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Bye Bye Gmail

m24tom.com

21–30 of 130 posts

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#21
post #9

"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..." Out of the pan, into the fire. my recommendation: i've been happily using fastmail for years.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have serious issue with Fastmail’s spam filtering. Meaning, it seems that I am the spam filter. I find myself considering closing the account on a regular basis because of it. I am also extremely frustrated with Gmail’s AI features now being apparently impossible to disable.

Thier spam filter is really great, probably only one time they flagged a legit email as a spam. On the other hand, the email I have that uses fastmail never ended in someone’s spam.

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#22
I have more than 20 years of email in my gmail account. How do I even start migrating?

And even if I migrate, I will need to keep my address alive and forwarding to my new address at least for a few years. So no privacy gains there either.

Does anyone have concrete advice as to how to make the transition?

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#23
post #9

"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..." Out of the pan, into the fire. my recommendation: i've been happily using fastmail for years.

Have you considered using AWS WorkMail? Very easy to set up, even helps you with MX/DKIM/DMARC/SPF if you use Route53, and only $4/month/user I believe. Granted, you won't get anywhere near Google's level of automatic credibility, but even that is relatively low for young gmail accounts.

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#24
Both me and partner switching to Infomaniak (also Swiss), can recommend. Not E2E encrypted, but kMail is more usable than ProtonMail (also a lot cheaper on all levels).

Been using ProtonMail for 5 years but so annoying I can't propely search my emails because of the encryption, can't use standard IMAP without a proprietary connector, and their Drives/Docs suite is missing a lot of features.

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#25
I moved my custom domain from google workspace to fastmail a few years ago and didn't look back. Very happy with that decision.

The only two downsides:

1. A few people have reported my emails from fastmail (calendar invites mostly) going to their spam folder. Not enough reports so I'm not worried.

2. Google won't let me sign in and create / edit /comment in google docs with my custom email hosted at fastmail so I have to have a random@gmail.com account just to use free google docs to collaborate with people who only send me google docs.

Overall I think AI features are going to be great but give me the ability to pick and choose which I enable / disable and we should be good. If not then I agree with OP - Bye Bye Gmail.

oh, and don't read my emails and protect my privacy google! - no? Ok bye bye!

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#26
post #9

"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..." Out of the pan, into the fire. my recommendation: i've been happily using fastmail for years.

"My email is now being hosted by Microsoft..."

Please tell me this is parody.

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#27

I have more than 20 years of email in my gmail account. How do I even start migrating? And even if I migrate, I will need to keep my address alive and forwarding to my new address at least for a few years. So no privacy gains there either. Does anyone have concrete advice as to how to make the transition?

- Start with takeout

- Setup automatic forwarding

- Then probably just use that old email for searching old emails

This has worked okay for me

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#28
post #13

Is it easy and advisable to host your own email server on vps?

I am no expert, but from what I've read... Easy: I don't think so. Advisable: Hell no. I believe you have to constantly maintain it, and good luck with deliverability. Anyone: correct me if I'm wrong.

Not an expert, but I suppose that you can safely receive email using a self-hosted SMTP server. Sending it without being blacklisted / greylisted is trickier. If you don't want to muck with obtaining an IPv4 with a good karma, there are options to send via large providers, such as GMail (IIRC free), or AWS SES, or things like Sendgrid or Brevo. The latter may be effectively free if you send only a handful of emails per day.

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#29
post #13

Is it easy and advisable to host your own email server on vps?

I am no expert, but from what I've read... Easy: I don't think so. Advisable: Hell no. I believe you have to constantly maintain it, and good luck with deliverability. Anyone: correct me if I'm wrong.

I host a few client marketing & transactional mails.

Mostly sending stuff from marketing automation/newsletter software.

Not an issue. Will be migrating the first few domains of off paid google workspace E-Mail to a self hosted solution. I actually don’t expect too much trouble.

But that’s currently still a hypothesis. I have seen a few people do that successfully. So I know it’s possible. Still. Not having hosted a mail infrastructure in 20 odd years…

Re: Bye Bye Gmail

#30

I have more than 20 years of email in my gmail account. How do I even start migrating? And even if I migrate, I will need to keep my address alive and forwarding to my new address at least for a few years. So no privacy gains there either. Does anyone have concrete advice as to how to make the transition?

I was in the same boat as you. I tried Fastmail and they have a really great tool that just did it. I was skeptical but after I tried it was very pleased. Give it a shot.
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