Proton acquires Standard Notes to expand its service ecosystem

Proton, the maker of Proton VPN, Proton Mail, Proton Drive, and other privacy-focused services, announced the acquisition of Standard Notes, a privacy-minded note-taking app. It is Proton's second acquisition after joining forces with SimpleLogin in 2022.

Standard Notes is an end-to-end encrypted note app available on desktop platforms, web, and mobile devices with over 300,000 active users. Proton says the two companies share the same goal of giving users services that protect their privacy:

Standard Notes has been around since 2017 and has withstood the test of time. Standard Notes has also grown without venture capital funding and has demonstrated a commitment towards serving its community. This alignment in values is rare, and creates a natural fit to work together.

 

We are proud to have the entire Standard Notes team join us on our journey, and we look forward to learning from them and growing stronger together. But most of all, we look forward to continuing to serve both the Proton and Standard Notes communities together in the years to come.

Despite the acquisition, Standard Notes will remain an open-source and fully supported project. Proton wants to "do the right thing" and respect open-source projects, so it plans to preserve what people love about Standard Notes. The company also reassures that the prices are not changing and that Proton will honor all current subscriptions.

As of right now, Standard Notes is still a standalone service, but Proton plans to "find ways" to make Standard Notes more accessible for Proton users, creating a more robust ecosystem with secure email, cloud storage, calendars, passwords, VPNs, and now notes.

Standard Notes is available for free, but customers can upgrade to the Productivity plan ($90/year) with more advanced editing features, spreadsheet support, one-year note revision history, unlimited storage, and more. There is also a professional plan for teams, unlimited file size, 100GB of encrypted storage, and more.

Source