I’ve been searching for good and secure 2FA alternatives for services like Google Authenticator and Apple Password. Out of everything I’ve seen, but haven’t tried yet, Proton looked like the most appealing one, especially given the amount of built-in features it has to offer. Have you used its services? Are they any valid? Is it worth paying for?
I’ve been a Proton user since their closed Beta and a paying user and honestly, I’m really happy. They are really committed to open-source, encryption and privacy.
The only negative thing is the feature parity across devices. Like the Android app having features that the IOS app doesn’t (and / or vice versa).
Been paying for Proton over 5 years and am very satisfied. They’re well established and continually improving their product. Note: Security is incredibly tight, so if you join up, be sure to get your recovery codes. Without them you will not recover access if you lose your password.
google authenticator is not a service. just a small app generating numbers from a code and time. the whole point of it is not to be in the cloud, but locally on your phone.
bitwarden also allows 2fa code generating, but keeping your passes and 2fa at the same time is dumb as f. even bitwarden admitted this, yet they are still doin this. i dont get it.
anyway if you want to use a 2fa app go get ente, aegis, authenticator pro. offline, opensource, allows export for phone change, allows biometric login. this is the way.
both proton and tuta treats their free users like crap and bans them for trivial reasons, wouldnt trust them with 2fa codes.
I think proton is probably better than gmail. But at the end of the day, you still trust a private entity with your own data. It’s always a trade-off.
For me, I stopped using gmail when Google became pure evil. The Google we now see is inacceptable. It has to go. It also became too greedy, which is why it nerfed its search results. It does not WANT people to find something useful anymore. Look at how it went against ublock origin. That is ethically questionable what Google died here, along with its manifesto-lies (gorhill countered that already, so read his blog explanation - he is spot on. Google is pure and utter Evil.)
Never go full on with any company.
Just use their best services.
Don’t use all of its services. Never get into rabbit hole of ecosystem. That’s what google did and now proton is doing the same.
Now I’m tending to standalone independent services only such as mullvad vpn, free proton and tuta mail, bitwarden, firefox+ubo, Pcloud, signal, session…etc
DECENTRALISE YOURSELF
NEVER EVER GET INTO ANY ECOSYSTEM SERVICES
No. Support sucks. And, if you do make the switch to Proton, do not go all in. I made that mistake and was locked out of my proton account for about a week waiting for them to respond to my pleas for help.
Its not a bad choice but I would recommend using your own domain to be able to switch the provider if Proton doesn’t work out for you.
I’m just a bit annoyed at them for relying on Google Services for push notifications on Android, so on a fully degoogled phone you need to open the app to get messages.
I was using Proton for about 2 years. Overall an ok experience. Switched to mailbox because of the whole in-between layer apps. It is more convenient for me to use something that follows the standards.
I was a Proton user for many years and recently moved to Fastmail.
I am very happy as a paying customer on the Duo plan. Sure there are a few rough edges here and there, but it’s rock steady and reliable. I’m glad I switched from Google. The VPN is particularly good.
I use KeePassXC for password management and 2FA, and Syncthing to sync it with my phone.
I’ve been a paying customer for several months and I am very happy.
I would absolutely reccomend Mail and Pass, they’re the services I’ve found myself liking the most. VPN works, and for plus/free users the free version is very competent (it’s used a lot in my country for safety!)
I like pass in particular because of its included email aliasing in the paid tier, and because I find the App to be a lot smoother than bitwarden on my phone and browser extension. Otherwise, Bitwarden is still the best one out there.
For 2fa I recommend Ente better. The app is brilliant and is very safe. I can also recommend their Photos service. It feels a lot like Google’s, is reasonably priced, and works fantastic.
Drive honestly I don’t think is very usable yet. I do use it to store sensitive documents, but it takes forever to sync and download files (which makes sense tbf) the storage is very small, and because of how safe it is, it doesn’t really work well for a lot of the useful things cloud storage allows. I would reccomend Nextcloud instead, personally.
I don’t really use the other apps so I can’t comment on them.
I’m a Proton customer and it is 100% worth it, I literally have the 2 year plan
i’ve been using proton services for over 3 years and it is pretty good. works good and i would say it would be a great alternative to the google services. works towards privacy and encryption and stuff. maybe its vpn service rn is kinda not that great. most features of the vpn services is paid yet it works.
Proton Mail? Yes.
Proton VPN? Sure.
Proton Drive? No. There are better cloud services.
Proton Pass? Yes, if you’re a newbie to password managers. No, if you’re an advance user of password managers.
Simple Login / Proton Pass Aliases? NO. Choose another alias provider.
In my opinion, for privacy reasons, it is best to not use Simple Login / Proton Pass aliases with Proton Mail, as it compromises your privacy, More over, I recently discovered that they only allow one alias per third party websites, which makes no sense if you have multiple accounts with the same website. If you use more than one alias for the same website, you can risk losing your account. Your entire Proton account, not just SL/Proton Pass. Imagine losing access to your passwords because of this.
Im personally trying to switch away. support sucks, and it really takes a long time to load. I also pay for 3 domain package. not worth it imho. searching through emails sucks, doesnt find keywords or emails that you swear you saw like 15 seconds ago. etc.
I am a new user and happy with Proton. Only thing is, I feel like updates to the apps / services are a bit too slow. But Protons products feel the most polished right now to me.
I’m a satisfied paying customer but I only use the email service. The service is great and I use a custom domain for my email.
My only gripe is the lack of SMTP.