I can struggle to get by within the limitations of a free account and Protonmail get nothing.
This is just do-able for me.
or
I could afford perhaps 10 Euro/year for a basic personal account & Protonmail get some cash.
I can't afford 48 Euro, though.

And after this stupid Brexit the price will go up for me, stuck in the UK.

No protonmail is not too expensive.
They have gone above and beyond all other email providers for physical security, infrastructure security, they are their own ISP, build their own servers..... the list goes on.
All this for a euro a week. Absolute bargain.
No other provider has proven themself under fire like Proton has.

For everyone complaining about not offering people in developing countries the opportunity to protect their email privacy.... they have done! It's called their FREE account. 500mb can last a long, long time if you delete some old emails and don't send silly size attachments.

I find Proton expensive. Speaking in Australian dollars, I would be paying $78 for Proton Plus. Including domain and hosting, it would be over $130.

Of course I would like to support the service, I have a premium Tutanota account for this very reason. Tutanota is very basic but I am able to support them because €12/$19.50 is affordable. Free Proton (and even Plus) lacks basic features.

Entry
1 GB
2 Addresses
300 Daily Messages
50 Folders/Labels
Email filters
Autoresponder
€6/$9.75

Basic
3 GB
3 Addresses
500 Daily Messages
100 folders/labels
Email filters
Autoresponder
€12/$19.50

If there were lower tier plans it would accommodate lower income earners, students and countries with lower currency exchange (e.g all of Asia with a 4.4 billion populous).

I believe in supporting the service, by paying for one of your premium plans. But, you are asking much more than similar competitors: https://tutanota.com/pricing

Please allow a lower price point for those who want to contribute, without creating a burden for those with limited resources. Protonmail and ProtonVPN staff have mentioned the importance of providing privacy and security for everyone. Adjusting your prices to allow a more reasonable, lower point of entry, will achieve this goal.

Your recent holiday offerings move in the right direction. But, people should not have to purchase 2 years of service to get a reasonable price, which is still higher than your competitors.

Your service begin with tremendous financial support from the global community. Now that it is popular and running well, it is time to think about how your company can be most supportive of the community which brought you this far.

Please be as fair as Tutanota, in offering a low budget, paid plan, for those who want to contribute, but have limitations. And consider making the second tier of service more reasonably priced, for the monthly fee, as well as the yearly and biannual fee.

If you really want this service to become a mainstream option, you need to be more realistic about what the public is willing to spend, and offer an option for each financial situation.

As others have commented previously, when we recommend this service to others, they are disheartened to find that switching from the wrath of g00gle will cost so much. You need to make the transition easier for them to leave corporate surveillance behind.

Offer a lifetime account!!!

I pay $24 year for a domain + $48 for proton, total $72!!!! yearly, is freaking expensive for email.

and proton force to pay because I need the IMAP/POP option and also only the LIMITED 5GB!! (yes is too little space).

So let me know you DOWN the prices (like $1 per month/$12 yearly) and I start to using protonmail.

I would downvote this if I could, I find the pricing quite reasonable and understandable for running everything and developing new features/products.

Let's take ProtonMail and compare it to a competitor (and there are quite a bunch). IMHO, I'd say Mailfence is a solid Protonmail competitor, one of the reason is because it is based in Belgium, which is not a very cheap country, and the prices are quite close to Switzerland.
Comparing the features (the different between the two):
* Mailfence - has full PGP inter interoperability, has calendar and storage, offers 20 aliases.
* Protonmail - e-mails are always encrypted on the server, has native Mobile app (for Android is based on Google Services Framework... pretty controversial if you are paranoid about privacy and do not have GSF installed, push notifications won't work), and offers only 5 aliases.

Speaking of the price:
* Mailfence - 2.5 euro per month
* Protonmail - 4 euro per month

Now before everyone gets critical, there is 1 important note to this, it's your geolocation. I'm coming from Eastern Europe country, where the average salary for 2018 is around 100 euro per month, and even though 1.5 euro might not be a big of a difference, it is 1.5% of the average salary and it can make a difference. To name a jew, 1.5 euro can get you one of the following:
* the home-work-home round-trip 10 days of the month (1 if you use the taxi)
* 1 lunch (or 2 if you are vegetarian)
* 1.5 kg of fruits (bananas, apples, etc.)
* 15-20 eggs
* 2l of milk

Moreover, we are not discussing the fact that PM is expensive in general, just that it might lack a special pack that might bring in more people.

As noted by on of the users, I'd propose some kind of "Economy pack" with the following features:
* 1-2 GB of e-mails
* 250-500 messages per day
* no custom domains
* 2-3 aliases (just for temporary mail, or even 0 aliases, though that would be harsh)
* IMAP/SMTP support
* 50-100 folders
* 50-100 labels
* filters enabled

Adding a cheaper plan between the free and the "Plus" makes sense.

Lets call it "Basic" plan. Should cost $1 per month, and features 1GB of storage, 3 aliases, no custom domain, 500 messages per day, 100 folder / 100 labels, custom filters, support, and no autoresponder.

There ain't no free lunches.

I wish I could downvote this ridiculous "suggestion".

4 EUROS a month is less than all the shitty fast food you buy every WEEK for a legit encrypted email service in Switzerland.

Why negative votes are not allowed?

IMHO, the price is just right. Compare to the 5 USD it cost for a Google G-Suite with all the "read your email" - ok it comes with a tons of app but hell, protonmail is all about secure, private email. I guess it is okay to pay a little extra. Just my two cents.

Export/save MY emails = $
Make 5 lousy folders = $
Email client = $
But hey, you have 500mb for free! yeyyy

One time payment - non existent.

By the way, I pay for my services, I don't believe in free stuff anymore, but you people need to "step up".

PS: where is calendar and contacts sync by the way? Even my 5years old qnap nas has free carddav/caldav support.

to the dudes @protonmail: do you think how much money you can make even at 1$ if all gmail users come to you? It is a interesting service, but to grow and keep the fight up you need more, and for that users have to come to you.
4Euro/month for my mother, brother,sisters etc? they will newer switch. 1$ and maybe a family pack even cheaper - I will pay for them all!

Also - add the option for everyone to be able to download their mails!(bridge or whatever) This is like basic stuff! come on ....

I would not put any recovery/important stuff here without option to take-and-leave if you go away/shut down or I go someplace else!

In my country average income is 100$, that’s why 5$ for mailbox is expensive

There will be always people who look for everything so called "cheap or free" but require top level service. Would you work for free in the city like Geneva, N.Y. Tokyo, London etc? Would you have best native developers to do work for you for $5/month without outsource to unknown because of "cheap" and at the same time maybe risk security?. Do you ask at each shop to give you discount? Common, change your mind about money and the rest will follow. Happy New Year!

lifetime subscription is a great idea. I would not sign up for monthly/yearly payment even just because of the effort involved, even if it was $2 a month. I want low-maintenance email service.

I use GSuite which I`m going to switch to my PM Pro Account. GSuite charge me €5/month and only for one domain. The only good thing about it is that Google gives me 30GB (currently 8GB used) and PMPro just 5GB for the same amount. Anyway, I`m going to move after all and see how things goes. Right now with 1 domain set and a few emails I already use 25MB. When I move my biz domain than I will have to think how to manage without adding more GB for time being

If ProtonMail Plus is too expensive for you, there is a free plan. It's very possible to use ProtonMail without paying.

The issue with lifetime plans is that this is a service, not a commodity.

You will cost ProtonMail money in server time, storage costs, and bandwidth costs, and those costs continue over time. A one time payment has to be large enough to cover all your potential use going forward.

A very limited quantity of lifetime plans were offered previously, at $1337 each.

There is no feasible way for a one time payment to cover the recurring costs of having you as a customer, without being prohibitively expensive.