5 ms·

I want to migrate from Gmail but I have my Gmail address tied up to so many things. How do you make the move ?

by mderazon 6y ago

867-5309 6y ago
a bit like a physical address - forward the mail on for x months and then cut off completely
- dsissitka 6y ago
  That's what I did and it worked well for me for the most part. I ended up keeping Gmail around for the occasional service that doesn't work well with Fastmail. Off the top of my head I've had issues with: - Frontier - Green Man Gaming - Paperspace - Rainway - SquareTrade
benhurmarcel 6y ago
I went through all accounts in my password manager and changed it. Not so bad. It doesn't need to be done quickly.
- wyclif 6y ago
  I would make this Step #1 to the 5 or 6-step processes outlined above. Gets most of the important migration out of the way with a little work the first day.
CalRobert 6y ago
Get your own domain, use it for all your email, and in five or so years gmail will be nothing but spam, basically.
- gcbw3 6y ago
  which ironically, is the 5yrs it take for gmail/yahoo to not threat your domain outgoing email as spam.
  - CalRobert 6y ago
    I've never had a problem with gmail recipients since setting up DKIM, SPF, etc. There is an incompetent rinkydink shop running IT for the Irish government ( Topsec - https://www.topsec.com/ https://www.topsec.com/ )that blocks ANY email from namecheap DNS which is really annoying, though.
wjdp 6y ago
FastMail can pull from gmail. My account pulls from all emails I use minus work and can send on those addresses so. It also supports having a different signature depending on which address I'm sending from. See https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/migratetofastmail.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/migratetofastmail.html No connection to them, just a happy customer!
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I set up my own domain, and forwarded emails from it to my Gmail account. Over a year and a half, every time I logged into something, I updated the email address to my own. Eventually, when I jumped to FastMail, I repointed my domain name to it, and most of my new emails started coming over automatically, since the email address is now something I control. I monitored Gmail for a while regularly to catch straggler services. (I chose not to forward to avoid complacency with stuff going to Gmail before reaching my FastMail account.)
dmit 6y ago
Here are the steps I've been following: 1) Sign up for Fastmail. 2) Sync all mail from GMail account to Fastmail (via the Fastmail web UI; you grant FM access to your GMail data through OAuth - once sync is complete you can revoke this access). 3) Set up an auto-forward rule in GMail for all incoming mail to go to your Fastmail address. 4) Set up a rule in Fastmail to put all incoming mail sent to your GMail address into a separate folder (or labeled with a special label if you're signed up for Fastmail's label beta). Any time you get email in that folder, that's a task for you to either unsubscribe or update the corresponding account to your new email address. I'm currently in month #10 of migration. Most commonly used accounts were updated during the first couple of weeks. But be careful that the tail of services that are still configured to use your old email address tends to be long, and in my experience those are some of the more important emails that you don't want to miss. The ones that are only sent once every couple years. Also, it really helps if you've been using GMail with a personal domain name (e.g. through Google Apps). In this case migrating is a matter of pointing the MX DNS records to Fastmail's servers. Bonus points: Fastmail allows wildcard recipients, so if you prefer to have unique addresses for each service you sign up for, you don't even need to set up a separate xyz@example.com alias. Just register with <whatever>@example.com and you'll get all email delivered to that address in your inbox, and you'll be able to specify it as the sender's address if you decide to reply to some of those mails. Having a separate email address for each web service also makes looking up who leaked what on haveibeenpwned.com more fun.
- mynegation 6y ago
  And most importantly: 0) Get your own domain and set up MX record to fastmail servers This way if you ever migrate again, you will not need to do it all over again. One word of advice - keep your registrar login and emails associated with the domains _not_ on your domain, otherwise it is going to present a problem should you ever need to fix anything related to domains.
  - ximeng 6y ago
    Then you are pushing the problem to someone else to manage the domains right? How do you set this up?
archenary 6y ago
I did this recently. It's pretty straightforward. First, do a one-time import from Gmail. Fastmail has an import tool that does this over OAuth. Took me ~45 minutes to import ~50,000 emails. Next, setup IMAP and SMTP on Fastmail for your Gmail account. This way, you can continue to receive and reply to emails sent to Gmail, using Fastmail as the client. When replying to an email, Fastmail defaults to the right sender (identity) based on whom the email is sent to (abc@fastmail.com or abc@gmail.com). An alternative is to setup email forwarding in Gmail, so you get a copy of emails sent to your old address. If you don't have a custom domain, I highly recommend getting one and use that going forward. There might come a day when you want to migrate off Fastmail. With a custom domain, you just need to update the MX records.
neuronic 6y ago
Late but essentially what the others said. Additionally I would point out that I migrated my accounts whenever I used them and noticed I logged in - so really piecewise. On top, I had some burts of motivation to step through my password manager vault occasionally and update accounts I don't log in to too much.

I want to migrate from Gmail but I have my Gmail address tied up to so many things. How do you make the move ?

867-5309 6y ago

a bit like a physical address - forward the mail on for x months and then cut off completely

dsissitka 6y ago
That's what I did and it worked well for me for the most part. I ended up keeping Gmail around for the occasional service that doesn't work well with Fastmail. Off the top of my head I've had issues with: - Frontier - Green Man Gaming - Paperspace - Rainway - SquareTrade

benhurmarcel 6y ago

I went through all accounts in my password manager and changed it. Not so bad. It doesn't need to be done quickly.

wyclif 6y ago
I would make this Step #1 to the 5 or 6-step processes outlined above. Gets most of the important migration out of the way with a little work the first day.

CalRobert 6y ago

Get your own domain, use it for all your email, and in five or so years gmail will be nothing but spam, basically.

gcbw3 6y ago
which ironically, is the 5yrs it take for gmail/yahoo to not threat your domain outgoing email as spam.
- CalRobert 6y ago
  I've never had a problem with gmail recipients since setting up DKIM, SPF, etc. There is an incompetent rinkydink shop running IT for the Irish government ( Topsec - https://www.topsec.com/ https://www.topsec.com/ )that blocks ANY email from namecheap DNS which is really annoying, though.

wjdp 6y ago

FastMail can pull from gmail. My account pulls from all emails I use minus work and can send on those addresses so. It also supports having a different signature depending on which address I'm sending from. See https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/migratetofastmail.html https://www.fastmail.com/help/account/migratetofastmail.html No connection to them, just a happy customer!

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I set up my own domain, and forwarded emails from it to my Gmail account. Over a year and a half, every time I logged into something, I updated the email address to my own. Eventually, when I jumped to FastMail, I repointed my domain name to it, and most of my new emails started coming over automatically, since the email address is now something I control. I monitored Gmail for a while regularly to catch straggler services. (I chose not to forward to avoid complacency with stuff going to Gmail before reaching my FastMail account.)

dmit 6y ago

Here are the steps I've been following: 1) Sign up for Fastmail. 2) Sync all mail from GMail account to Fastmail (via the Fastmail web UI; you grant FM access to your GMail data through OAuth - once sync is complete you can revoke this access). 3) Set up an auto-forward rule in GMail for all incoming mail to go to your Fastmail address. 4) Set up a rule in Fastmail to put all incoming mail sent to your GMail address into a separate folder (or labeled with a special label if you're signed up for Fastmail's label beta). Any time you get email in that folder, that's a task for you to either unsubscribe or update the corresponding account to your new email address. I'm currently in month #10 of migration. Most commonly used accounts were updated during the first couple of weeks. But be careful that the tail of services that are still configured to use your old email address tends to be long, and in my experience those are some of the more important emails that you don't want to miss. The ones that are only sent once every couple years. Also, it really helps if you've been using GMail with a personal domain name (e.g. through Google Apps). In this case migrating is a matter of pointing the MX DNS records to Fastmail's servers. Bonus points: Fastmail allows wildcard recipients, so if you prefer to have unique addresses for each service you sign up for, you don't even need to set up a separate xyz@example.com alias. Just register with <whatever>@example.com and you'll get all email delivered to that address in your inbox, and you'll be able to specify it as the sender's address if you decide to reply to some of those mails. Having a separate email address for each web service also makes looking up who leaked what on haveibeenpwned.com more fun.

mynegation 6y ago
And most importantly: 0) Get your own domain and set up MX record to fastmail servers This way if you ever migrate again, you will not need to do it all over again. One word of advice - keep your registrar login and emails associated with the domains _not_ on your domain, otherwise it is going to present a problem should you ever need to fix anything related to domains.
- ximeng 6y ago
  Then you are pushing the problem to someone else to manage the domains right? How do you set this up?

archenary 6y ago

I did this recently. It's pretty straightforward. First, do a one-time import from Gmail. Fastmail has an import tool that does this over OAuth. Took me ~45 minutes to import ~50,000 emails. Next, setup IMAP and SMTP on Fastmail for your Gmail account. This way, you can continue to receive and reply to emails sent to Gmail, using Fastmail as the client. When replying to an email, Fastmail defaults to the right sender (identity) based on whom the email is sent to (abc@fastmail.com or abc@gmail.com). An alternative is to setup email forwarding in Gmail, so you get a copy of emails sent to your old address. If you don't have a custom domain, I highly recommend getting one and use that going forward. There might come a day when you want to migrate off Fastmail. With a custom domain, you just need to update the MX records.

neuronic 6y ago

Late but essentially what the others said. Additionally I would point out that I migrated my accounts whenever I used them and noticed I logged in - so really piecewise. On top, I had some burts of motivation to step through my password manager vault occasionally and update accounts I don't log in to too much.