ProtonMail’s encrypted email service was recently selected by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences as a Finalist for the 2016 Lovie Awards.

Update: We have just heard that we have been selected as the 2016 winner in the Mobile Utilities & Services category! Thanks to your votes, we also won the People’s choice award!

For those who have never heard of the Lovie Awards (that would include us until a few weeks ago), the Lovie Awards are the European counterpart of the American Webby Awards, which are also known as the “Oscars of the Internet”. Even though ProtonMail is an European project, we were also honored at the Webby Awards earlier this year.

Like the Webby Awards, the Lovie Awards have a strong emphasis on innovation and design, and it is quite surprising that given our emphasis on security and encryption, we are finalists for an award with a strong creative focus. When considering the full list of finalists, the inclusion of ProtonMail is even more extraordinary. This is a prestigious award, and we are happy to be finalists in the Mobile & Applications category.

From the start, we have always put a strong emphasis on design, since our primary goal is to make email encryption more widespread by making PGP easier to use. Good design and good user interfaces are absolutely critical because the most secure email system in the world will not improve internet security if it is so complicated nobody can use it. While ProtonMail continues to innovate on security, we have devoted an equally large amount of resources towards product design. It is rewarding to see that the Internet industry has finally taken notice and recognized us for our commitment to encryption with good design.

While the winners of the 2016 Lovie Awards will be selected by a panel of eminent judges, there is also a People’s Lovie Award which is selected by the voting public. If you would like to help give ProtonMail a boost and spread the word about online privacy, you can vote for ProtonMail at the following link:

http://www.peopleslovie.eu/#utilities-and-services-1

Registration on that site unfortunately IS required in order to vote (likely to deter automated voting), but the voting process itself is quite painless. Simply click on ProtonMail as shown in the image below:

ProtonMail is a community project, because it was initially funded by the community, and the direction of our development is entirely guided by our community. We are open source, and developed with input from the community. Therefore, ProtonMail’s excellence in design is also due to your efforts, through the thousands of suggestions, bug reports, and other feedback the community has provided over the years. Thus, ProtonMail’s nomination for a People’s Lovie Award is also a recognition of our community of over a million users.

In addition to being an honor, winning the People’s Lovie Award will be an opportunity to share ProtonMail with a whole new community of people, and help even more people discover easy-to-use encrypted email. We would love to have your vote and your support to help ProtonMail reach an even larger audience!

Best Regards,

The ProtonMail Team