We want to share a quick update and thank you for all your invaluable feedback and support that has helped our team build a privacy-first identity and password manager from the ground up.
To serve your best interests, Proton doesn’t rely on venture capital investors, and we price our services to ensure sustainability. This means that, generally speaking, Proton is never the cheapest option in any of the markets we serve, particularly when factoring in our extra emphasis on security and privacy and our Swiss jurisdiction. It also means that when our costs go up in an unsustainable way, we must increase prices.
However, because Proton is community funded and not investor funded, Proton isn’t subject to the relentless drive to maximize profits to the detriment of our community. This has allowed us to have unparalleled price stability in the tech industry. For example, our first paid product, Proton Mail Plus, has maintained the same price since 2014, even as inflation has increased dramatically.
If we increase prices when costs go up, it’s only fair that we also reduce prices when costs go down — and this does happen from time to time due to economies of scale. For example, a few years ago, we tripled the storage that comes with our Proton Mail Plus plan without increasing prices.
Thanks to the swift adoption of Proton Pass and the rapid growth of the paid Proton Pass user base, we have achieved economies of scale sooner than anticipated. For this reason, we’re decreasing the price of Proton Pass Plus from $3.99/month to $1.99/month on the annual subscription for both new and existing customers.
With more and more people using Proton Pass, we had to focus on optimizing our architecture and infrastructure to better handle the ever-increasing load. As a result, we managed to reduce our server cost per account, allowing us to decrease prices. We can scale down costs faster because we own and operate all our server infrastructure unlike most other password managers, which rely on third-party cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS).
If you’re currently a subscriber to the Proton Pass Plus plan on the old pricing, you’ll receive an email from us with information on how to take advantage of the new pricing.
Thanks again for supporting Proton Pass. We’re continuously working to bring more enhancements and features to make your experience even more enjoyable — stay tuned for important updates in the coming weeks! And, as always, thank you for fighting for a better internet where privacy is the default.