Email and newsletters decision
Proton Mail Plus
A competent engineer can implement a useful encrypted webmail workflow (send/receive, basic encryption, domain support) using existing open-source mail stacks, but reproducing Proton’s scale, audits, ecosystem, and brand is impractical; keep paying for those enterprise-level benefits.
Visit website↗$4.99/mo
$60/yr
Not verified against a pricing page.
$100one-off80 h to build
$0/mo8 h/mo upkeep
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Open-source builds that already do this
Every project below is open source and already does this job today. Fork one, self-host it, or take the parts you need - the build prompt further down assumes an empty file, and this is the shortcut past that. Licences differ; check the one on each card before you ship. All Proton Mail Plus alternatives, with the arithmetic →
What a replacement has to do
- Provide end-to-end encrypted email accounts (send/receive) with web UI, support for custom domains, storage and search, and basic spam/filtering.
What it still won’t have
- Proton’s global scale and infrastructure (100M+ users)
- Brand trust and enterprise audits/certifications
- Bundled ecosystem (VPN, Drive, Pass, Lumo AI) and native mobile/desktop apps
- Independent security audits and long-term transparency/reporting
What remains hard
- Infrastructure at scale
Trusted by over 100 million users and organizations
- Brand trust
Our transparency, open-source software, and rigorous encryption have earned Proton millions of users — and the recommendation of the United Nations.
First-year cost
Keep paying
Paying is—cheaper in year one.
On cash alone, building overtakes the subscription at 2 seats.
Money you would actually spend
Time you would spend
—
What you would spend
What we assumed
The verdict above measures whether you could build it. This one is only about money.
Runnable build prompt
Build a minimal, self-hosted encrypted webmail service using PostgreSQL, Redis, Postfix (or Mailu), Dovecot (IMAP), and a Node.js + React webmail UI. Core features in scope: account signup/login with 2FA, send/receive via SMTP/IMAP, client-side or zero-access message encryption storage (AES per-message with server-stored encrypted keys), inbox/folders/labels, attachments (S3-compatible storage), custom domain MX setup and DNS verification, and basic spam filtering (SpamAssassin). Out of scope: mobile apps, large-scale multi-region infra, proprietary AI features, enterprise compliance certifications. Require TLS everywhere, automated backups, monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana), error handling, and unit/integration tests for auth, mail flow, and storage encryption.
How we checked
How the score was reached
- Partly verdict base52
- An open-source build was found+5
- 5 cited sources+3
- Hard moats found in the evidence-3
- Evidence score57
The base comes from the verdict. Everything under it is a check that either happened or did not, and each one is a fact frozen in this record rather than a judgement made at render time - so the same evidence always produces the same number.
How scoring works →Cited sources · 5
Every page the run actually retrieved.
- official productProton homepage
- official pricingProton pricing
- official docsProton Drive docs
- open sourcelavabit/magma
- open sourceBillionmail/BillionMail
Integrity checks
What held up, and what did not.
