When a data-stealing Trojan hoovers up all your sensitive files and exfiltrates them to its owner’s evil server, you’ve got trouble. Unless, that is, you took the precaution of encrypting those files using an app like EncryptPro. You can install EncryptPro on one PC and encrypt all your files, with no limits on the number or size of files, and all at no charge. Or you can pay the subscription fee and get even more features. In ease of use, it matches AxCrypt Premium and Xecrets Ez Premium, both Editors’ Choice winners for encryption. But AxCrypt and Xecrets offer advanced features such as multi-factor authentication and secure sharing of encrypted files. If you don’t need those features, EncryptPro can be a fine choice.

Encryption Overview: How Does EncryptPro Work?

In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men," Holmes and Watson encounter a series of curious drawings: rows upon rows of dancing stick figures in different poses. Holmes deduces that each pose represents a letter and cracks the code by matching the most common poses with the most common letters. Indeed, a simple substitution cipher like this almost always caves to the kind of frequency analysis Holmes used.

Had modern cryptographic algorithms been available to the crooks in this tale, Holmes would have been out of luck. Unless you have the password, there's no way to decrypt a modern encrypted document. No, you can't just try every possible decryption key. With current computers, you wouldn’t finish before the sun goes nova.

In 2001, the US government settled on Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) as its official algorithm, replacing the less secure Data Encryption Standard (DES). EncryptPro wisely relies on AES.

You're probably familiar with the idea of symmetric encryption, where the same password or key encrypts and decrypts a file. AES, Blowfish, and many other common algorithms are symmetric. With this kind of algorithm, you must keep the password a deep, dark secret and share it only via secure channels. But there's another way. In a public key infrastructure (PKI) system, each user has two keys: a public key and a private key. If I want to send you a file, I look up your public key, use it to encrypt the file, and you decrypt it with your private key. Public key cryptography is less common in small-scale encryption utilities like EncryptPro, though AxCrypt and Xecrets both use it.

Pricing: How Much Does EncryptPro Cost?

EncryptPro’s pricing scheme is simple. You pay $55 per year, which comes to about $4.50 per month. You can reduce the monthly price by committing to a longer period. For example, a $75 subscription covers 18 months, roughly $4 per month. And if you opt for a full two years, that costs $90, roughly $3.70 per month.

At $15 per year, Xecrets decidedly undercuts EncryptPro’s pricing. AxCrypt’s price is $62.04 per year, but that’s in Canadian dollars. As of this writing, that’s $43.69 in US dollars, about the same as EncryptPro. And NordLocker runs $59.88 per year with the default 500GB of cloud storage. If you want 2TB of storage, NordLocker goes up to $179.88.

Installation and Setup: Getting Started With EncryptPro

EncryptPro offers a totally free edition that includes all the premium edition’s features, with some limitations. For example, you can use the premium edition to encrypt files on three PCs, while the free edition lets you use just one. Both allow view-only use on unlimited devices, but the free edition requires an internet connection for that feature, while the premium edition does not. I suggest you install the free edition, get familiar with it, and then upgrade if the limitations chafe.

You start by visiting the EncryptPro website and finding the link to get started for free. Next, you go through several sign-up and verification steps. Create an online EncryptPro account and verify your account by responding to the verification email. Then you click to request a free license key, which is sent to your email along with a feature tutorial and an installation guide. At this point, you get to download and run the installer. At launch, the app demands your free license key and requires you to enter it—no copy-and-paste for you!

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To complete the setup, you define a master key to protect your encrypted files. Note that this isn’t the same as your online account key, unless you choose to make it the same. You get a stern warning that if you lose that master key, you’ll lose access to all your files. Unlike Advanced Encryption Package and CryptoForge, EncryptPro doesn’t rate strength as you type a password. 

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AxCrypt and Xecrets Ez work in much the same way, using a single password to unlock all your encrypted files. NordLocker, too, requires a password for your online account and another for encryption. However, NordLocker also provides a 25-character recovery key, which can save your bacon if you forget the encryption master password.

Encrypting Files: Learn From the Guides

Just looking at the app’s main window, it’s not immediately obvious how it works. The home page is divided into panels of various sizes and shapes, mostly filled with statistics and information about your subscription. One large panel at the bottom is labeled Feature Locked. Clicking it gets a note extolling the virtues of upgrading to the premium edition.

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A menu on the left lets you choose Account, Groups, or Support. The Groups page is available only to premium users; at the free level, all your encrypted files are in one group. Free users see a couple more Feature Locked buttons on the Groups page. I feel it would be more encouraging to let users know exactly which features are locked.

But how do you encrypt a file? Dropping files onto the app didn’t work. Fortunately, the Support page links to FAQs, knowledge base articles, and video tutorials. Unfortunately, those links and the Check Updates button are temporarily disabled. My EncryptPro contact promised these would be fixed in the next update and gave me a link to those useful guides online. Here I learned that to encrypt a file, you right-click it and choose Encrypt. Windows 11 users note that you won’t immediately see that Encrypt option—you must first click Show More Options at the bottom of the initial right-click menu. Naturally, the right-click menu for an already-encrypted file includes a Decrypt option.

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Double-clicking an encrypted file invokes EncryptPro’s On The Fly Access feature. The app decrypts the file and loads it into the appropriate editing program. When you save and quit, it re-encrypts the file. In the free edition, this feature is limited to text files.

Security and Convenience: Easy Encryption

As you’ve seen, you manage encryption and decryption through the right-click menu. Once you’ve logged in with your master key, you don’t have to enter it again for five or so days. AxCrypt, NordLocker, and Xecrets Ez also keep you logged in.

With any of these apps, you must be extremely careful not to walk away with your desktop unsecured. A quick tap of Windows+L will lock your workstation.

EncryptPro uses AES-256 encryption, a standard approved for use in the US government. Some competitors let users choose from a collection of encryption algorithms. Advanced Encryption Package offers 17 choices, and CryptoForge lets you stack up to four different algorithms, for example. But these collections always include AES-256, and it’s typically the default choice. AxCrypt, NordLocker, and Xecrets Ez, like EncryptPro, simply make use of AES-256 without giving the user any confusing choices. EncryptPro’s documentation states that all encryption and decryption occur on your device. The only time it connects to the cloud is to authenticate your account.

There’s no limit on the number or size of files you can encrypt with this app. EncryptPro’s video guide describes it as a free, lifelong security companion on your primary device. That last point is important. You get full use of EncryptPro on the one Windows PC where you’ve initially installed it. Paying customers can exchange encrypted files between three PCs, with a note “expandable via support.” My EncryptPro contact explained that you can expand that coverage to five devices at no cost by just asking support.

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Logging in to EncryptPro requires an internet connection, but you can still use it even if you can’t or don’t want to. You simply enter Viewer Only Mode. You’re totally free to decrypt your files or to edit them using On The Fly Access. You just can’t encrypt new files. This mode also lets you access files from multiple groups even if your paid subscription has lapsed. EncryptPro’s guides note that you’ll never be forced into ongoing payments just to access what’s already yours.

Premium Edition: What Do You Get by Upgrading?

If your aim is just to keep your files safely encrypted on a single Windows PC, the free EncryptPro probably has everything you need. But you get more if you pony up your $55 yearly subscription fee.

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The layout of the main window doesn’t change, but the reported stats do. There’s no more banner warning that this is a free edition with limited access. And the bottom panel now shows the title Save Offline Access File. I tried that button, and it did create a file called offline_access.dat. But what is that?

Figuring out how to use it was tough, as it doesn’t seem to be described anywhere on the EncryptPro website. I eventually queried a popular AI model and, after some back-and-forth, learned what was up. The file in question stores data that can be used to authenticate your EncryptPro login, even without internet access. If you’re simply offline on your regular PC, you’ll be able to log into Viewer Only Mode seamlessly. If you’re moving your files to another computer, EncryptPro will prompt you when it needs that file. Not clear? Don’t worry about it for now, but do be sure to click that big Save Offline Access File button.

Groups: Don’t Decrypt Everything at Once

A paid account lets you define up to five groups, each with its own name and password. Out of the box, you have just one group, named General. You can add up to four more, perhaps Work, Personal, Financial, and MyNovel.

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Encrypted files have extensions like EG1, EG2, and so on, where the digit indicates the group number. The General group defaults to using your main account key as its group password, but you can change that. And each of the four other groups can have its own distinct password. If a group is locked, you must supply its group password to decrypt its files. If it’s unlocked, there’s no need.

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The point of this system is that you don’t have to unlock everything at once. If you’re editing work-related files, you can unlock the Work group and leave the rest locked. When you’re done with work and switching to piling up words for the latest chapter of your novel, unlock the MyNovel group and lock Work. Organizing into groups is a tiny effort with a decent security payoff.

On the Fly Access: Edit Your Encrypted Files

With some encryption systems, there’s no direct way to edit an encrypted file. You must decrypt it, make your edits, and encrypt it again. You may also need to run a secure deletion pass on the unencrypted version you just created.

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With EncryptPro, it’s much simpler. To edit, say, an encrypted Excel file, you just double-click it. EncryptPro creates a temporary copy and opens it in Excel. When you’re finished editing, you save your changes and close the file. Then a simple click tells EncryptPro to copy the changes back to the encrypted file and delete the temp file.

When deleting this temp file, EncryptPro bypasses the Recycle Bin but doesn’t apply secure deletion, so it could theoretically be recovered with forensic software. The same is true of the plaintext originals of files encrypted by EncryptPro. My company contact says the developers are looking to include secure deletion in the next version.

More Premium Features: Better Support, Folder Encryption, and More

On its pricing page, EncryptPro provides a clear, simple chart showing what's free and which features are reserved for premium users. As noted, paying users get five groups rather than one, and they can open any type of file for editing, whereas free users are limited to text files. Premium users also get priority support.

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Where the free edition only encrypts individual files, the premium version can encrypt folders, including all their contained files and subfolders. Note that EncryptPro can’t encrypt system folders, such as Documents and Pictures.

As noted earlier, you can use the full range of features for a free account on just one device, while premium users can use three PCs, and possibly more. With either type of account, you can enable Viewer Only Mode to work with your files on unlimited PCs, meaning you can decrypt or edit existing encrypted files, but can’t perform any new encryption. Free accounts require an internet connection to enable this mode, while premium accounts don’t.

Cloud and Sharing: EncryptPro Is Strictly Local

When you log in to your EncryptPro account, your PC interacts with EncryptPro’s servers to authenticate your credentials. That’s the extent of its online communications. Everything else occurs locally. Neither your decryption keys nor your data ever leave the PC.

NordLocker is the opposite. While it once let you create local encrypted storage vaults called “lockers,” it’s now strictly cloud-oriented. When your locker in the cloud is open, you can treat its contents as if they were in a folder on your PC. If you lock it, that cuts off all access to those files.

NordLocker’s cloud-first approach makes it easy to share encrypted files. When sharing with another NordLocker user, you can control the permission level, allowing the recipient to view the file or view and edit it. Separately, there’s an option to share an encrypted file or folder with a password, in which case the recipient doesn't need to install NordLocker.

Xecrets Ez also lets you share files using a password, allowing the recipient to view the contents without requiring an Xecrets installation or even an internet connection. With AxCrypt, you can share encrypted files, but the recipient must install a special viewer app. Reading the encrypted file requires internet access.

As for EncryptPro, there’s no file sharing, though my contact noted that it’s “on the roadmap.” And unlike AxCrypt, NordLocker, and Xecrets Ez, EncryptPro doesn’t support multi-factor authentication, at least not right now.