Comment by _akhe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _akhe | Hacker News Reader

I use Proton Mail and Calendar for my main email (and their VPN). Proton is like a slow version of Google, but I like having a cloud-based non-Google option (I use Gmail for other accounts).

My only complaint about Proton is it takes forever to start. Proton Mail shows a splash screen for seconds every single time. Over time it starts to feel unbearably slow. And recently, someone on their product team had the genius idea to put an app switcher as the new default screen, so now it's 1 click plus the splash screen just to get into your inbox. Takes too long to get to email basically, but on the plus side it prevents me from checking it too often.

My gmail emails that I use with app passwords etc. all had their prices raised recently to $7.20/month. For a long time I was paying $5. So it should still be cheaper to use Google over Proton for 1 domain, but if you have more than 1 maybe it's worth switching.

I haven't tried Proton as a developer yet (app passwords, using their APIs, etc.) just as a user. Overall it's a very similar experience to Google.

That doesn't sound right, have you reported the issue you're describing above to our support team at: https://proton.me/support/troubleshooting?product=mail?

Yes a while ago, and Proton support sounded exactly like your comment "Hm that's strange" - do you use your own product?

If you navigate to the inbox - https://mail.proton.me/u/1/inbox - there's a splash screen with the Proton logo in the center and the text "Loading Proton Mail..." for several seconds on every single page load.

Try it out! Let me know.

This may depend on the browser too - have you tried different ones, and if yes, have you noticed any differences in the duration of this splash screen?

The splash screen shows for seconds on every page load in both Firefox and Chrome, and yes with/without extensions, and yes I tried unplugging it and plugging it back in :P

It's been hilarious trying convey this to you guys. You designed it that way, it's not a user issue at all. If it helps sometimes it will say "Loading Proton Account..." for a couple seconds then "Loading Proton Mail..." for a couple more seconds.

I would say this is one reason not to use Proton - they treat you like this when you open a support ticket too, like it's impossible there's anything wrong and it's always user error. They're always confused as if nobody has ever reported it and you never arrive at a solution, you just get sick of talking with them after a while because they don't know their own product.

We apologize, we didn't intend it to sound that way. When logging into our web app, it's expected to experience a short delay because, unlike with Gmail, the web browser also needs to decrypt the data encrypted with zero-access encryption. So, the delay 1-2 seconds is expected. If more encryption keys are active on your account, it will take longer. This is unavoidable on an encrypted service. Depending on the browser, browser version, OS, OS version, and the device itself, the duration of this delay can vary further.

> the delay 1-2 seconds is expected

This user disagrees.

> Gmail is not encrypted

Don't know where you heard that but Gmail uses client-side encryption too: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/13317990?hl=en

They also use all the industry-standard encryption for requests. Proton may use different encryption techniques than Gmail, and because Proton doesn't run an ad business on my inbox like Google does, there are probably generally less crawlers in Proton messages than in Gmail, but wouldn't that make Proton faster?

I'm surprised the several seconds long splash screen doesn't get reported often - it's glaringly the only thing wrong with the service.

Note that Gmail doesn't use zero-access encryption: https://proton.me/blog/zero-access-encryption. This is why Google has the technical ability to scan your email content, and Proton doesn't - on Proton Mail, you can only access your inbox with the account password, which only the account owner should have.

Email trackers, on the other hand, load upon the opening of a particular emails, not the entire inbox, so that shouldn't prolong the time it takes to load the web app, but only those emails that contain them.

> This is why Google has the technical ability to scan your email content, and Proton doesn't

I don't buy this theatre for 1 second. Proton obviously has the ability to run a data business off my data if they wanted to - they own it all and it runs on their server.

Not saying they do it, but the idea that it's impossible because of "encryption" is a joke - you assign the keys and you could easily use them on the backend out of my view, the user has no visibility into how that works or what you guys do behind the scenes - it's not like decentralized technology (even the best decentralized tech can't deliver on this promise yet).

So it seems like it's slow because of client-side encryption which Google also does. Yes I know they have a data business, but the data is still encrypted.

It's been confirmed in independent audits, and our code and cryptography are open-source, so they can be inspected (https://proton.me/community/open-source). It's also been confirmed in court, as we were never able to provide any of our users' email content to the law enforcement (when presented with legal data requests that we have no grounds to contest). Basically, we protect users' data by having no access to it.

Your encryption keys are encrypted with your password (which we don't have access to), so we cannot access or use your keys. Therefore, the server doesn't in fact have access to your private encryption key. Once the files are encrypted with the user’s public encryption key they are no longer accessible to the server or the server’s owner: https://proton.me/blog/zero-access-encryption. For more resources on PGP encryption we recommend this one too: https://proton.me/blog/what-is-pgp-encryption.

It really doesn't. Mobile App starts in under a second and i can't remember the WebApp ever taking long enough to load, for me to notice.

Can't remember? Try it now - you saying you don't see a splash screen that lasts for long enough for your eye to notice? It's about 2-5 seconds for me. The experience is jarring overall - Gmail doesn't do that.

I still use Proton, it's not a deal breaker, it's just a clunky and annoying software at times.

Thanks for the info. That loading screen feels like a friction that would get annoying!

Exactly I like it snappy! I want to navigate and before I can think of anything it's like page loaded. O_O Your move user.

Or I hover and it's like tooltip! And I'm like dang that was fast, hm what if I... click- result! Dang that was so freakin fast how do they-

Because if you aint snappy you crappy you feel me

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