For those of you who have been using Proton Mail for a year or longer, how reliable have you found it? Have you encountered any instances where websites didn’t accept or didn’t deliver to you Proton email address? Have you ever had trouble accessing Proton Mail while travelling?
I’m looking to try some of the Proton services soon, so I’d appreciate some honest experience from real users. Thanks!
I have somewhere on the order of 80 accounts on as many websites registered to Protonmail accounts, and I’ve never once had a website turn me away for the @protonmail.com domain. I exclusively use that domain. I can only remember one specific instance where they had downtime, too - overall they’ve been very reliable.
I did once have some of my protonmail accounts closed for suspicious activity, multiple years ago - but in their defense I was being pretty suspicious. I emailed support from my main account, explained the situation, and they unlocked the accounts for me - never had an issue since.
There definitely are sites that block or restrict accounts using ProtonMail addresses. Obviously social media sites will be more likely to force an account to provide a phone number if one is using a proton mail address compared to for instance, a GMail address. There has been one site I have seen block/restrict ProtonMail outright, and that is Lenovo. It is not possible to actually make purchases from Lenovo directly if the account’s email is a ProtonMail address. Too be fair though, that is the only site I have seen any explicit account blocks/restrictions.
They block both @protonmail.com and @pm.me aliasesl?
It seems I did not try making a Lenovo account with the pm.me alias address. I did use a protonmail.com address when tried before swapping to making an account using a Tutanota address and attempting to replay the purchase sequence. I don’t remember the conversation I had with support when they deduced the error to protonmail addresses not being eligible for purchases for not “being verifiable” despite the fact that payment and billing information is also provided in a purchase. I don’t remember if the support technician claimed that the pm.me alias would also be blocked, but for some reason I never tried it.
Fair enough - all I can say is that I’ve never personally encountered one of those sites, despite having signed up for things with Protonmail exclusively for over 5 years now.
Lemmy (and formerly reddit) aside, I don’t use social media - but even if I did, I’m not sure I’d notice the restrictions you mention without an unrestricted point of reference.
The Lenovo point is interesting - I don’t have a Lenovo account, but I do use Thinkpads, so I may need one eventually.