Proton Pass Review 2024: Before You Buy, Is It Worth It?

Not the Most Feature-Rich but Has Some Standout Features

I found that Proton Pass isn’t as feature-rich as other top password managers. For instance, it’s missing crucial modern features like passkey support, emergency access, and individual item sharing. To be fair, it’s a very new product and Proton has promised more features in the future. However, it has started out with some unique features, like email aliases and Proton Sentinel that help set it apart.

Intuitive Vault — Ensures Safe and Easy Password Management

Proton Pass has beginner-friendly vaults that make it easy to manage passwords. Considering how slick and easy-to-use all of Proton’s apps are, I’m not surprised with how simple and effective Proton Pass’ vaults are. You can easily navigate them in the web app, browser extensions, and mobile apps.

You can use Proton Pass’ vaults to store cards, accounts, secure notes, email aliases, and more. It’s not as comprehensive as 1Password’s vault, which provides storage for SSH keys, API credentials, and many other types of data. However, this is a minor issue, as you can simply use the secure notes to save unsupported data.

Hide-My-Email Aliases — Helpful Tool in Case You Don’t Want to Share Your Actual Email

Proton Pass lets you instantly generate email aliases if you aren’t comfortable sharing your actual email somewhere. I especially like how well-integrated this feature is. During tests, I was signing up for a GoDaddy account, and Proton Pass instantly asked if I wanted to sign up with an alias instead of my actual email.

All the mail sent to your aliases is redirected to your Proton email, meaning you’ll never miss any important messages if you use this feature. You can create multiple aliases without issues, but remember that Proton Pass’ free plan limits you to 10 aliases per account. Unfortunately, you can’t choose to redirect to a different email address, so this feature might not be too useful if you don’t use Proton Mail.

Auto-Save and Fill — Effective and Time-Saving Features

Since auto-save and fill features are such crucial parts of a password manager, I’m happy to report that Proton Pass has seamless auto-save and auto-fill. Both features work as they’re supposed to. Whenever I signed in to a website or registered for a new account, Proton Pass showed a dialog asking me to save my login information.

Proton Pass’ auto-fill is equally effective. It instantly shows a dialog box asking to auto-fill information on a website you’ve saved a login for. If you have multiple logins, you’ll get a list that lets you choose which account to use. If the list doesn’t appear automatically, you can click the Proton Pass icon to open it manually.

Another thing I like about this app is that you can pause auto-fill on specific websites. This is a useful setting if you frequently log into banking apps and don’t want the app auto-filling your information there.

Note that since there’s no native desktop app, Proton Pass can’t auto-fill your logins on desktop apps. This feature will only work on websites accessed on your browser, so the app’s auto-fill isn’t as effective as what you get with top password managers with native apps, like 1Password.

Password Generator — Creates Secure Passwords and Passphrases

While I’ve seen better password generators in the best password managers, Proton Pass has a reliable password generator that should meet everyone’s needs. It can generate up to 64-character-long passwords, and it lets you customize passwords to include numbers, special characters, and more.

Besides passwords, Proton Pass’ password generator can also make passphrases up to 10 words long. Also, this feature shows up whenever you’re signing up for a new account to ask if you want to generate a new password, which is convenient.

TOTP Generator — Generates 2FA Codes for Logging Into Your Accounts

Among Proton Pass’ most useful features is its TOTP generator. This lets you avoid the hassle of needing another authenticator app for 2FA codes. To use this feature, enter your 2FA secret key in the designated field while saving your account, and Proton Pass will automatically generate time-based one-time passwords to log into your accounts.

Other password managers offer this feature, but Proton Pass implements it better. Whenever you log into an account using the auto-fill feature, Proton Pass instantly copies your account’s OTP to your clipboard. You can instantly paste it and access your account without having to open the web extension to check the OTP.

Import/Export — Easily Switch Between Password Managers

To ensure you can seamlessly switch password managers, Proton Pass provides excellent import and export capabilities. I was especially impressed with how many sources it supports importing from. You can easily import passwords from popular apps like Dashlane or import them directly from your browser.

Proton Pass even has a button that lets you submit a request to add a new password manager if you don’t see it supported in the list.

On the other hand, exporting is just as effective. You can export your Proton Pass data directly as a .json file that can easily be imported elsewhere. Also, Proton Pass lets you encrypt your exported data with a password, and it’s then exported as a safer .pgp file. You can use this feature to ensure that only authorized parties can import your data.

Vault Sharing — Somewhat Limited but Still Useful

I was pleased to see that Proton Pass has reliable sharing functionality, even though it’s not the best I’ve seen. Proton Pass lets you share any of your vaults with others by entering their email. Recipients must have a Proton account to view the data, and they even get an invitation to create it if they don’t already have one.

Proton Pass lets you set 3 different access levels for shared vaults, which include the following:

• Viewer — can only view the shared items.
• Editor — can view, edit, delete, and export shared items.
• Admin — can do everything the editor can while also granting and revoking vault access.

The main downside to the app’s sharing feature is that Proton Pass doesn’t let you share individual items. There’s a simple workaround, though, where you can just create a vault with 1 item and share that with your recipients.

All things considered, Proton Pass’ feature variety is decent. I would’ve liked to see important tools like passkey generation, emergency access, file storage, and a built-in VPN like you’d find in Dashlane. However, I was still impressed during my tests, especially because core features like the auto-save and fill work well and because of the unique email alias function.