6 ms·

My solution is, buy your own domain. It's cheap and it will cost you only 20$ a year or something like that. I'm not saying run your own email service (I do, bu

My solution is, buy your own domain. It's cheap and it will cost you only 20$ a year or something like that. I'm not saying run your own email service (I do, but I recognize that it's complex and not worth for most people), but use a public email service (like also GMail) with your own domain. That way at least if you no longer can access your account, or you get banned, or whatever, you don't loose your address (since you can just move to another provider). Also, use an email client on your PC (such as Thunderbird) and configure it to keep a copy of all your emails locally (and possibly have the PC backed up). That way if you loose access to your account you don't loose access to your mail, that you can even upload again in the new provider server.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
SMAAART 5y ago
- djbusby 5y ago
  Not FUD, putting your eggs in the Google basket "considered harmful" - unless you pay (Gmail for your domain). I had a similar lockout but on my paid account, got fixed in about 48h. It's happened to like 10 other folk I know over the last 2-3 years
- stavros 5y ago
  I don't know if it's FUD, but it's true. It happened to a person I know, and in her case, the resolution was "ask around until a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend works at Google". She literally had to ask her friend, who asked me, I asked one of my friends to ask one of his friends who works at Google to put in an internal ticket. It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials), but the process is insane. Use your own domain with Fastmail. Yesterday.
  - rovr138 5y ago
    > It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials), More than your own domain, BACKUPS.
  - hotpotamus 5y ago
    Indeed, I only consider myself tangentially in the tech world, but I do have access to a private facebook group with many old co-workers and sometimes this sort of request will go out to current FB or Googlers. Inevitably some will complain that it's inappropriate and should go through official channels and others will point out that this back channel is often the only real resolution.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    Google now have support, including phone and chat, via Google One ( basically if you pay for extra storage for Gmail/GDrive/Photos/etc.).
    - stavros 5y ago
      Interesting, I wonder if you can somehow pay after you're locked out.
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I usually do use emails only on my own domains, but in this specific instance I wanted an account that could not be easily traced to me (nothing illegal, just some investigative activity), and this was how I've found out how erratic and merciless our new Google AI overlords are.
Arnavion 5y ago
And if you don't run a local mail client like Thunderbird, make sure to take a Google Takeout backup as frequently as your threshold for losing recent mail. The backup of GMail includes all your mail in a standard .mbox format.
luke2m 5y ago
https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ is cheap and great, albeit still in beta.
- AnonC 5y ago
  I looked at Purelyemail recently and it looked attractive for what it does and what it provides for a low price of $10 a year (compared to Fastmail and others, which can be quite expensive for more than one user/mailbox). But the fact that there’s just one person behind it makes me uncomfortable to consider it for any serious use. But that also probably works in favor of the low price.
Masema 5y ago
I did this! Kind of. I bought a domain and was lucky enough to get in to a custom domain email (and more) service with a big company years ago when they had a free version. Unfortunately... it was Google (so kind of hiring the wolf to care for my sheep, as it turns out). And now they're cutting off all of us free tier folks. Which I can't fault them for, but still blame them for. Because I'm petty and entitled or whatever.
- Osiris 5y ago
  Same here and it's a massive problem because nearly all of my digital presence is associated with, not just that email address, but that Google account specifically. I'll lose important things like my Google Voice number that I've had for a decade unless I pay for a business account.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    You can port your number out. I'm working on doing that myself. I think Google charges like $3 for some reason to do it, but whatever.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Keep in mind you can port out a Google Voice number, also if you pay for Apple services domain hosting is free for iCloud+ users now, although you don’t get as many addresses. It is very frustrating. I did a lot with Google Apps on that domain, and migrating that stuff out to a consumer account is a painful process.
  - WheatM 5y ago
  - marwatk 5y ago
    You can transfer your Google Voice account to a regular GMail account despite their documentation claiming otherwise. See: https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice
- 5y ago
jfoster 5y ago
And be careful not to have your domain recovery procedure tied to the same email account that you might need to recover.
elorant 5y ago
Or get a paid e-mail service where you can have support. I use Fastmail for this exact reason.
kelnos 5y ago
I agree with the advice to get your own domain, and then use a service to manage email for it. But don't use GSuite/Google Workspaces/whatever they're calling it now. Your Google account will be somewhat crippled and will be missing a bunch of features, because Google has just decided GSuite accounts should not have those features. And you can't convert your account to a regular Google account. I really want to untangle all this, but there's no way to (for example) export your Google Photos sharing settings and import them into a new account. I have hundreds of GPhotos albums, with many of them shared with various people, and if I migrate to a new, regular Google account, I'll have to manually set up all those sharing settings again. And this is just one of many difficulties; I'm assuming I'll also lose all my Hangouts/Chat history as well, with no ability to import the old history. But I'll be doing all this sometime soon, as Google has decided to finally pull the rug out from under those of us who signed up for GSuite when it was free (well, "Google Apps for Your Domain", as it was known back then), and will start charging later this year. This is all incredibly frustrating, and the level of lock-in is pretty severe after more than a decade of having this account. If I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would have created a Google account without GMail[0], using my email on my custom domain, and hosted my mail somewhere else. Though, admittedly, back when GMail was first a thing, webmail otherwise universally sucked. [0] https://accounts.google.com/signupwithoutgmail?hl=en https://accounts.google.com/signupwithoutgmail?hl=en
- rdschouw 5y ago
  Yea it is odd that not all Google accounts are the same. My favorite is that I cannot migrate my Nest account to a Google account because it does not support Google Workspaces accounts. I use it with my own domain and it is my private Google account.
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  What features does GSuite lack?
  - WillPostForFood 5y ago
    Two that affect me: can't use it with Nest, can't buy family plan YouTube subs.
jlcoff 5y ago
Won't work though, big email providers have made it a nightmare to run your own email.
rr808 5y ago
The only problem is now you have to make sure you dont get your domain hijacked. This was the reason I went back to gmail (and outlook).
YeBanKo 5y ago
And what email address did you use, when registered your domain?
10729287 5y ago
The issue with running your own domain is that it could be blacklisted by google (and Facebook) if you get hacked, and then you're fucked big time. I encountered that because of an outdated Wordpress. Domain was blacklisted everywhere on the internet. Luckily I didn't have email set up on it.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  >Domain was blacklisted everywhere on the internet. Well this is horrifying. Of course, not much worse than Google unilaterally and permanently banning a Gmail account.
annexrichmond 5y ago
I guess one potential downside is if you mess up and forget to renew the domain on time and some jerk (automated system) buys it up and tries to resell it for a ridiculously high price. Happened to me even on my firstnamelastname.com domain.
krsdcbl 5y ago
Honestly i really like Gmail as a client, but I've read too many Google horror stories over the years. Therefore I've always had this setup: own domain & mailbox at a trusty provider, and then just forwarding copies to a gmail account + sending via smtp that way I've got the comfort of gmails features but always have a "real" mailbox to fall back to if anything happens

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

SMAAART 5y ago

djbusby 5y ago
Not FUD, putting your eggs in the Google basket "considered harmful" - unless you pay (Gmail for your domain). I had a similar lockout but on my paid account, got fixed in about 48h. It's happened to like 10 other folk I know over the last 2-3 years
stavros 5y ago
I don't know if it's FUD, but it's true. It happened to a person I know, and in her case, the resolution was "ask around until a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend works at Google". She literally had to ask her friend, who asked me, I asked one of my friends to ask one of his friends who works at Google to put in an internal ticket. It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials), but the process is insane. Use your own domain with Fastmail. Yesterday.
- rovr138 5y ago
  > It was thankfully resolved quickly (she lost access to all her work materials), More than your own domain, BACKUPS.
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  Indeed, I only consider myself tangentially in the tech world, but I do have access to a private facebook group with many old co-workers and sometimes this sort of request will go out to current FB or Googlers. Inevitably some will complain that it's inappropriate and should go through official channels and others will point out that this back channel is often the only real resolution.
- sofixa 5y ago
  Google now have support, including phone and chat, via Google One ( basically if you pay for extra storage for Gmail/GDrive/Photos/etc.).
  - stavros 5y ago
    Interesting, I wonder if you can somehow pay after you're locked out.

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I usually do use emails only on my own domains, but in this specific instance I wanted an account that could not be easily traced to me (nothing illegal, just some investigative activity), and this was how I've found out how erratic and merciless our new Google AI overlords are.

Arnavion 5y ago

And if you don't run a local mail client like Thunderbird, make sure to take a Google Takeout backup as frequently as your threshold for losing recent mail. The backup of GMail includes all your mail in a standard .mbox format.

luke2m 5y ago

https://purelymail.com/ https://purelymail.com/ is cheap and great, albeit still in beta.

AnonC 5y ago
I looked at Purelyemail recently and it looked attractive for what it does and what it provides for a low price of $10 a year (compared to Fastmail and others, which can be quite expensive for more than one user/mailbox). But the fact that there’s just one person behind it makes me uncomfortable to consider it for any serious use. But that also probably works in favor of the low price.

Masema 5y ago

I did this! Kind of. I bought a domain and was lucky enough to get in to a custom domain email (and more) service with a big company years ago when they had a free version. Unfortunately... it was Google (so kind of hiring the wolf to care for my sheep, as it turns out). And now they're cutting off all of us free tier folks. Which I can't fault them for, but still blame them for. Because I'm petty and entitled or whatever.

Osiris 5y ago
Same here and it's a massive problem because nearly all of my digital presence is associated with, not just that email address, but that Google account specifically. I'll lose important things like my Google Voice number that I've had for a decade unless I pay for a business account.
- kadoban 5y ago
  You can port your number out. I'm working on doing that myself. I think Google charges like $3 for some reason to do it, but whatever.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Keep in mind you can port out a Google Voice number, also if you pay for Apple services domain hosting is free for iCloud+ users now, although you don’t get as many addresses. It is very frustrating. I did a lot with Google Apps on that domain, and migrating that stuff out to a consumer account is a painful process.
- WheatM 5y ago
- marwatk 5y ago
  You can transfer your Google Voice account to a regular GMail account despite their documentation claiming otherwise. See: https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice https://github.com/marwatk/gsuite-to-gmail/#google-voice
5y ago

jfoster 5y ago

And be careful not to have your domain recovery procedure tied to the same email account that you might need to recover.

elorant 5y ago

Or get a paid e-mail service where you can have support. I use Fastmail for this exact reason.

kelnos 5y ago

I agree with the advice to get your own domain, and then use a service to manage email for it. But don't use GSuite/Google Workspaces/whatever they're calling it now. Your Google account will be somewhat crippled and will be missing a bunch of features, because Google has just decided GSuite accounts should not have those features. And you can't convert your account to a regular Google account. I really want to untangle all this, but there's no way to (for example) export your Google Photos sharing settings and import them into a new account. I have hundreds of GPhotos albums, with many of them shared with various people, and if I migrate to a new, regular Google account, I'll have to manually set up all those sharing settings again. And this is just one of many difficulties; I'm assuming I'll also lose all my Hangouts/Chat history as well, with no ability to import the old history. But I'll be doing all this sometime soon, as Google has decided to finally pull the rug out from under those of us who signed up for GSuite when it was free (well, "Google Apps for Your Domain", as it was known back then), and will start charging later this year. This is all incredibly frustrating, and the level of lock-in is pretty severe after more than a decade of having this account. If I could do it all over again, knowing what I know now, I would have created a Google account without GMail[0], using my email on my custom domain, and hosted my mail somewhere else. Though, admittedly, back when GMail was first a thing, webmail otherwise universally sucked. [0] https://accounts.google.com/signupwithoutgmail?hl=en https://accounts.google.com/signupwithoutgmail?hl=en

rdschouw 5y ago
Yea it is odd that not all Google accounts are the same. My favorite is that I cannot migrate my Nest account to a Google account because it does not support Google Workspaces accounts. I use it with my own domain and it is my private Google account.
Hnrobert42 5y ago
What features does GSuite lack?
- WillPostForFood 5y ago
  Two that affect me: can't use it with Nest, can't buy family plan YouTube subs.

jlcoff 5y ago

Won't work though, big email providers have made it a nightmare to run your own email.

rr808 5y ago

The only problem is now you have to make sure you dont get your domain hijacked. This was the reason I went back to gmail (and outlook).

YeBanKo 5y ago

And what email address did you use, when registered your domain?

10729287 5y ago

The issue with running your own domain is that it could be blacklisted by google (and Facebook) if you get hacked, and then you're fucked big time. I encountered that because of an outdated Wordpress. Domain was blacklisted everywhere on the internet. Luckily I didn't have email set up on it.

Gareth321 5y ago
>Domain was blacklisted everywhere on the internet. Well this is horrifying. Of course, not much worse than Google unilaterally and permanently banning a Gmail account.

annexrichmond 5y ago

I guess one potential downside is if you mess up and forget to renew the domain on time and some jerk (automated system) buys it up and tries to resell it for a ridiculously high price. Happened to me even on my firstnamelastname.com domain.

krsdcbl 5y ago

Honestly i really like Gmail as a client, but I've read too many Google horror stories over the years. Therefore I've always had this setup: own domain & mailbox at a trusty provider, and then just forwarding copies to a gmail account + sending via smtp that way I've got the comfort of gmails features but always have a "real" mailbox to fall back to if anything happens