Proton AG acquires SimpleLogin, an email alias service

Proton AG, the Swiss company behind the popular privacy-friendly products ProtonMail and ProtonVPN has acquired the email alias service SimpleLogin.

SimpleLogin is an open source email alias service that has free, commercial and Enterprise plans. Email alias services act as proxies that protect user email addresses online. Users sign-up online using an email alias that is provided by the service to protect their own email address. All communication is forwarded to the user's email address automatically. Options to reply from the email alias and other features are supported by many services, including SimpleLogin, as well.

Email spam and other unwanted content can be blocked using an email alias service, as it is usually just a flip of a button to disable an alias and block any future communication.

We mentioned SimpleLogin as an excellent alternative to Mozilla's Firefox Relay service, as it is offering more features for a lower price.

The acquisition by Proton AG has no affect on SimpleLogin's service according to the announcement on the SimpleLogin blog. The current open source model won't change and users may use the email alias service with all email providers just like before. Proton AG will provide additional resources for the development of SimpleLogin.

SimpleLogin mentioned the following improvements that are coming to its service in the near future:

• The service will benefit from the Proton infrastructure and expertise in "running an email service that’s been battle-tested".
• Uptime and incidence handling will improve thanks to a 24/7 team.
• Ability to leverage Proton's "expertise in email and application security", and to benefit from "ProtonMail's anti-abuse and anti-spam technologies".

SimpleLogin's code has been audited already and the infrastructure has been hardened. Development will be faster thanks to increase of development team members.

Proton AG plans to integrate the SimpleLogin service better into its ProtonMail email service.

Closing Words

ProtonMail users could use SimpleLogin already, but the upcoming integration of the service will make things easier and the entire process smoother. ProtonMail benefits from the move in several ways: it adds capabilities to its service in the short term that were not as good as those of competing services, and it is getting another revenue source.

Now You: do you use SimpleLogin or ProtonMail? What is your take on the acquisition?

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