I Miss Native Email

I’ve been using Proton mail for almost a year now. For the most part, it has been great. I’ve thrown myself into the Proton ecosystem, using Pass, Calendar, and of course, Email. I also had tentative plans to move my VPN needs to Proton instead of re-upping Mullvad in the fall. On one hand, the ecosystem is fantastic. It all works well together, and does almost all the things I want it to do. On the other hand, I am putting all of my eggs in one basket, so to speak, and that frightens me quite a bit. For one, even my 2FA is mostly through Proton, so if I were to get locked out of that account for some reason, there would be pain. I’ve also used a ton of Proton generated aliases for accounts I’ve signed up for. I don’t know how easy it would be to move away from Proton if I had thoughts to do so.

I’ve been thinking about this more and more recently. The biggest reason is that I miss native email. Proton’s webmail client is fine, and they have a shitty electron app that they use to give you a “desktop client”, but it’s not the same as Thunderbird or some other native client. There’s a bridge, but it is finicky AF, and I have no interest in mucking about with it. I have thought, in recent days, about switching my mail to Fastmail, which I’ve been told is quite good.

The problem is multifold, as I said above. I’m pretty tied into the Proton way of doing things. And that’s all well and good as long as I stick around. But if I want to move anything away from Proton, I have a feeling it would be quite the process. I also have nearly a full year paid for in referral credits, so moving away would negate that as well.

I don’t know that it would be worth it, if I’m being honest. I do have my problems with the Proton app on Android (the zoom in that app is terrible), but I’ve used it this long, I can keep going. At least until I feel more like suffering through changing.

I do need to fix the 2FA thing. I’m going to move to another provider for that, as I do not want to risk getting shut out of everything if I were to lose my Proton account. I don’t think there’s much risk there, and I have everything backed up in a Bitwarden account, but I still don’t like Proton having so much of my security. I need to diversify a little bit, if only for the peace of mind.

The email thing will wait, but I really do miss native email. Maybe I try the bridge again, though that won’t fix the mobile app. More likely, one day I get fed up and start the process of moving away.