Key facts
Your inbox knows more about you than almost anywhere else online. It has your receipts, your medical appointments, your conversations with people you love, your password reset emails. Gmail reads all of it and now with AI scanning turned on by default, it's worse than ever.
Proton Mail doesn't. It's end-to-end encrypted, which means even Proton can't read your messages. It's based in Switzerland, which has some of the strongest privacy laws in the world, and it's been independently audited. It also happens to look and feel like a normal email client.
The free plan gives you 1GB of storage and one address, which is enough to get started. Paid plans start at $4/month and unlock custom domains, more storage, and unlimited folders and labels. If you go with the Unlimited Plan - $10/month - it gives you access to Proton's other products; VPN, calendar, cloud storage, Pass, and others which are worth it if you want to go all-in on leaving Google.
The Unlimited Plan also gets you full access to SimpleLogin. SimpleLogin lets you create throwaway email aliases for every site you sign up to, so your real address never gets exposed. Instead of giving your actual email to a newsletter or a shop, you give them an alias and if it starts getting spam, you delete it. It also integrates with their password manager, making it extremely easy to create and keep track of your aliases. It's one of those tools that quietly changes how you think about your inbox.
Migrating is not as bad as it sounds. Proton has a built-in import tool that pulls your Gmail history over in the background. You don't have to start from scratch. Most people set up a forward from their old address, use both for a few weeks, and naturally transition over. There's no hard cutoff date. You're not deleting Gmail on day one. You can treat Proton as your primary and let Gmail quietly exist in the background for months while you gradually update accounts.
The one honest caveat: if the person you're emailing is on Gmail, your message is only encrypted on your end. End-to-end encryption only works when both sides support it. That's not a reason to avoid Proton, it's just reality.
I have personally switched to using Proton Unlimited full time, taking full advantage of SimpleLogin and the email aliases. This would be one of my top recommendations.
