After a year of crowdfunding, ProtonMail was released publicly on 16 May 2014 into beta as an end-to-end encrypted email service. It got so much traffic within the first 3 days, that it had to temporarily suspend its public beta program. ProtonMail 2.0 was released 14 August 2015, including a rewritten codebase, and, at the same time, becoming open source.
ProtonMail and ProtonVPN
On 22 May 2017, upon the release of ProtonVPN, "ProtonMail" became Proton Technologies, with ProtonMail becoming a subsidiary alongside ProtonVPN. As of 1 May 2020, it has 20 million active users, and is accessible online through the Tor net and clearnet, and its dedicated iOS and Android apps. After over a year of crowdfunding, ProtonMail released ProtonVPN on 22 May 2017; a secure VPN service provider. Simultaneously, ProtonMail became Proton Technologies AG. Since then, it has gained popularity through its strict no-logging policy, location in Switzerland, and prevention of DNS and WebRTCIP addressleakage, and currently On 21 January 2020, Proton Technologies announced that ProtonVPN would now be open source, to allow independent security experts to analyze it, becoming the first VPN service to do so. Proton also announced that an independent security audit had been conducted. As of 1 May 2020, ProtonVPN had a total of 809 servers, located in 50 different countries, all owned and operated by Proton itself.
Opened to public beta on 30 December 2019, ProtonCalendar is an alternative to services like Google Calendar and iCal, and will be the first fully encrypted calendar app. As of 1 January 2020, it is available to paid subscribers of ProtonMail.
Future
According to various statements made by Proton as well as through various other sources, announced by ProtonMail, there is a cloud storage solution called ProtonDrive in development with a planned release date of Q4 2020 and beta release date of Q3 2020.
Location and security
Both ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are located in Switzerland to avoid any surveillance or information requests from countries under the Fourteen Eyes, and/or under government surveillance laws like the U.S.'s Patriot Act or outside the bounds of law. They are also located in Switzerland because of its strict privacy laws that protect users' privacy.
Funding
Proton Technologies is supported by FONGIT; a non-profit foundation, notably financed through a division of the Switzerland government; the "Swiss Federal Commission for Technology and Innovation". Proton is also supported by its community through donations and paid subscriptions to either ProtonVPN or ProtonMail. Paid ProtonVPN notably includes access to all of its countries rather than the free '3' and access to the Tor network, as well as more security and peer-to-peer networking support.
