How Infrasity Took a Privacy-First Password Manager From 0 to 90% LLM Citation Coverage
Proton Pass is the password manager from the team behind ProtonMail. Zero-knowledge encryption, open source, Swiss privacy law, built-in email aliases, and passkey support built in from day one, not added on.
The category it competes in is heavily entrenched. Bitwarden has been the community default for years. 1Password owns the enterprise conversation. In a space where trust is built through years of community mentions and peer recommendations, a newer entrant does not get the benefit of the doubt, regardless of how good the product is.
When Proton Pass came to Infrasity, it was not showing up in the Reddit threads buyers were landing on, the Google results those threads ranked in, or the AI responses generated from them.
Infrasity began the initial phase by mapping the prompts users were actively feeding into AI-LLM models when evaluating password managers. From those prompts, the threads already ranking in SERPs and being cited inside AI responses were identified. The goal was not just brand mentions. It was to own the evaluation layer, the exact threads, rankings, and AI responses a buyer encounters from the first Google search to the final AI-assisted recommendation. 90% LLM citation coverage later, here is exactly how that happened.
Where Proton Pass Stood in Community Visibility Before Engaging Infrasity
Proton Pass had Reddit mentions but they were scattered, inconsistent, and nowhere near the volume needed to compete with what Bitwarden had built over the years. When someone asked for a password manager recommendation in r/privacy, r/netsec, r/selfhosted, or r/degoogle, Bitwarden came up first. It came up most. And it came up with upvotes, follow-up comments, and community validation behind it.
The threads ranking on Google for every high-intent password manager query reflected the same reality. Bitwarden was in them. Proton Pass was not. When AI models cited those threads to answer buyer prompts, they were pulling from the same pool. A buyer going from Google to Reddit to ChatGPT in the same evaluation session would encounter Bitwarden at every step and Proton Pass at none.
The Three-Track Approach Infrasity Used to Build Visibility for a Proton Pass
Proton Pass was absent from the conversations that were driving password manager decisions. The threads ranking on Google for high-intent queries were not mention it. The AI models citing those threads were not surfacing them.
Infrasity approached this across three tracks running simultaneously from day one. Not sequentially, not in phases. All three at once, because each one fed into the next. Community engagement improved the threads that were ranking on Google.
Track 01: Competitive Thread Targeting for Password Manager Alternative Queries
The first step was finding the threads that were already doing the work. Reddit threads asking "what should I switch to from LastPass," "is Bitwarden still the best option," and "best 1Password alternative" had years of engagement behind them, were ranking consistently on Google, and were being pulled into AI responses. These were the threads that mattered.
Infrasity mapped every high-intent thread across the five tracked prompts and engaged them with positioning grounded in specifics: zero-knowledge architecture, open source codebase, Swiss jurisdiction, and the integrated Proton privacy stack. Nothing vague, nothing that reads as promotional.
Track 02: Building Proton Pass Presence Across Privacy and Security Subreddits
r/privacy, r/degoogle, r/ProtonMail, and r/ProtonVPN are not communities where you can drop a product name and expect it to land. The people here are technically informed, have strong opinions on what they trust, and will ignore anything that reads as marketing. Getting Proton Pass into these conversations meant showing up with real arguments, not product descriptions.
The positioning focused on what this audience actually cares about: the fact that Proton Pass sits inside a complete privacy stack alongside ProtonMail, Proton VPN, and Proton Calendar, all zero-knowledge, all under Swiss privacy law. That is a real differentiator that resonates with this specific audience.
Track 03: Identifying and Engaging LLM-Cited Threads for Password Manager Buying Prompts
The five target prompts were run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overview. The Reddit threads being cited in those responses were identified. Those specific threads were then engaged directly so that when the models next referenced them, Proton Pass was already in the conversation.
The loop ran continuously: run the prompt, identify cited threads, engage, then rerun to verify Proton Pass appears. This is the track that moved the needle from near-zero LLM citations to 90% coverage across all five tracked prompts.
Help Your B2B SaaS Get Discovered Across Communities and AI
AI Visibility and Search Rankings for a Privacy-First Password Manager
1) Google AI Overview
For "Best Password Manager for privacy," Google AI Overview now names the password manager as a top recommendation, citing it specifically for its zero-knowledge encryption, Swiss privacy-law backing, and built-in email-alias generation. The sources panel shows Reddit threads as the primary citation source, with reddit.com appearing 6 times across 17 total sources, confirming that the community-led approach is feeding directly into AI-generated recommendations.
For "Best Privacy-first password manager," the password manager is named alongside Bitwarden and KeePassXC as one of the top three recommendations, positioned as the strongest option for users who want cloud convenience without sacrificing privacy.
2) ChatGPT
The password manager is now being recommended in ChatGPT responses for privacy-first password manager queries, positioned as the go-to option for users who want integrated identity masking alongside password management. It appears consistently in direct comparison with Bitwarden and KeePassXC across privacy-focused prompts.
3) LLM Citation Dashboard
Across 30 postable threads tracked against the five core buying prompts, 27 (90%) now mention the password manager directly. Cited URLs have grown from near zero to 44 within the tracking window, with brand mentions climbing steadily and the trajectory still moving upward.
4) SERP ranking threads mention
42 Reddit threads are currently ranking across the tracked prompts, averaging 42 threads per run. Of those, 30 threads, 71%, already mention Proton Pass. When a buyer searches for any of these prompts on Google and lands on a Reddit result, there is a better than 7 in 10 chance the password manager is already named in that thread.
As Rankings Grew, So Did Positive Sentiment: 98% Positive Across 163 Active Subreddits
The SubredditSense numbers tell a story that goes beyond basic brand tracking. The password manager has 92 total mentions across 284 days, spread across 68 active communities. That kind of breadth across 68 subreddits doesn't happen with a handful of engagements. It reflects genuine community resonance.
Average engagement per mention sits at 67.34 upvotes and comments, which is exceptionally high. These are not low-traffic threads where a mention gets buried. The conversations where the password manager appears are active, high-engagement discussions with real community participation.
Positive sentiment is at 98% with an estimated 5,139 upvotes attributed to those mentions. The most active communities span r/ProtonMail, r/ProtonPass, r/ProtonVPN, r/privacy, and r/degoogle, showing that the brand presence is not confined to its own product subreddit but extends across the broader privacy ecosystem, where buyers are actually making decisions.
The heatmap shows consistent mention volume across every time window, the last 7 days, 8 to 30 days, 31 to 90 days, and beyond. This is not a spike that fades. It is a sustained floor of presence that keeps compounding.
How Community-Led Visibility Works for Privacy and Security Products
Privacy and security tools live and die by community trust. No amount of content marketing or paid visibility replaces what happens when a trusted voice in r/privacy recommends a tool to someone who just asked for help. That recommendation gets upvoted, referenced, and cited, by other users, by Google, and increasingly by AI models that are learning what the community trusts.
The work Infrasity did for Proton Pass was built entirely around earning that presence rather than manufacturing it. Every engagement was grounded in the product's actual strengths. Every thread was chosen because it was already part of the evaluation conversation, not because it was easy to post in.
The result is a visibility footprint that does not need constant maintenance to keep working. The threads keep ranking. The AI models keep citing them. The community keeps engaging with them. That is what compounding visibility looks like in practice.
Want to Know Where Your Product Stands Across Reddit, Search, and AI?
If your product is not showing up in the threads your buyers are landing on, or the AI responses they are reading, that gap has a real cost. We will run a free Reddit and GEO visibility audit for your product. You will walk away knowing exactly which threads are ranking for your category keywords, which LLM prompts your competitors are already appearing in, and where your product should be showing up but is not.
One call. No commitment. Just a clear picture of the gap and what it would take to close it.
