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Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

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Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#51

Post by Ylpertnodi »

cpach wrote: post #33
gertop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that signal knows my phone number doesn't bother me. The fact that anyone who knows my phone number can know that I use signal does bother me.

May I ask why you’re bothered by this fact?

[Not op] People (newbs) join signal and it shows I'm on. So they message me "hi!". If I wanted whatsapp etc chats, I'd be on them, but signal is for my real friends, and essential contacts. I chose for several reasons, and being visible on everyone's list is not one of them.

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#53

Post by frognumber »

authorfly wrote: post #39
southernplaces7 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Needing Google occasionally is understandable but keeping it to a minimum and as disconnected as possible from core business functionality, and as replaceable as possible if things go sideways with its brainless algorithms, is absolutely doable. Please, enough justification for why almost anyone generally "needs" Google. For example: >B2B and go to a conference? Where are you putting your video demo reels/talks? YouT…

I agree with you as a technical guy. It's not the worst. But as to why is happens: If your business-focused founder or Marketing guy is going to the conference, it'll be Youtube, even though Vimeo is accessible. Unless you go make the account, share it to them, and have a SOP, why would they look at Vimeo? The problem is when you get any sort of size the non-tech people choose Google as a default and then it (with we…

The rule is simple. Google is fine for anything not in the critical path.

Need something to spread on social media? Fine. Post on Twitter, Facebook, Google, go nuts.

Never use Google (or other sketchy vendors) for anything you need to rely on to be there tomorrow.

Example: Youtube is fine for promotional materials. If you run an ed-tech and need videos to be there for students (core business), pay for something which works.

Example: Running a Black Friday promotion? Adwords. Relying on Google SEO for your main business as the main way to recruit customers? Bad idea.

You get one exception to this if you're building a Google-centric business. Is your business an Android App? You obviously get to use Android in your core business. If your business a Youtube channel? You get to use Youtube.

Things like Google Workspace, Google Cloud Platform, etc. are out. If, tomorrow, Google decides to wipe all you Google Workspace data (yes, it did this to a startup I was involved with), you're DOA. Office 365 is annoying compared to Google Workspace, but still worth it, since Microsoft won't wipe out your business as a statistic.

The way I think about this is each business has risks which multiply out:

(failed to execute technically) * (odds of market fit failing) * (odds of not being defrauded by your co-founder) * ....

This should multiply out to how likely your startup is to succeed. The way exponentials work, most of those risks need to be very, very low. You get one, maybe two, big ones. Every Google product in the core critical path has perhaps 10% odds of wiping out your business. Adopting Android is totally worth it if your business is Pokemon Go, but for most aspects of your business, pick trustworthy vendors.

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#54

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #51
cpach wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask why you’re bothered by this fact?

[Not op] People (newbs) join signal and it shows I'm on. So they message me "hi!". If I wanted whatsapp etc chats, I'd be on them, but signal is for my real friends, and essential contacts. I chose for several reasons, and being visible on everyone's list is not one of them.

You can turn that off in settings

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#55

Post by mooreds »

wanderingmind wrote: post #46

I suggest Zoho one. It's been in service for many many years. It's not as feature rich as Google or MSFT, but their service is fantastic and gives you all options a small business needs (office, marketing, CRM, sales, HR, Finance among others). https://www.zoho.com/one/

Pricing[0] is $37/employee/month, so 3-6 times the price of Google Workspace[1].

But avoiding getting locked out of your account and having to post on HN to get any support from Google? Priceless.

0: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/

1: https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#56

Post by fragmede »

mooreds wrote: post #55
wanderingmind wrote: post #46

I suggest Zoho one. It's been in service for many many years. It's not as feature rich as Google or MSFT, but their service is fantastic and gives you all options a small business needs (office, marketing, CRM, sales, HR, Finance among others). https://www.zoho.com/one/

Pricing[0] is $37/employee/month, so 3-6 times the price of Google Workspace[1]. But avoiding getting locked out of your account and having to post on HN to get any support from Google? Priceless. 0: https://www.zoho.com/one/pricing/ 1: https://workspace.google.com/lp/business/

Structurally, what does proton do that means you'd not get locked out of your account?

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#57

Post by palata »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #7

In my opinion, E2EE comes with too many compromises to be worth it for most people and/or companies. Proton wasn't evolving quickly enough, so I switched to Fastmail. Email aside, no CardDav/CalDav is a dealbreaker for me.

I went from Proton to Fastmail and then Migadu. But I think that it is not really answering the question.

The question is about a Business Suite similar to the Google Suite. I don't think that Fastmail provides a Drive or Docs (as far as I know they have mail, contacts and calendar, right?).

Not to say that Proton is a perfect alternative: Proton Docs is pretty new and doesn't have the excel/powerpoint equivalents that Google has.

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#58

Post by palata »

nemosaltat wrote: post #19
metalmangler wrote: post #5

I am bootstraping, and have used proton for years as my only email, but have my own email now, and am slowly backing out of proton. The horrible way that they extort by limiting and degrading a service is only part of the problem.They degraded email replies at one point, to a tiny "page" with less than one full line of text. There is more, but proton is not worth the effort to remember and detail all of it. I will us…

Same here. When you say your own email, do you mean Fastmail? I love Proton and they got me and my SO largely off of Google. Fastmail is just so good, I’m going to migrate everything there eventually.

> When you say your own email, do you mean Fastmail?

Not sure what they mean, but at the very least I think you should have your own domain. So that you can migrate without changing the email address (and having to ask all your contacts to update to the new one).

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#59

Post by palata »

gertop wrote: post #31
cpach wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of threat model do you operate under where Signal Technology Foundation knowing (one of) your phone numbers is a large risk?

The fact that signal knows my phone number doesn't bother me. The fact that anyone who knows my phone number can know that I use signal does bother me.

Settings > Privacy > Phone number has two options:

- "Who can see my number". If you choose "Nobody", then your phone number will not be visible to anyone unless they have it saved in their phone's contacts.

- "Who can find me by number". If you choose "Nobody", then nobody will be able to see you're on Signal unless you message them or have an existing chat with them.

Re: Has anyone used Proton Business Suite rather than Google's for a startup?

#60

Post by palata »

roastedpeacock wrote: post #22
pcb-rework wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a fool if you believe handing over metadata like your personal phone number so you can be tracked is an improvement. That's not email and not a replacement for GPG, something that actually works properly. Session is a superior app for text replacement. I think you need to find new blogs that don't offer crap advice.

Session started as a fork of the Signal client/server to use identifiers that are not phone numbers (perfectly sensible) but having deviated from the known primitives of the Signal protocol and omitting PFS gives me pause.

And now Signal allows you to use identifiers that are not phone numbers (except for your registration to the server).
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