We switched to Proton Mail
I'm not a prominent security expert, but I have always been concerned with basic data hygiene.
And I'm not perfect: I never was on Facebook, but I massively used Twitter before it became a cesspool. For many years, all my business mail (Merkapt and then Innovation Copilots) has been managed with Fastmail to ensure a decent level of security. Fastmail is a solid solution. It's fast, well-managed, and offers out-of-the-box proper privacy. For quite some time, though, I had the itch to get on a full-on security-first email solution.
Enters Proton Mail.
Proton Mail was founded in 2014 by scientists and engineers from CERN to create a secure and private email service, especially in response to growing concerns about mass surveillance and data privacy. Based in Switzerland, Proton Mail benefits from strong privacy laws and offers end-to-end encryption, meaning even Proton can’t read users' messages. Compared to mainstream email services like Gmail or Outlook, Proton Mail prioritizes privacy over convenience or integration with ad-based ecosystems. While it lacks some of the enterprise-level features of bigger platforms, Proton Mail is often considered the gold standard among privacy-focused alternatives.
Is it the perfect email service? No. It's close enough, though. It's admittedly slower than the proverbial Fastmail, and everything they do in the email client is quite vanilla. All the expected features are there; nothing remarkable. We could have a full discussion on what's wrong with email and why nothing has been invented to make this daily business tool vaguely more efficient in the last twenty years, but this is not the time.
Again, it works out of the box without me having to set up a Linux server in my office or whatever home-brew solution "real" experts would pick over working with a third party. But compared to Fastmail, it's a big step up. And the "based in Switzerland" feature in our current geopolitics? Quite interesting. My main gripe with them so far? The purple color scheme of their logos.
Now, is all this that important for a small boutique consulting agency like us?
No.
Even though we regularly work with European companies in the defense or banking sector, we never have access to any sensitive information beyond some early knowledge of new product launches in some cases.
But again, data hygiene.
PS. I wish it were an infomercial, as I would be happy not to pay for Proton Mail for a while (it's not expensive, though). But it's not, and I have no coupons for you 😌
