc.), then just moved a bit at a time. I also took that opportunity to delete accounts that I no longer needed.
The only thing that sucked was moving TOTPs out of Proton Pass. I'm sure there was an easier method, but I had to get everything then extract the TOTPs separately to load into KeePass XC.
@thekerker @markotway @mikerspencer
The most difficult part of moving will be all the anti-spam email aliases. I’m taking steps to ensure that doesn’t happen again (bought a couple domains). But it’s not a quick or easy process moving them all.
@clacksee @markotway @mikerspencer exit being difficult is by design.
With a domain have a look at purelymail for email hosting, have used for a few years and been happy with them no data harvesting and can recommend.
@curiously @clacksee @markotway @mikerspencer
Which domain service is recommended these days? I'm in the EU so that gets a bit more weight, but also need to be trustable