If I am not mistaken, there is a "don't show me this offer again" thingy somewhere.
But as others have mentioned, it is a free service. And most importantly, this free service does not collect your data or show targrted ads to make a profit off of you when you don't pay. It is truly free. I think being asked to pay for the service is extra okay because of this.
If you're on a free plan, doesn't it make sense for them to push their paid plans to you? They don't sell your data so they need to make money somehow.
I didn't know there was a way to get a subscription that lasts 2 years! I see I can access that by clicking "Edit billing cycle" at https://account.proton.me/u/0/mail/dashboard
I'll definitely check that out when there aren't many remaining days for my current subscription.
Oh, I guess I didn't notice this before somehow. I don't know about other users, but it only turns me off. For a non-profit organization, they employ some of the worst marketing strategies.
Not really. Them not using ads means they can't make money that way, so the only way they can make money is through subscriptions. Even a not for profit needs to pay people and pay for overhead. If everybody used the free service they would go under over night. As long as they continue to respect privacy they have every right to have these pop-ups. Especially since they don't force you to subscribe.
And for a damn good reason... Companies need money to operate. Proton may not be for profit like Google, but they are not a charity either.
Very little is free without strings, what's been normalized (in a bad way) is the concept that you can have free things that don't intrude asking for money. That only happens in the venture capital "get em hooked" stage (and we've seen a lot of it because the Internet is still relatively young). Even KDE is now asking for money (granted once a year ... but your usage of their desktop doesn't require them to run expensive servers).
I got a subscription last year and I don't have a memory of seeing an advertisement at https://mail.proton.me/u/0/inbox after that, and I didn't see one just now when I checked.