Today, we’re all connected to the Internet in every aspect of our lives. We use the Internet to search for information, listen to music, play games, pay bills, and get in touch with our loved ones.

Email is one of the crucial ways by which we communicate with others. It’s fast, cheap, reliable and universally accessible regardless of the device and operating system we use. But as our real and digital lives get interconnected, we often share a wealth of personal and confidential information through emails.

The Need of Encrypting Your Emails

If your email isn’t encrypted, your email communications are sent in plain, human-readable form. While your email travels to the intended recipient, people with technical proficiency could intercept it. Your Internet Service Provider (ISP), cyber criminals or your next door unemployed neighbor could read your confidential email communications. Cyber criminals could hack into other email accounts, perform identity thefts, or misuse them for other illegal activities. If you wish to secure the contents of your emails and any attachments (such as documents, photos), it’s crucial to encrypt them.

How Does Email Encryption Works?

In simple words, encryption converts your email from a human-readable text into cipher text. Even if you’re connected to an unsecured public Wi-Fi (such as those on airports or railway stations) and someone intercepts your connection, all they would see is a series of randomized letters and numbers which are completely unreadable to a human mind. Only the intended recipient of your email could decrypt your email using the decryption Key. (We still highly recommend using a VPN on an unsecured public Wi-Fi as rest of your Internet activities are still exposed to the hackers)

Send Encrypted Emails Using ProtonMail (Freemium)

Based in Switzerland, a country with strictest privacy and data security laws, ProtonMail is one of the most secure and private email and VPN services around the world. All Proton apps (including ProtonMail and Proton VPN) are open-source and independently audited by security researchers for their top-notch privacy and security features.

When you create a free ProtonMail account, it doesn’t ask for any personal information. If you wish to go with a premium plan, you can make anonymous payments using supported cryptocurrencies. You can read more at Proton’s Privacy Statement.

Your ProtonMail emails are end-to-end encrypted. ProtonMail stores your emails on their servers with zero-access encryption algorithm.

ProtonMail can be accessed from your web browser, or using its Android and iOS apps. You can also integrate your ProtonMail account into your favorite email client (such as Mozilla Thunderbird) using the ProtonMail Bridge.

Other Key Features

Short Email Addresses

Do you find your ProtonMail email with protonmail.com domain name long and tedious to type? No worries, you can activate alternate domain addresses, such as, proton.me or pm.me. They are shorter and easy to type. If your existing email address is example@protonmail.com, you’d get shorter email addresses such as example@proton.me, or example@pm.me.

Personalized Themes

The redesigned interface of the ProtonMail provides multiple themes to choose from. You can change the look and feel of your inbox. It’s also possible to further customize your inbox to get the Gmail feel.

Easily Search Old Emails with Email Filters

Email filters are another key feature of ProtonMail. You can search through your old emails using various parameters, such as keyword, location, email address, date/ duration, read status (whether your email was read or unread), etc.

A question may arise in your mind: Can you search for a keyword inside an email content? Unfortunately, you can’t. This is particularly because your emails are stored on ProtonMail’s servers in an encrypted form.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Many of the ProtonMail features are quickly accessible using keyboard shortcuts. You can forward emails, reply to emails, switch between different folders, or organize emails using various keyboard shortcuts.

Easily Import Your Contacts

Sometimes, we’re hesitant to switch to another email service because we’d have to spend a lot of time setting up everything from scratch, adding our contacts one by one. Fortunately, ProtonMail makes the migration easier with automated contacts importing feature. With a few clicks, you can import your contacts from other popular email services such as Google, Microsoft Outlook and Yahoo.

2-Factor Authentication (2FA)

What if someone guesses your password and tries to get into your account? These days, 2-FA is a security norm. You can activate the 2-FA security feature to protect your ProtonMail account from hackers trying to compromise your account. 2-FA will send a One-Time Password (OTP) on your authentication app, registered mobile number or registered email address. It’s also possible to use a Hardware-based Key for highest security.