Proton Drive Reviews 

We chose Proton because it's encrypted & AI is opt-in. But unfortunately it's SO buggy we can't work properly. It makes our job 10 times harder every day...

Certo — ecco la versione con **Proton Drive prima** e **Proton Mail alla fine**.

I chose Proton Unlimited mainly because Proton is one of the very few providers whose technical architecture appears to genuinely implement the level of security and privacy it publicly claims to provide. From that point of view, I still consider Proton one of the strongest services available.

Unfortunately, my experience with Proton Drive and Proton Mail has not been equally positive in terms of reliability and synchronization.

Proton Drive was the most concerning part for me.

Normal synchronization was reasonably fast, but making files available offline could become extremely slow, sometimes around one file every 30 seconds for ordinary photos and documents.

I also observed situations where the application reported that synchronization was complete while files still appeared to be waiting for upload or download. In some cases, newly created files did not appear online as expected.

This is particularly problematic because a synchronization application should give the user a reliable indication of whether all data has actually been uploaded and synchronized. If the application reports that everything is synchronized while some files are still pending, it becomes difficult to trust the displayed status without manually checking the remote storage.

I understand that end-to-end encryption requires additional processing, and I appreciate Proton's security model. However, my archive contains thousands of files, so performance and, above all, reliability at scale are essential.

I need to be able to trust the synchronization state without continuously checking whether every file has actually been transferred correctly.

I eventually decided to cancel Proton Unlimited and migrate my files back to Dropbox. I am now restoring recent backups and comparing folders to make sure nothing has been lost or missed during synchronization. This is a substantial amount of additional work, and I am obviously not happy about having to do it.

Another disappointing aspect is Proton's refund policy. Once the standard refund period has expired, cancelling or discontinuing a Proton Unlimited subscription does not automatically result in a refund for the unused portion of the plan, even when the decision to stop using the service is related to technical or reliability issues.

In my case, I asked Proton to reconsider the refund because of the problems described above, but I was initially informed that I was not eligible under the standard refund policy.

I also encountered several issues with Proton Mail.

The folder hierarchy is too limited for my needs, especially when migrating and managing a large existing mailbox.

I experienced inconsistencies between the mailbox structure shown on mobile, on the web interface, and in Thunderbird through Proton Mail Bridge.

During migration from my old Gmail account, several messages ended up in a recovery folder and generated errors.

After resetting Proton Mail Bridge, some messages disappeared from the local folder structure, leaving me uncertain whether they were lost, still present on Proton’s servers, inaccessible from the client, or only available in the original Gmail account.

Proton Mail Bridge synchronization was also quite slow.

My mailbox contains thousands of emails accumulated over many years, so preserving the structure and being able to verify that everything has been migrated correctly is very important to me.

This is a real pity because Proton’s privacy and security model is one of the best reasons to choose the service. In my experience, however, Proton Drive synchronization, the desktop applications, and Proton Mail Bridge are not yet at the same level as the underlying security architecture.

I hope Proton continues improving these areas, because if reliability and synchronization become as strong as the privacy model, the suite could be outstanding.

20260907 : ticket 5127571

I've never had any issues while using Proton Drive. Support is very helpful too

Proton Drive does not have a built-in automated rule or native setting to scan for and delete duplicate files while keeping the newest one. I must manage duplicates manually. This is a product killer for me and I will dump it.

Used to be good, it's just keeps getting worse of late. Totally unusable, file conflicts all over the place, takes ages to upload and download files. Don't waste your time

Corrupted many of my files, a pain in the ass to uninstall because It forces you not to, and never use the sync if you don’t want half of your files becoming corrupted/deleted

Have SYNC ISSUES ALMOST EVERY DAY! You leave one laptop showing the file synced. You open another the file is deleted have to retrieve it from delete folder online.

Had no problems installing the drive app on MacOS, iOS or Android.

Everything seems reliable - no issues with uploading or downloading items.

I prefer its privacy compared to Apple Cloud which likes to upload everything from your computer to their cloud unless you fight hard to stop it.

I had to contact their support about the iOS app and they replied quickly with a detailed reply. At the moment the Proton Drive app doesn't integrate with the iOS files app. But they told me they are working on this and the new app is in beta.

Overall very happy

Searching for a european alternative to Dropbox, Drive etc. and already having a proton email account I gave the Proton Drive a go. Important for me is the auto photo back up of my android phone. Well it [the app on my phone] works but unfortunately it has no selection for 'only new photos' which means that it uploads ALL the content of the selected directories which can take days [because of the encryption] after which one must delete all the excess once it's finished [5Gb free acount]. As I have multiple folders with photos taken and received from various sources this would mean a really time consuming process. I use dropbox, which does have this feature [OK I only needed it starting out, but still], as my safety upload 'on the road' so I can back up to my own system at home. I had hoped to switch to Proton for this but it's simply too involved, and means a great deal of wasted resources and energy.

I gave up after a whole day of trying to install it on various new laptops. The most unuser friendly program that I just paid for.

Proton is great but it needs a Linux desktop app. I will give it 5* when that happens.

Promising but not at all good

I wanted to have an European alterative to onedrive, dropbox and more.

After researching my analysis came out with proton drive as the option. I copied from dropbox. It looked fantastic. During moving the files I was even offered by proton to get extra free storage, above the 5GB which are for free. Hallelulja. I did. I moved everything. I was very exited.

Some time after I realized the storage was back to 5GB and I could not sync with my phone ???? And it got much worse when I tried to get the files over on my new computer !!

I tried to write Protons help desk, without a result :/ I contacted proton and got a automated reply from “support+idEE0L19XG2V4(at)protondrive.zendesk.com” basically saying there was no time for replying as you where very busy.

I have now sadly removed my files back to dropbox. Hoping to find an alternative soon.

This for both private and the organisations and companies I am involved with.

Proton replies that 5GB is max, this is not the message I got when so uploaded. How else would I be able to upload more than 5GB?

My review stays the same.

Great for file storage. Terrible for documents.
You can not use word documents.

Their own document version is so irritating. By default when you click enter to go the the next line it leaves a big gap. You can hold shift and enter. But I write a lot of addresses. This is just a massive unnecessary inconvenience.

For a company that has pioneered so many areas, I can’t believe they have overlooked something so basic. Yet so irritating I’ve moved over to using standard notes solely for this reason.

And when it comes to Proton Pass. Don’t get me started on that. One of the worst features that actually caused me several days of problems to fix and recover lost data was not having an auto save feature when writing notes.

Yes, you can say it’s my responsibility to click save. But when you are busy it is too easy to accidentally click out when finished and forgotten to click save. Almost all apps I’ve used have auto save. It’s almost assumed.

Another really small thing that would likely be so easy to fix is enough to make me want to use Standard Notes to ensure this never happens.

It’s also slower that standard notes to sync across

But it’s a shame because Proton as a whole has so many good features. From VPN, email, file storage, and more. They could have the whole package. But due to a few really minor things make it too annoying to use. Although I do still use it for secure file storage.

But anything where I have to write out text or use documents then I won’t use Proton.

PLEASE PROTON… ADD AN AUTOSAVE FEATURE TO DOCUMENTS EDITING. AND STOP MAKING THAT STUPID BIG GAP BETWEEN LINES THE DEFAULT. OR MAKE IT EASIER TO CHOOSE WHICH FORMAT YOU WANT.

I was searching for European alternatives for OneDrive en Google Drive. I tried some, but Proton Drive is for me the best one. It is not perfect, sometimes a bit laggy but maybe it was my phone with a hickup.