this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2024
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I stopped using Brave when and because of crypto bs.
I stopped using proton a few months ago because the price was just too high and my need too small. I needed a reasonably priced family plan for email on my domain, not another cloud drive.
I think this decision will hurt them as others come to this conclusion
I never switched to Proton for exactly this reason. I'd much rather use a service that does one thing really well than one that does 20 things okay.
It's all just to keep you locked into your subscription. Now they want you to keep other money tied up in it too.
It did email really well. And it had the best VPN. Didn't like the calendar or drive Didn't touch the password manager.
I don't think it will hurt them, because I think the majority of Proton users want exactly what you didn't. There are lots of options for email using your domain, but I don't know of any cloud suite providers that respect your privacy like Proton does.
Also, I am surprised that with the amount of different plans they offer none do what you wanted well. I thought they had a family plan for just mail without the other services, but they only have a business one and $7 per user is not a great price.
Tutanota is kind of a protonmail competitor but it's been years since I looked into it idk how they're doing
Yep, I've been a paid user for years and reconsidering my choice to invest my time and money in Proton lately, and this one hit hard. Crypto? WTF Proton.
Focus on getting the basic shit working instead of jumping on bullshit scams like AI and crypto, both of which are eating up enormous amounts of energy for very little good as well.
People still can't sync their fucking contacts. It's 2024.
Tbh I think it's cool, and since most ppl wanted proton to release stupid things like another browser or another encrypted chat app, a wallet fits right into that while being something that doesn't need that many manhours to be maintained.
I think this will benefit them, proton is more mainstream than you might expect
(also, unlike brave, they are a profitable business without vc and a non-profit org, so there are no intentions to sell your data)
It does need many man hours to be built and maintained, especially with things like finance apps. Also, this is a crypto wallet, not a competitor to something practical like Google Wallet. Crypto is basically a useless pyramid scheme and uses an enormous amount of energy.
Yes, it needs like a month or two to be built, but after that the most time you'll spend on it is when you add tokens. If you look at something like the electrum wallet, there are like 3 ppl working on it in their free time.
Also: Imagine you're the average proton user. You probably don't know what PGP is, you mostly use proton for the VPN and you use Google as your default search engine.
You just got solar and you're thinking about what to do with the excess energy created at mid day, so you download NiceHash or whatever and set up a wallet.
Wouldn't it be a nice thing if the company that you're already trusting with your mails, data and internet traffic had a crypto wallet? Like, yes, trusting one company with everything is not best practice, but trusting proton with everything is still better than using some random closed-source software.
And again: people voted for another chat app and a browser. WTF.
How will it hurt them? If you don't want a Bitcoin wallet, don't use it. It's not like offering one takes a significant amount of resources or drives up the cost.
I’m not a customer, but I personally avoid any company offering that mentions crypto and/or AI. I’m guessing I’m not alone based on some responses here. They are just the latest buzz words to try to inflate company value and I’m tired of them.
I started migrating off from Google products (homepage, chrome, drive soon) and my laptop does not have windows anymore for example. It’s hard to get customer trust back after it is lost.
I'm similar, I've been on Linux for 15-ish years and I've been pushing to get off Google. So I get the anti-big company sentiment. I also understand being tired of crypto nonsense, there are so many scams that the handful of legitimate use-cases get buried in a sea of speculation.
But offering a crypto wallet has nothing to do with that. Proton doesn't get any of the crypto, and you could get essentially the same thing with just using their drive to store your keys and using a separate wallet app. I could probably build a Bitcoin wallet in a weekend, they're really not that complicated and there are plenty of FOSS libraries and whatnot to borrow from.
I get it though, there are a ton of crypto scams out there. If Proton created their own coin, then I'd be with you running for the hills. But just offering a wallet might catch the attention of new customers, and more customers means more investment in their platform. Proton is transitioning to a non-profit structure, so they're really not in it to make a quick buck, they're on it to build a solid, sustainable business.
My main complaint is that they're prioritizing Bitcoin, which is very much not a privacy-focused cryptocurrency, instead of Monero, which is a lot more privacy focused (but also more complex to build a wallet for), so their appeal to privacy-minded crypto people would be minimal. But it's low hanging fruit so why not?
As a userbase grows, companies have 2 options to make it more competitive.
More services Lower prices
And no company chooses the later.
And that's how you get bloat
Companies do the second all the time. As the number of services grows, so do the options for service tiers. But that only works if there's competition. For example, my ISP had two options for years, but as soon as my city announced a new fiber rollout, they overhauled their product offering with options above and below the previous options. I just checked and they overhauled things again (new higher tiers), and now my tier is $5/month cheaper than it used to be. In my area, we currently have about 4 options (cable, DSL, my local ISP, radio), and we're adding a city-owned fiber network as a fifth.
Oh, and they added more features and now offer TV, managed WiFi, etc, and those are also at competitive prices. So at least in my case, adding options has decreased prices due to product segmentation.
Back when I only had 2 options (cable or DSL), their prices kept going up and their features stayed stagnant.