Review Insights · App Store
Proton Mail - Encrypted Email
Proton AG · 42,748 ratings · ★ 4.7
4.7
★★★★★
42,748 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 38 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"email"
13 negative reviews mention this · 34% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Missing block sender feature. The block sender feature requires you to open phishing emails. “What’s new” Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results They just made 1/3 of the page blank space. Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu" - mjm.00
2
"proton"
12 negative reviews mention this · 32% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Would be a 5 if not for the most basic function. I’ve been trying to switch for a few months but find it clunky, and the worst part is that you can’t sort by sender or subject and from searching this seems to be a common complaint that Proton is tone deaf about Sort by any header is the …" - Just a users
3
"emails"
8 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Missing block sender feature. The block sender feature requires you to open phishing emails. “What’s new” Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results They just made 1/3 of the page blank space. Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu" - mjm.00
4
"mail"
8 negative reviews mention this · 21% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Missing block sender feature. The block sender feature requires you to open phishing emails. “What’s new” Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results They just made 1/3 of the page blank space. Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu" - mjm.00
5
"doesn"
7 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Cannot sign in. When I try to sign in, it says “user already signed in” but then doesn’t allow me passed the log in screen. So am I logged in or not? If I’m already logged in, then i should be taken to my inbox. Out whatever the open page is, I wouldn’t kn…" - Sue_mh.17
6
"support"
6 negative reviews mention this · 16% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Feature Poor with No Real Plan to Improve. I hate to say that after patiently being a paying customer for Proton Mail for the past four years, I have to give Proton a failing grade. Proton was supposed to be a secure, private alternative to free accounts from Google, Microsoft, App…" - gravste
7
"update"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Annoying toast notifications. Downgrading my rating to 1 star… Update: I deleted that account from my phone but I’m still getting notifications of new mail!! -- Of late I have started receiving toast notifications for an account that I’m signed out of but is present on…" - Yorel206
8
"phone"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Annoying toast notifications. Downgrading my rating to 1 star… Update: I deleted that account from my phone but I’m still getting notifications of new mail!! -- Of late I have started receiving toast notifications for an account that I’m signed out of but is present on…" - Yorel206
9
"been"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Would be a 5 if not for the most basic function. I’ve been trying to switch for a few months but find it clunky, and the worst part is that you can’t sort by sender or subject and from searching this seems to be a common complaint that Proton is tone deaf about Sort by any header is the …" - Just a users
10
"customer"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Welllllll. Great email worst customer service on planet earth sense of urgency level zero" - inthemiddle33
11
"other"
5 negative reviews mention this · 13% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Fonts in email body are too small. I read there was an update to honour system settings to make fonts larger: Changing font size for all apps and the OS is not a solution to email bodies having smaller fonts than other apps. Basically, if the font is smaller than in an avera…" - porcoesphino
12
"work"
4 negative reviews mention this · 11% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Missing block sender feature. The block sender feature requires you to open phishing emails. “What’s new” Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results They just made 1/3 of the page blank space. Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu" - mjm.00
📋 All 38 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Missing block sender feature
The block sender feature requires you to open phishing emails.
“What’s new”
Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results
They just made 1/3 of the page blank space.
Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu
“What’s new”
Search does not work, matching text in body are not in search results
They just made 1/3 of the page blank space.
Need to add block sender to the checkbox menu
Annoying toast notifications
Downgrading my rating to 1 star…
Update: I deleted that account from my phone but I’m still getting notifications of new mail!!
--
Of late I have started receiving toast notifications for an account that I’m signed out of but is present on my phone. Would be great if I didn’t have to delete the account from my app in order to stop those.
Update: I deleted that account from my phone but I’m still getting notifications of new mail!!
--
Of late I have started receiving toast notifications for an account that I’m signed out of but is present on my phone. Would be great if I didn’t have to delete the account from my app in order to stop those.
Cannot sign in
When I try to sign in, it says “user already signed in” but then doesn’t allow me passed the log in screen. So am I logged in or not? If I’m already logged in, then i should be taken to my inbox. Out whatever the open page is, I wouldn’t know because I can’t get passed the log in page.
Welllllll
Great email worst customer service on planet earth sense of urgency level zero
BLOATWARE
Pare down the app size. Seriously just do it.
Paying cust and it is still worthless
Looking for rec for alternatives to PM, anyone plz lmk. It’s been YEARS they ack issues with syncs and removed ability to edit contacts via app. They ack issues and say “devs working on”. No. No they are not cuz it wouldn’t take YEARS to fix. That and no cross logon with biometrics? Still? Really? If I am logged into mail I should be able to open calendar and vice versa WITHOUT needing to type a password.
Orig-Improved sync worthless : So you improved email sync performance? Who cares when you cannot sync contacts AT ALL? Email without contacts, worthless. It’s been broke for well over a year! Fix it else offer refunds to us paying customers back to when you disabled the editing of contacts via the app. N
Orig-Improved sync worthless : So you improved email sync performance? Who cares when you cannot sync contacts AT ALL? Email without contacts, worthless. It’s been broke for well over a year! Fix it else offer refunds to us paying customers back to when you disabled the editing of contacts via the app. N
“User already signed in” is stupid
Why tf is that even an alert, obviously I’m not signed in. I am able to sign into everything else but mail app. Fix this ffs, I don’t pay you money for no reason
Fonts in email body are too small
I read there was an update to honour system settings to make fonts larger: Changing font size for all apps and the OS is not a solution to email bodies having smaller fonts than other apps. Basically, if the font is smaller than in an average website, then you've coded the formatting incorrectly... and it is
Continued degradation of the UI
15 Apr 2026: yep. App badge still broken.
Want to see how many unread messages you have? Tough! You will get an approximation and you will like it!
Did you think that the app badge would accurately reflect the number of unread messages? Tough. You will get a random number generator and you will be thankful. It's not like you pay for this service.
Want privacy? Tough! We will load privacy violating icons because they're pretty and you can't turn them off because you will
love them!
Want to see how many unread messages you have? Tough! You will get an approximation and you will like it!
Did you think that the app badge would accurately reflect the number of unread messages? Tough. You will get a random number generator and you will be thankful. It's not like you pay for this service.
Want privacy? Tough! We will load privacy violating icons because they're pretty and you can't turn them off because you will
love them!
Broken App
The following settings don’t work…the swipe direction is stuck on archive no matter what you set it to in settings. The conversation grouping will not turn off even after toggling the setting multiple times.
Feature Poor with No Real Plan to Improve
I hate to say that after patiently being a paying customer for Proton Mail for the past four years, I have to give Proton a failing grade.
Proton was supposed to be a secure, private alternative to free accounts from Google, Microsoft, Apple etc.
People like me joined even though Proton wasn’t yet ready for prime time as a replacement for Google. We thought if we waited long enough and kept paying to support the development we would finally have a something that would allow us to fully decouple from Google.
Instead of delivering on that promise, Proton has continue to add nice but non-essential services while still not allowing us to fully decouple from Google.
I am specifically referring to the piss poor Calendar for iPhone (no app for iPad yet and we still can’t edit appointments where others have been invited) and the total absence of a Contact app. I still have to keep my Google account to have my contacts in the Cloud. The mail app is better but still doesn’t have the ability to format text within the body of the e-mail.
If others feel as frustrated as I do please write a bad review. I don’t see how Proton will ever respond if they don’t see it in the reviews.
Proton was supposed to be a secure, private alternative to free accounts from Google, Microsoft, Apple etc.
People like me joined even though Proton wasn’t yet ready for prime time as a replacement for Google. We thought if we waited long enough and kept paying to support the development we would finally have a something that would allow us to fully decouple from Google.
Instead of delivering on that promise, Proton has continue to add nice but non-essential services while still not allowing us to fully decouple from Google.
I am specifically referring to the piss poor Calendar for iPhone (no app for iPad yet and we still can’t edit appointments where others have been invited) and the total absence of a Contact app. I still have to keep my Google account to have my contacts in the Cloud. The mail app is better but still doesn’t have the ability to format text within the body of the e-mail.
If others feel as frustrated as I do please write a bad review. I don’t see how Proton will ever respond if they don’t see it in the reviews.
Useless on iOS
Completely ridiculous that a paid email service doesn’t allow you to customize the notification sound because the developer won’t implement it. I won’t be renewing my workplace plan this month and moving all my domains to a different provider. Fastmail allows custom sounds and is 1/4 the price, sure it will be annoying to move 11 domains but a custom sound is THAT important. So thanks for not fixing that one feature and pushing me to look for a new provider, now saving $22 a month on email service.
So many glitches!
This app used to work, but now there are so many weird little glitches. Emails in the inbox will not delete, reappear, other odd behavior. So, one star now.
Loved it. Learned to despise it
If you are looking for a good private email service proton is great. However, their practices if you choose to leave are predatory.
I ended up moving to another service for consolidation reasons. I figured I could put a forwarder and auto reply on and come back to proton if I wanted.
Wrong.
Forwarding and auto replying are premium features. This means when my subscription did lapse my forwarding and auto reply silently stopped. I missed emails and now I have to nurse this dead inbox and move things over manually unless I pay for something I no longer want to use.
I won’t be going back and advise against anyone who wants to trust something as sensitive as email with this predatory dark UX practice.
I ended up moving to another service for consolidation reasons. I figured I could put a forwarder and auto reply on and come back to proton if I wanted.
Wrong.
Forwarding and auto replying are premium features. This means when my subscription did lapse my forwarding and auto reply silently stopped. I missed emails and now I have to nurse this dead inbox and move things over manually unless I pay for something I no longer want to use.
I won’t be going back and advise against anyone who wants to trust something as sensitive as email with this predatory dark UX practice.
Looks nice but doesn’t sync
Visually, the app looks fantastic. it’s a shame it’s nearly unusable as it never syncs properly with the server. Emails constantly blinking into and out of existence as the app struggles to figure out what’s real. You pretty much end up organizing things twice, once on the web app and again on the mobile app.
Struggling with such basic functionality surely can’t be a good sign!
I have reached out to Proton Support and apparently they are “aware of the issue.” Though notably nothing has improved.
Struggling with such basic functionality surely can’t be a good sign!
I have reached out to Proton Support and apparently they are “aware of the issue.” Though notably nothing has improved.
Can’t view images
This is EXTREMELY frustrating! Embedded images appear as large blank white rectangles in the e-mail body. Auto show embedded/remote images are enabled. Images load correctly on mail.proton.me in Safari. Happens after full reinstall. App version 7.8.0 (7) - 0.162.6
I’ve now wasted a lot of time and nothing, including a full reinstall, works. There is obviously a BUG in the iPhone App, especially since I can see imbedded images in Safari on my iPhone but NOT in the app.
I’ve now wasted a lot of time and nothing, including a full reinstall, works. There is obviously a BUG in the iPhone App, especially since I can see imbedded images in Safari on my iPhone but NOT in the app.
Poor usability
Poor usability for the signup bonus to receive double the amount of free storage. You are put on the clock to complete a vague checklist of four tasks, but the checklist seems to be a figment of Proton’s imagination. You install the iOS app, read the promotion instructions, it tells you to sign in with the web app, and one of the steps is to install the iOS app. It’s a stupid hall of mirrors.
Trash. Won’t let me login or go anywhere past the initial screen
It gives an error code first then says “user already signed in” but stays on the initial login page. I can’t see any of my emails on here and I need it to access some tracking info.
POOR CUSTOMER SUPPORT
Nothing worse than incompetence and apathy when paying for a product that tortures customers with super bad customer support-they just don’t care-they don’t respond-when they do, responses range from totally useless to half-baked cut ‘n’ paste sections of a manual. No apparent IT education or training in the “support” department at Proton.
No support
Made an account, doesn’t allow me to use it on mobile platforms. Reached out for help, a week later, still no form of customer response to any inquiry I sent.
Bad experience, don’t recommend
Bad experience, don’t recommend
Awful Awful Awful
Proton Mail on my laptop if fine, however, trying to get email on my mobile app is heinous. I had important email with US post office and i sat with my phone in hand at my computer. Email appeared instantly on my PC but on my iphone 17 it never arrived until about 15 mins after the exchange of the time.sensitive code number for a process. I was really upset and disappointed in Proton. Why do i receive other providers mail immediately but Proton mobile doesn’t work for me 😵
Terrible app update
Current app update kicked me out of the system with no viable means of recovery I've now lost invaluable data concerning critical research and policy papers. DO NOT UPDATE. You will get locked out. I'd been using protonmail without difficult with 2FA and other security since 2025. Unless customer support can fix this research, safety, conservation MOU agreements are all lost.
Better iOS support is needed. And severely lacking. I was considering upgrading my business E-mail to proton as my business contacts grew but in light of this I feel it is too unstable.
Better iOS support is needed. And severely lacking. I was considering upgrading my business E-mail to proton as my business contacts grew but in light of this I feel it is too unstable.
frustrating
loading it, just trying to set it up I am bombarded with Plan after plan. I just got so frustrated I deleted it.
Na. No Rules. There is no security
This is not secure at all and I have unequivocal proof. Low quality features and no security. Loser product
Compromised
Proton gave an activists personal information to law enforcement because they log users private information! Mullvad and Tuta Mail is safer!
Proton <3 FBI
I’m canceling my Proton Unlimited plan; Proton recently handed over information to Swiss authorities which then handed information over to FBI.
March 2026 update
This is the worst update ever from them. It shows the previous messages in each and every email.
No New Emails Since 2/26
Your email server is down or something. I am receiving the emails that I send to myself, but have not received any emails since 2/26. Please fix!
New update keeps crashing
The new update keeps crashing. If I leave the app to look at something else, it’ll freeze when I return to it. Even if I close out the app, the same frozen screen will pop up when I try to open it. I have to wait several minutes for it to finish crashing before I can utilize it again. Please fix this!
Frustrating app
The unread emails badge is always wrong. Formatting is often way off leaving some emails unreadable. This app feels like it was written for android and poorly ported to iOS.
Would be a 5 if not for the most basic function
I’ve been trying to switch for a few months but find it clunky, and the worst part is that you can’t sort by sender or subject and from searching this seems to be a common complaint that Proton is tone deaf about
Sort by any header is the most basic of database features. I’ve been using email since before it was cool
Sort by any header is the most basic of database features. I’ve been using email since before it was cool
The worst search functionality of any app I’ve ever used! Beyond terrible.
Otherwise it’s a great app…
So annoying
I constantly have issues with this account. It’s super unreliable to use for me. I tried to get a verification email from an account I set up and I just gave up and used my gmail. The verification email showed up instantly. I regret making this my primary email account because I have way too many problems.
Not as good as gmail
too many quirks to mention. one example is it literally takes sometimes 3-5 seconds to send an email like it’s running on a dial up modem. my internet is 1gig fiber too. i won’t pay unless its as good as gmail. your calendar is even worse. clunky. lacking.
Meh
It’s a decent suite, but has shortcomings. Here’s the biggest problem. I have questions. With a fully paid subscription, I was told that I would have “premium support”.
What support?
No support contact is listed on the website. There’s no support email. No phone number. Just an incomplete FAQ.
I’m paying for support. Where the heck is it??????
What support?
No support contact is listed on the website. There’s no support email. No phone number. Just an incomplete FAQ.
I’m paying for support. Where the heck is it??????
Going down hill
The previous versions were good. Now they trap messages in frames where if you expand them to the point you can see them on your phone, then you can only see portions of the message. I discussed this with them back and forth for months and so far nothing has been done. There is no option to return to a previous (functional) version so I’m contemplating a change.
App is very bugged
This application is bugged. You better.
Ok when it works
The phone app is terrible. It doesn’t sync and show updated emails. It shows emails I’ve deleted on my laptop. I can’t report a problem because it says I’m not connected to the internet. It used to have a manual sync option that is gone for some reason?? To make the app more inconvenient? Looking at other email options after years of being with Proton because the quality has gone downhill so dramatically.
Sentiment summary
94%
Positive (4-5★)
2%
Neutral (3★)
4%
Negative (1-2★)