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Outlook vs ProtonMail
March 16, 2025 | Author: Adam Levine
37★
Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager from Microsoft. It can be used as a stand-alone service/application, or can work with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft SharePoint Server for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, Exchange public folders, SharePoint lists and meeting schedules.
19★
Our email service safeguards user data with strict privacy protections and our secure datacenter facility hidden inside a Swiss granite mountain. Your emails are automatically end-to-end encrypted inside our email service. Because of this, we cannot decrypt or share your data with third parties.
See also:
Top 10 Email services for Business
Top 10 Email services for Business
Outlook and ProtonMail are both email services, which means they both allow people to send messages electronically instead of using pigeons, smoke signals or shouting very loudly across vast distances. They both come with handy organizational tools, spam filtering (to protect you from princes offering great wealth in exchange for your banking details) and mobile apps so you can check your email while pretending to listen in meetings. Most importantly, both offer a free plan, meaning you can enjoy the existential dread of an ever-filling inbox without spending a penny.
Outlook, being a Microsoft product since 1996, is a slick, business-focused behemoth, seamlessly interwoven with Office, Teams and whatever else Microsoft has decided you need this week. It has calendars, contact lists and task managers, ensuring you never truly escape from work, even in your sleep. Encryption is available, but only if you know where to find the right buttons and settings, which Microsoft has cunningly hidden in a labyrinth of menus, presumably for your own good. It is primarily designed for people who need emails to be serious, professional, and, most importantly, always available—because no one ever wants to say, "Sorry, I didn’t get your email" in a corporate environment.
ProtonMail, on the other hand, emerged from the neutral, chocolate-producing lands of Switzerland in 2014 with the radical idea that email should be private. It encrypts your emails so thoroughly that even ProtonMail itself can’t read them, which is excellent for privacy but sometimes a bit of a puzzle if you forget your password. Unlike Outlook, it does not integrate with much unless you use a special tool called ProtonMail Bridge, which sounds like something out of a spy novel but is actually a way to get ProtonMail working with normal email apps. Designed for those who value security, anonymity and the vague thrill of knowing the NSA would have a very bad day trying to snoop on them, ProtonMail is the choice for people who prefer their emails like their secrets—completely unreadable to everyone else.
See also: Top 10 Email services
Outlook, being a Microsoft product since 1996, is a slick, business-focused behemoth, seamlessly interwoven with Office, Teams and whatever else Microsoft has decided you need this week. It has calendars, contact lists and task managers, ensuring you never truly escape from work, even in your sleep. Encryption is available, but only if you know where to find the right buttons and settings, which Microsoft has cunningly hidden in a labyrinth of menus, presumably for your own good. It is primarily designed for people who need emails to be serious, professional, and, most importantly, always available—because no one ever wants to say, "Sorry, I didn’t get your email" in a corporate environment.
ProtonMail, on the other hand, emerged from the neutral, chocolate-producing lands of Switzerland in 2014 with the radical idea that email should be private. It encrypts your emails so thoroughly that even ProtonMail itself can’t read them, which is excellent for privacy but sometimes a bit of a puzzle if you forget your password. Unlike Outlook, it does not integrate with much unless you use a special tool called ProtonMail Bridge, which sounds like something out of a spy novel but is actually a way to get ProtonMail working with normal email apps. Designed for those who value security, anonymity and the vague thrill of knowing the NSA would have a very bad day trying to snoop on them, ProtonMail is the choice for people who prefer their emails like their secrets—completely unreadable to everyone else.
See also: Top 10 Email services
