Proton Mail
Email Switzerland
Encrypted email for private communication and secure inbox storage. Alternative to Gmail and Outlook Mail.
Details
Proton Mail is the encrypted mailbox from Proton AG in Geneva, launched out of CERN in 2014 and majority-owned since 2024 by the non-profit Proton Foundation. Messages sit in zero-access encrypted storage and travel end-to-end encrypted between Proton accounts, with password-protected mail for everyone else. Paid plans add custom domains, aliases, and multi-user business accounts; desktop IMAP and SMTP clients connect through Proton Bridge. The apps are open source and independently audited, and the servers fall under Swiss privacy law.
About Proton
Proton AG is a Swiss stock corporation at Route de la Galaise 32, 1228 Plan-les-Ouates, Geneva, registered as CHE-354.686.492. Its terms of service are governed by the substantive laws of Switzerland and give the courts of the Canton of Geneva exclusive jurisdiction for business users and for consumers outside the United States. The company launched in 2014 after a crowdfunding campaign in which more than 10,000 people put up over USD 500,000.
The primary shareholder is the Proton Foundation, a Geneva non-profit that founder Andy Yen, co-founder Jason Stockman and first employee Dingchao Lu endowed with their own shares in June 2024; its first board of trustees included Tim Berners-Lee. Proton says employees hold the large majority of the remaining shares, with the rest split between the Geneva technology foundation FONGIT and Proton users. Innosuisse and the European Commission have both supported the company and hold neither shares nor control.
Proton reports more than 100 million accounts and over 600 staff across nine offices: Geneva, Zurich, Skopje, Taipei, Vilnius, London, Barcelona, Paris and Prague. The line-up covers Mail, Calendar, Drive, VPN, Pass, Meet, Docs and Sheets, Authenticator, Wallet and the Lumo assistant, and the client apps are open source.
In July 2025 Proton said it was moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland and putting more than EUR 100 million into the EU, starting with Lumo. It objected to a proposed revision of the Swiss VÜPF surveillance ordinance that would oblige services above 5,000 users to identify customers and retain metadata for six months. The new capacity is going to Germany and Norway.
