In his week’s issue of stupid stuff I’m considering in some idiotic quest for perfectionism I keep thinking about changing email providers from Fastmail to Proton. This is a stupid idea even further since I just paid my $50 to Fastmail for the year less than a month ago, so I’m hoping by writing this out I can slow my roll.
I was tempted last year to make the move, arguably because I like how clean the Proton app is. I even dabbled with a free account, which I then proceeded to lose the password (and of course, I didn’t set up a recovery option) so that account was lost. I put that all behind me, since Fastmail has been good to me, and outside of a lackluster app I have no complaints.
Last weekend, I needed a Google Drive alternative since I’m done with Google. I’ll be honest, I like iCloud as a sort of extension of my regular device storage, but I’m not a fan of it as a cloud drive. It’s just too muddy and I’m just not a fan of that. Anyway, I needed to share a couple of large files, so I signed up for Proton Drive, quickly upgraded to five GB for free and it worked well. Files uploaded twice as fast as on Google Drive and again, it’s clean and looks nice.
This got me thinking about making the move. One of the biggest obstacles was worrying about going through the pain of changing all my account logins, and that’s when I realized, that is not a problem. I’m using a custom domain, so there really isn’t much stopping me.
But let’s look at the pros and cons for a moment.
Pro:
-Nice clean look
-Extra security
-I like supporting good projects
Cons:
-My threat level is nowhere near needing Proton type encryption
-I worry the prices will rise and continue to rise as additional development occurs
-There would still be work on my end to get everything up and running
One other determining factor is the 5 GB I got for free on Proton Drive will most likely serve all my purposes. I really don’t need to pay for more, although if I signed up for ProtonPass realistically I could stop paying for Bitwarden, Mullvad, and Fastmail.
I really don’t have a great reason to make this switch right now, other than throwing away money. Maybe I’ll re-evaluate if a great Black Friday sale happens.
Update (5/21/24):
Well, after some great discussion on Mastodon, I’m going to stick with Fastmail. I heard some great feedback from users of both services, and it seems like for what I truly need Fastmail is the best bet. I knew I was just getting wrapped in wanting something new and different. I’m sure once I made the switch I would have regretted it.
Also, just a heads up for anyone considering swapping from Fastmail to Proton, something I learned is Proton only allows for 15 email addresses. The way I have my email set up, my custom domain hosts a variety of different email addresses. I have 97 different email addresses on Fastmail that I would have had to change/reduce to get under that 15 email address limit and that would have been too much work for me and would have broken my entire email system.
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