Proton, the Swiss company behind various privacy-focused online services, has brought its end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) cloud storage service to desktop for the first time.
Following an extended beta phase, Proton Drive is available on Windows from today, with the Mac incarnation expected to hit beta testing “soon.”
Founded in 2014, Proton was initially focused on an encrypted Gmail alternative called Proton Mail, but the company has since launched its own VPN, password manager and calendar app, while last September it launched a cloud storage service on the web followed by its mobile counterparts a few months later.
Proton Drive for Windows. Image Credits: Proton
Proton Drive is pitched as a “zero-knowledge” encrypted cloud storage and file-sharing service, which essentially means that nobody aside from the sender and recipient can access any of the data that’s shared between them. This will be a major selling point compared to rivals in the space such as Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive, though Dropbox recently acquired certain assets from a startup called Boxcryptor with plans to eventually offer something similar to Proton Drive. However, that will be offered as a benefit to paid business subscribers only.
Proton Drive, for its part, is available in basic form for free with 1GB of cloud storage, with users able to upgrade to 500GB of encrypted storage with the $9.99 monthly Proton Unlimited plan, which also unlocks premium versions of Proton’s other services.
There is also a standalone Proton Drive subscription costing $3.99 per month, which has a 200GB storage limit.