Account Settings

• Recovery: With everything client-encrypted, Proton's teams cannot restore an account, leaving you responsibility of key preservation. Depending on your level of anonymity required, you may choose email and phone number as recovery methods or, for the truly elusive, a recovery phrase and recovery file. At Proton, regaining account access and decrypting content are separate processes, except for the recovery phrase which manages both.
• Two-factor authentication: An obvious choice for most, unless you need your account to be entirely untraceable, in which case you may want to avoid linking a 2FA to your phone's authentication app.
• Security logs: By default, access logs don't include IP addresses, but you can enable this feature for more comprehensive records. However, if you want to avoid any potential traces to your identity, don't activate IP logging. You can erase logs at any time.

• Account deletion is immediate and irreversible, unlike Google, Facebook, or Microsoft accounts, that afford a 30-day grace period. Tread lightly in the settings menu, as there are few steps before reaching the point of no return.
• Free accounts face deletion after one year of inactivity, with no hope of reactivating the username or restoring the content. Ensure you log in at least once a year, or subscribe at some point to guarantee eternal account life.

Email

• With paid plans, you can have up to 15 aliases, which is quite handy if you'd rather avoid juggling multiple accounts.
• You can also manage custom domain names, with strong security features (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).
• On the flip side, due to encryption, Proton cannot read the content of the emails, which induces some limitations: no tabs in the inbox to automatically sort your notifications and newsletters, and no convenient “Smart Compose” feature.

Drive

• First and foremost, the fact that Proton has zero knowledge of the content of my Drive, including metadata such as folder and files names.
• A clean, minimalist, and highly functional interface.
• The absence of activity logs, which is a significant contrast to Google Drive, where metadata and logs are retained indefinitely. With Proton, once a file is deleted, it's as if it never existed. Rename a file, and its previous name becomes unknown.
• Thoughtful features for file sharing, such as the ability to add a password and set an expiration date.

• No desktop application for local file synchronization as of now, but it's reportedly on the roadmap for 2023.
• Unlike Google Drive, there isn't a built-in file editor like Sheets, Docs, or Slides. When migrating, you must convert your native Drive files to Microsoft Office formats, and they won't be editable online.

Calendar and contacts

VPN

• Security standards: As you would expect from Proton, it maintains a strict no-log policy and high security standards. For the first time in my life, I actually read their privacy policy.
• Connectivity: Crucially for a VPN, it offers a wide selection of 67 countries and 3000 servers with fast connectivity. While the performance of paid servers is good, I don’t know about the free servers though.
• Streaming experience: Many of their servers are not detected as VPNs by streaming providers like Prime Video and Netflix, so I no longer need to disconnect for streaming services, unlike my experience with Mullvad. But ChatGPT seem to dislike them, it disconnects at almost every prompt.
• Advanced features: All the advanced features of a serious VPN, multi-hopping for enhanced security, kill switch, several protocols including Wireguard, and an integrated malware blocker.
• Apps: The mobile and desktop app are stable, unobtrusive, with a clean interface and a range of options that you can play with.
• Chrome extension: They also offer a convenient Chrome extension with split tunneling, but I experience frequent disconnections, which is irritating.