We’re offering extra resources in response to COVID-19

We are living through a situation that is unprecedented in modern history. At a moment of great professional uncertainty and personal stress, we are also being asked to be apart from each other physically. 

Over the last few weeks, we have taken immediate steps to keep our employees and their families safe. This includes mandating that anyone who can work from home do so, as well as canceling all in-person meetings and non-essential travel until further notice.

Due to the strong support from the community, we have been navigating these new challenges better than most. We have maintained 100% operating capacity and are continuing to expand to meet the needs of the community. 

In these turbulent times, we’re reminded of the importance of community and solidarity. With this in mind, we wanted to do our part to help support both the Proton community and others around the world who need support to confront this crisis. 

Supporting the Proton community

We are here to help, and we will do our best to accommodate requests from the Proton user community so that we can get through this together. Feel free to reach out to us at any time.

We will also be automatically providing the following to all Proton subscribers (free of charge):

Additional ProtonMail storage

In a world where working remotely is the new norm, there is an even greater need for the secure and private communications ProtonMail enables. Whether it’s collaborating with co-workers or keeping in touch with friends, email needs have increased. To support this, we’re increasing storage for all paid ProtonMail users. 

The increases are as follows:

• +5 GB for Plus plan
• +5 GB/user for Professional plan
• +10 GB for Visionary plan

All existing paid users and all new paid subscriptions started before April 30 will be eligible for this increase, which is permanent as long as your subscription is active. You can manage your subscription by going to mail.protonmail.com → Settings → Dashboard.

Additional ProtonVPN servers

The worldwide Internet infrastructure is under incredible strain because of stay-at-home orders, and there has also been an increase in ProtonVPN traffic as more people use it to access blocked content or improve the security and privacy of their Internet connection.

In order to improve VPN speeds across Europe and the Americas, which are the two most heavily impacted regions of the world right now, we have added 53 servers in 17 countries. Here you can find the full list of recent ProtonVPN server updates.

Anyone with a ProtonMail account can also use ProtonVPN for free by downloading one of our apps and logging in with your Proton credentials. 

Supporting the global effort against COVID-19

In addition to supporting the Proton community, we will also be taking some concrete steps to support the global response to COVID-19.

Donating email and VPN services 

We have great respect for the numerous organizations around the world helping to spearhead the global COVID-19 response. To support these organizations, we will be donating email and VPN services to organizations assisting in the global COVID-19 fight. 

If you feel you qualify, please send basic information about your organization to enterprise+covid@protonmail.com. Any data you provide will be processed by Proton Technologies AG and solely used to assess whether your organization qualifies to benefit from the program.

Donating computing resources

The best way to beat COVID-19 and similar diseases in the future is through better science. Better science enables better diagnostics, better understanding of disease spread and progression, and a faster path to a vaccine. In order to support the scientific efforts against COVID-19, we are donating the spare computing resources in our Zurich datacenter to the Rosetta@home project. 

Rosetta@home is a project run by the University of Washington that leverages computing resources donated by individuals and organizations around the world to run computer simulations to predict the atomic-scale structure of important coronavirus proteins. Now, some of the extensive computing infrastructure which runs ProtonMail will also be used to help scientists search for a cure. 

Learn more about the Rosetta@home COVID-19 effort. 

As Rosetta@home is crowdsourced distributed computing, anyone with a computer can participate, and you can also join ProtonMail’s Rosetta@home team.

Let us know how we can help you

In these challenging times, it is important not only to stay healthy, but also to stay safe online as we come to depend more than ever on the Internet. To assist with this, we have also created the following resources that can help you navigate the security challenges of this period:

• Guide to IT security while working from home
• How to stay safe from the surge of coronavirus scams
• Privacy issues with Zoom video conference software

We know also that in many regions globally, there have been extensive job losses, with many more likely to come. At Proton we are still hiring, so if you have been impacted, we encourage you to check out our job openings and apply (remote work possible).

As the Proton community, we have always come together to pursue our shared vision of a better Internet and a better world. We will continue to provide secure and unrestricted communications, which in these times is even more important than ever. Most importantly, in this moment of physical isolation, let’s also be there for each other and help support one another. 

Please stay safe and healthy, and let us know how we can help.

Best Regards,
Dr. Andy Yen

You can get a free secure email account from ProtonMail here.

We also provide a free VPN service to protect your privacy.

ProtonMail and ProtonVPN are funded by community contributions. If you would like to support our development efforts, you can upgrade to a paid plan or donate. Thank you for your support.