SimpleLogin joins ProtonMail

[TenFour]

Don't know what it means for the service or pricing.

The past 6 months have been intense for SimpleLogin, with many new users, many new features, and many new technical challenges. I’m now happy to share this news with you: SimpleLogin is now part of the Proton family.

https://simplelogin.io/blog/simplelogin-join-proton/

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by TenFour

Don't know what it means for the service or pricing.

https://simplelogin.io/blog/simplelogin-join-proton/

this reminds me that FM bought Pobox. from then pobox's CS is not as good as before.

[TenFour]

this reminds me that FM bought Pobox. from then pobox's CS is not as good as before.

I know. Doesn't it seem like these amazing small startups always become worse once they become part of some other big entity? The one that sticks in my mind is Skype. I can vividly remember how cool it was to be able to make calls from my laptop and chat with people anywhere in the world. Still exists, but seems to have lost its mojo as part of Microsoft.

[ioneja]

Thanks for the heads up about this. I think it's a good fit, and will result in a net positive result for both SimpleLogin and ProtonMail. Their company cultures seem pretty well aligned in meaningful ways. Good move for both companies. Of course time will tell.

[jeffpan]

SimpleLogin is very disgusting
This company provides aliases for protection of email being abused.
But this sh** company send AD email to its users every day.
I re-signed it for three days and got 3 AD messages already.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

SimpleLogin is very disgusting
This company provides aliases for protection of email being abused.
But this sh** company send AD email to its users every day.
I re-signed it for three days and got 3 AD messages already.

What kind of ads are you getting? SimpleLogin is supposed to be ad-free, funded only from subscriptions, they're open source (and you can see everything they do on Github), and they are also supposed to be GDPR and CCPA compliant. Are they sending you ads for their own services to upgrade to a paid premium account? Or are they giving your private information to third parties (which they state they won't do)?

FYI their privacy policy doesn't look bad at all -- https://simplelogin.io/privacy/ -- and now that they're owned by ProtonMail, it will probably be improved as well.

Anyway, can you be more specific? I'm thinking of upgrading to a paid plan myself since they were bought by ProtonMail, which should improve their security and infrastructure.

[ioneja]

BTW, I'm looking through their Github forum and not seeing any reports of abuse from SimpleLogin itself. Son Nguyen Kim seems very responsive to questions, so maybe worth reaching out to him and asking what might be going on with your account?

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by ioneja

BTW, I'm looking through their Github forum and not seeing any reports of abuse from SimpleLogin itself. Son Nguyen Kim seems very responsive to questions, so maybe worth reaching out to him and asking what might be going on with your account?

they are sending the AD emails for promotion to their own products. for instance, ask you to upgrade to payment account, or add another more mailbox etc. I don't like this kind of message. it seems no difference from the websites they attempt to stop against.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

they are sending the AD emails for promotion to their own products. for instance, ask you to upgrade to payment account, or add another more mailbox etc. I don't like this kind of message. it seems no difference from the websites they attempt to stop against.

I didn't notice those, but maybe my brain is used to those kinds of messages and tuned them out. That's different than abusing their services, though. Or selling your information or sending you ads from third parties. But to your point IMO those kinds of communications should be opt-in only, unless they are major service alerts or account notifications. Most free (and frankly most paid) services will send you some kind of follow-up marketing messages at some point, though, but it should never be abused and it should definitely be opt-in.

Out of curiosity, what makes you say they are disgusting though? Three ads from them about upgrading their free service to a paid service isn't necessarily disgusting in my book. Annoying yes, but not disgusting. I get those from many other similar services. Again, those should be opt-in, but to me, disgusting would be if they knowingly violated their own privacy policy, sold your information without your consent, or sent you third-party ads which they promised they wouldn't do. I would instantly cancel such a service. And in your case it doesn't seem like they've crossed those lines.

In any case, I think it's worth contacting them and getting some explanation of why they aren't opting-in people. I think any kind of email like that should require an opt-in, and yes it's annoying, and possibly concerning, if they keep it up.

[FredOnline]

Originally Posted by jeffpan

they are sending the AD emails for promotion to their own products.

I'll assume you have unticked/unchecked the box in Settings/Newsletters.

[ioneja]

Originally Posted by FredOnline

I'll assume you have unticked/unchecked the box in Settings/Newsletters.

And actually, I just realized you should see the actual newsletter alias in your account as well, which you can disable. I think it's the first alias that you get when you sign up. So I believe there are two ways to disable this, in theory -- disable the Settings/Newsletters option as FredOnline mentioned, or disable the newsletter alias itself.

That is if jeffpan was getting the ads on the newsletter alias... if he wasn't, then something else is going on re: those ads.

[webecedarian]

Originally Posted by TenFour

I know. Doesn't it seem like these amazing small startups always become worse once they become part of some other big entity? The one that sticks in my mind is Skype. I can vividly remember how cool it was to be able to make calls from my laptop and chat with people anywhere in the world. Still exists, but seems to have lost its mojo as part of Microsoft.

Isn't that true of any kind of business? I knew a guy who launched a second career as a baker. He told me that when a bakery is really great, some big corporation comes along and buys it - but the corporation then tries to squeeze more money out of the business by using cheaper ingredients, and pretty soon there is no longer anything "great" about it.

[ioneja]

Proton buying SimpleLogin is not a big corporation buying a small business. It's more like a barely-medium business buying an itsy-bitsy-tiny business. I think it's a good match.

They're both open source, they both have similar missions, they both have similar business models, they both have similar approaches and cultures.

Proton didn't HAVE to buy SimpleLogin. They could have easily forked the project or borrowed heavily from it (again, it's fully open source and sitting on Github for anyone to look at, and SimpleLogin even has instructions of how to self-host it).

If anything, it's going to be good for SimpleLogin customers that will get the benefit of Proton's experience in security and infrastructure (and auditing), plus an injection of extra resources, and all the SimpleLogin customers will no doubt be offered nice deals to sign up for ProtonMail.

Likewise, Proton customers will benefit from the integrations that are inevitably going to come, and it it will most likely be a win-win.

The people who will see a downside are people who already dislike Proton for whatever reason. I know there are some skeptics and people who don't trust Proton. However, is SimpleLogin under Proton's ownership LESS trustworthy than SimpleLogin all by itself, on its own? It's already working on bugfixes based on an audit they just had -- so I'd argue that SimpleLogin is net positive for the extra scrutiny they'll be getting in the future. I'd consider them MORE trustworthy now. Just to go through a buyout process like this, don't you think Proton had to look closely at SimpleLogin and its main developer (Son Nguyen Kim)? He was probably background checked and scrutinized with a microscope. So really, I don't see a downside unless you really, really, really dislike Proton.

Anyway, I like the arrangement enough so I upgraded to a premium account. Cross fingers. I think SimpleLogin has a good future. At least the next few years. Just use custom domains, and if they mess it up, then you can always migrate elsewhere.

[ioneja]

BTW, I've been adding some custom domains since I upgraded to a premium account, and I've been exploring some features I didn't really look at before, and it's very good so far.

The way they handle custom domains is excellent IMO. I wish I upgraded sooner. It has an optional auto-creation of aliases on your custom domains (basically a catch-all), with some good granular control with how you can manage aliases and also contacts per alias. Pretty intuitive, maybe needs some UI improvements here and there, but more powerful than I expected. I actually moved a couple domains over from another provider and so far so good.

The new subdomains feature is pretty neat too -- behaves very much like custom domains from what I can see so far. It's not something I plan to use much, since I prefer to focus on custom domains, but overall, this is like a flexible swiss army knife of email routing. I haven't tested their PGP or directories features yet, but everything else so far so good, and deliverability has been good in my initial domain tests. I'd personally like even more granular control and of course filters (which has been requested in the forum), but honestly for $30 US, it does a lot of things well. And I read through their forum and they have some interesting features planned. Overall, I'm happy so far and looking forward to what they do in the future. Hoping for the best.

[TenFour]

However, is SimpleLogin under Proton's ownership LESS trustworthy than SimpleLogin all by itself, on its own?

What I have seen happen again and again is that with a buyout there obviously comes a cost, and the new company must make a profit including that new cost of the buyout. That usually means an increase in pricing within the first year or so. And then what happens is the brilliant and enthusiastic person who created the product becomes just another team member in the bigger organization, put in charge of his product and instead of designing cool new stuff he is tasked with figuring out how to make more money from the product. He becomes a manager of people, dealing with spreadsheets and giving others commands instead of actually doing the fun work that created the product in the first place. Eventually, often after only a year or two that creative originator moves on to something else now that he has his new funding money. Who knows, maybe that won't be the lifecycle of SimpleLogin, but it seems to be a common pattern. Another example of the pattern is Javier Soltero and Accompli, the cool email client taken over by Microsoft and turned into the Outlook app. Javier moved up into management at Microsoft and is now at Google. Maybe I'm missing something, but I haven't seen much change in the Outlook app for years. Still works pretty good, but seems to have lost its mojo.