A longer term SUBSCRIPTION PLAN is needed. Calls for a 'one-off' payment are just daft, Proton is a quality product and best in class for what it offers and all those brilliant minds at Proton need to heat their homes and fill their eversoclever bellies too, just like you an me.
I have no reservations with paying for a good product (compared to all the s**t out there is there really any comparison anyway?) but feeling like I have made a long term commitment to the Proton ecosystem in my mind I would like Proton to recognise the value in locking in long-term subscribers with a reduction in price, something like a 10 or 20% reduction for signing up to long term plans, e.g. a five year plan that is paid over the first two years. A lifetime plan for a reduction makes no sense as some may enjoy the discount but then still leave affecting Proton margins and making it more expensive for the rest of us. A five year plan paid over two years would mitigate the risk for Proton of applying a discount but then not getting the trade if someone leaves after three years for example (although with the competition that is out there I don't know why anyone would leave although lets be fair and individual financial circumstances can change)
4EUR a month really does not feel like a lot, not in this day and age, you'll pay that for a pint of beer and if you compare what you get from Proton (zero access encrypted Email, Calendar, Drive, Pass, VPN) with a pint of beer each month then it will put it into perspective. I pay for the plus subscription every two years which makes it about £8.30 a month which I think is almost reasonable but would welcome a five year plan with a discount.

Folders and Labels are limited in Free not because of technical reasons (it doesn't cost anything to have them) but just to try and force people into a paid plan.

I understand a company has to make money, but they aren't making any money from free accounts and people are not moving into paid ones just to have a few more folders/labels that would be nice to haves.

If there would be an option for Lifetime plan (i.e. one off payments), people would probably pay for some features, if not too much.

Lifetime plans!

I'd opt for an affordable plan starting from 1-2€ for Email Plus and gradually increasing to 4€ based on how much storage+folders+emails-per-day I use.

INCREASE length of paid plans AND of course REDUCE pricing.

Currently the longest plan is an expensive 24 months plan. I like Proton, and I am fine to commit for the long term, but I also want PROTON to commit for the long-term with a 5 or 10 year plan, or why not with a lifetime plan, which should of course be much lower cost.

With this approach we users get protected from random price changes, and Proton get a loyal and captive user base, to which it can overtime sell more services.

VOTE for the LONG TERM PLANS Folks!!!

i too would like some sort of Retail/Lifetime Plan. i really don't like Subscriptions, they're a slippery slope to having a Charge bounce and be fined for it.

what i'm thinking is:

5-6GB Storage space total
2 E-Mail Addresses
20 Folders
20 Labels
10 Filters
E-Mail Client support

2 Calendars, 1 Calendar from Friends/Orgs
share Calendar via Link

for like say, $50?
i'm trying to be fair to everyone with this - a high enough / inefficient enough charge to make the Subscriptions a much better choice generally and to keep the cost of the Transaction minimal, but still offering the permanent upgrade for those that would like to support with increased limits.

this would make it easier for Proton to be a Service that one can rely on using into the future. without some sort of affordable Retail/Lifetime Plan option, those that are wary towards Subscriptions are left without any purchasing option.

This doesn't make sense. It's like a company offering to pay you ten years' wages right now if you agree to work for free for the rest of your life. Proton has to continue to pay its bills indefinitely.

Yes. 10 EUR a month is too expensive to just get a 2nd domain.

The problem I have with protonmail is they upsell me crap I don't need.
I don't need calendar, drive, vpn or 500GB of storage.

I just need a 2nd domain.

Domains should be an addon, for lets say 0.50 a piece.

I think we need a customizable plan. In fact, I'm still not switching because I don't need 10 emails for example, and for me this means spending 5€ not so good. If Proton adds any way to customize the plan, allowing for example to have unlimited daily emails, no custom emails addable, no custom domain, Proton Calendar, Proton Drive with 15GB and Proton VPN plus, it will be great for me and I would really like to pay for that plan.

I totally agree! I love Proton products, especially since their graphic redesign! All that's missing for me to finally abandon Google products is an offer consistent with the online storage market (100GB minimum), as well as a lifetime plan like Pcloud or IceDrive do.
Come on Proton, one more effort to become the reference of online services in Europe!

It would be convenient if Proton Drive had a one-time only, lifetime subscription plan; like pCloud and IceDrive do. Not even Sync.com has that option.

Country-dependent pricing model would do the trick - just like any other worldwide subscription based services these days operate.

For a "Plus" plan equivalent in my country I can get a whole bunch of apple services (50GB iCloud storage space included) or Spotify Premium for the whole family.
I guess less revenue is better than no revenue.

This will never happen and is a false hope, protonVPN and the other services they build are quality products that require a steady stream of income to produce and maintain, lifetime plans are a hoax at best, most company's that offer these services wont last very long, or change company names regularly as they don't profit from the lifetime 'deal'. They rely on over-selling & over-hyping there product, providing people a false hope of a 'lifetime' product that usually has a very short life span, or is just generally a terrible product which is garbage in comparison to paid services.

For regular people, the price is hard to swallow. There is nothing between free and fairly expensive. It's very understandable that they need to charge to keep the operation going, but I wonder how many more people would pay if there was a more affordable plan. Regular, non-power users, just need enough storage and preferably the ability to send from the "pm.me" domain.

I also think there could be work done to make it easier to clean up your inbox. There's also a bunch of redundant data (logos and corporate pictures that are the same for tens of e-mails - this adds up).

That doesn't make any sense because they will stop making money if they make a lifetime plan, and you know it. The only reason why you want to buy the lifetime plan is because you are too broke to buy it every years

I see why this option would be voted down but I think I could over time come to swallow the pill of paying upwards of $5,000 for lifetime for using 80% of the functions of visionary (all the features I use)

Not a ote for cheaper plans but for a lifetime option (business wise this also may make sense for a @protonmail.com email account only as its free advertising and business accounts are high volume and cost also to keep everything operating smoothly for these business accounts)

P.S. I would not switch to a non Business account/ Visionary to use Lifetime

Actually it is not cheaper than Microsoft. I use Microsoft 365 for my organization, even though I prefer ProtonMail. Microsoft 365 is only $5 per user, and this includes a huge variety of features, from Office, OneDrive, Teams, Tasks, much more storage and these products all talk to each other, and are easy to use Active Directory with, for which the basic version of Azure AD is free.

It's much more mature of an integration of productivity products like calendars, meetings, reminders, for less than what the organization account costs here.

I think the organization account type should be much less money.

Please have a lifetime plan for VPN.

Please have a lifetime plan for VPN.

There should be a discount code for Students linked to their university / high school .. otherwise I think commercially it is fine as it is cheaper than Microsoft.