I think a better strategy for gaining customers would be to charge for added-value offerings while offering a standard experience for free

As a new user to the Proton ecosystem I'm put off by the fact that I need to pay for such a basic feature that other providers offer for free.

The native Mail Desktop app is now in Beta for Visionary plans. Proton needs to make money to maintain the service, so getting everything for free doesn't seem a viable option.

The current systemd service for proton bridge is awesome as it uses almost no RAM and CPU, acting as a thin middleware between Proton and programs to access your services. It would be nice if other than the email was accessible, like exposing the calendar through webcal and the drive through webdav, on the localhost only.

This so much! I already have unlimited and it's a shame I can't really use all this storage since I'd like to have it mounted in my Linux file manager, like nautilus. And for the calendar too. I hate having to use multiple apps for calendars since I already use my work calendar (Exchange) in the native GNOME calendar. So for now I'm using Nextcloud for both calendar and cloud storage with webdav.

Even though you are heavily investing into your client apps for all services on multiple platforms, i think the core app for all platforms should be a bridge to transform the encrypted data to standard protocols, as you already did with the email-bridge.

The reason for this is, that most of us built their own ecosystem of apps and integrations for multiple years and the missing ability to use the known and trusted applications makes it a difficult decision to switch to proton in general. I would like to pay for proton unlimited, but as long as i cannot use the builtin gnome calendar with proton calendar or mount folders from proton drive, i cannot work with proton as with other vendors.

Plus: You could focus on the development of your ecosystem and your users could benefit from the multitude of awesome open source apps for managing calDav-calendars or syncing to webdav, etc..

Guys let's be real, running a service requires money (free plans also use servers resources) and as there are no ads it must come from the subscriptions...

Let's discuss about the idea of a bridge-only subscription, I wrote [a recap of the bridge proposals here](https://protonmail.uservoice.com/forums/935538-accounts-payments/suggestions/45970867-bridge-only-subscription-proposals-recap)

I'd prefer to pay for the bridge usage rather than seeing PM in economical troubles and having to switch to other email providers that do not offer anything in privacy terms...

I greatly agree. I find it quite unpractical to constantly have to open my browser and call up the web page. However, I also don't really want to upgrade simply for the Proton Bridge. Please make a desktop bridge or an app of some sort available to Free users!

I also support this idea; the only benefit disabling it provides is an incentive to upgrade.
I have no problem with low storage for the free account because running a server costs money, but I would love if Proton could put the user first instead of profit on this feature. Plus, there probably aren't *that* many people who upgrade just for IMAP/SMTP.

i cant log in or get app on pc

I would absolutely pay any price for the Bridge software! HOWEVER, I am BROKE and near eviction (thanks covid). I no longer have my own internet, so I am using public wifi and have to conserve battery on my phone and laptop. I cannot afford to pay even $1 per month to anyone but my landlord. Soon as I have a job again (health and economy willing) I will most likely immediately pay for 10 years of Visionary subscription! (When I work, I make low to mid 6 figures).

See my suggestion about implementing "sub keys" for additional devices and offering a detailed, advanced walkthrough for how to **Manually** setup the key pair and sigs on a desktop and how to manually decrypt/encrypt the mail stream. This would be a long walkthrough, but more people would end up wanting to pay after seeing the walkthrough. The only requirement for actual changes to the protonmail apps / server / website is to implement the "sub keys" feature, which is already available in open source tools such as Matrix and/or KeyBase.

Make the walkthrough an __**UNSUPPORTED**__ and "use at your own risk" only article. Many of us would follow it and figure it out with or without tech knowledge (I'm in tech).

....

And, in reply to those who commented saying to just pay up: not an option for many, many people! help us build a new design for civilization that does not require any monetary system or currency and instead of commenting to complain about someone not able to pay, help create the future world similar to Star Trek! (or, insert your favorite sci fi future civilization)

The freemail is a privacy bargain
If you want more, it's gonna cost you

That's realitty

Ruge

31

The Swiss think that their Swiss (very high) prices fits the rest of the world: everything is extremely expensive in Switzerland and ProtonMail Bridge makes no exception. Please, make this bridge free: it's ridiculous to pay such a huge amount of money each year! Just the Mafia or governments can afford to spend such a high amount of money.

At least make the bridge available for free users who actually need to have device notifications etc. I can't justify paying protomail for email service when you can't fully replace gmail. I might be willing to consider using the bridge instead of POP for Device notifications from things like my firewall, synology nas and I'm sure there are many others.

yep free

and more free

free1

the bridge should be FREE!