4 ms·

What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).

by bbkane 5y ago

Freak_NL 5y ago
Just do it! You'll have to choose anyway if you are one of the many folk here who use(d) a grandfathered free Google workspace plan with your own domain: it ends on June 1st, or thereabouts, and you'll be shunted into a paid plan (although there seems to be a waiting list for a free plan). I did it last week. I signed up for Fastmail, followed their excellent documentation, and now only have a mandatory (new) Google account for a few apps in the Play Store that are not available anywhere else (but nothing paid). If I lose access to my Google account, I lose nothing. My Fastmail migration basically went like this: * Clean up mailbox, truncate mailing list folders. * Copy mail to Fastmail using their importer. * Change domain settings at your domain host (changing MX-records and a bunch of others); mail now goes to Fastmail. * Set up mail and calendars in Thunderbird on Ubuntu and K-9 Mail on GrapheneOS.
- stuff4ben 5y ago
  The setting up part is easy. It's migrating user logins, subscriptions, and everything else tied to your GMail account that takes time and energy. Someone really aught to create a migrator app to get people off GMail and do the hard stuff.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    I dedicated most part of a day to migrate most of the subscription to a new email. Iirc, it took me more than 8+ hours.
  - hyperman1 5y ago
    This might actually be a great service for fastmail et al to provide: after you import old mailboxes, they should scan them for signup mails and show you a list with to migrate accounts i.e. red marks. After migrating an account, they know it, as they can scan your mail. Slowly, each red mark on your dashboard gets replaced with a green mark.
    - stuff4ben 5y ago
      Actually I was thinking it would be a good idea for a password manager to implement. They have all of the credential information, they'd just have to implement "Change my userid" logic for all websites out there. That's definitely a hard problem to solve...
martinflack 5y ago
It's a good idea to use something like gmvault [0] to ensure you have regular downloads of your mail corpus locally. [0] http://gmvault.org/ http://gmvault.org/
thesuitonym 5y ago
Just start doing it. It's easier than you think. 1. (Optional) Register a domain (So if you need to migrate in the future, you don't need to change your email address!) 2. Sign up for paid service somewhere else. Paid email services are extremely cheap, and worth it to have a phone number where you can call a real human person. * If you wish to continue using the Gmail interface, skip step 3 * 3. Forward Gmail to the new account. 4. As you see messages you want coming to your Gmail account, switch them to your new account. 5. (Optional) If you really like the Gmail interface, use IMAP/SMTP to check your email in Gmail, even though it's really coming from/to your external account! It's really easy to get away from GMail, and definitely worth it.
- anonuser123456 5y ago
  I’ve had a custom domain for some time, but it has its own risks / drawbacks. 1. If your registrar account is compromised, someone can redirect your mail at will. 2. If your payment lapses you might lose the entire domain. 3. If you die, it’s unlikely your family will understand how to maintain the system. 4. Some systems will classify your email as spam even with the right MX configuration (DMARC,DKIM etc) I think the right choice is having a paid relationship with a mail provider that’s been in the business a long time, and use their domain.
  - thesuitonym 5y ago
    Your concerns are valid, but at least for 1 and 2, you can be proactive about preventing them, compared to preventing loss of your Google account which is just... crossing your fingers. As for 3, well, I really don't care in the least what happens after I die. I won't be around anymore. I can't really speak about how much of a problem 4 is, because it's never happened to me. I suspect the people who get their email classified as spam while using a large email provider actually are doing something wrong.
    - MerelyMortal 5y ago
      As a sender, you don't know when #4 happens. Regular people don't check their spam folders. Regular people don't go out of their way to give the sender a head's up that it was classified as spam. I know it happens to me, because I have to verbally follow-up sometimes. The only way you would know if #4 doesn't happen to you, is if you're doing something wrong, like trying to track when people open the email.
adamc 5y ago
Recommendations for good commercial email services?
- beardbound 5y ago
  I switched to fastmail a couple of years ago from google and quite like it. I even switched some other people in my family too.
  - f1refly 5y ago
    Isn't fastmail hosted in australia?
imtringued 5y ago
I use gmail because it has this obscure addon thing that shows the number of unread emails in the favicon. Default gmail and all other email providers I have tried show the unread emails count in the title which is invisible on pinned tabs. I have three email accounts outside of gmail that are forwarding to gmail so I can have a favicon counter. Those email accounts maintain their own copies of the emails. If gmail were to lock me out I would lose my favicon counter. I would need to get a new phone number to create a new account and set up the fowards to the new address. Why do I insist on this convoluted setup? My previous email client was a firefox addon that showed me that counter and it made me read my emails. Every email account that doesn't follow this set up that I have has lots of unread emails. I have a thunderbird instance with 140 unread emails open right now. I have 0 on gmail.
dmd 5y ago
I would love to do this - and it would be easy, as I'm already forwarding from my own domain and have been for 25 years - but I receive so much spam (>600 per day vs. ~20 non-spam per day) that only Gmail's spam filtering is good enough. I've tried others (like Fastmail) and typically ~50/day get through their spam filters, vs. at Gmail where on a typical day 1-2 get through. As soon as anyone besides Gmail can successfully do spam filtering, I'm stuck with them. (Why do I get so much spam? Because I've been using the same email address, never hiding it at all even on Usenet, for 25 years.)
- wasmitnetzen 5y ago
  Have you tried training a user-specific spam filter like bogofilter? You might need to save a few months of spam for training. I have a quite good false positive and negative rates.
  - dmd 5y ago
    Yeah I’ve been trying various filters off and on for two decades.

What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).

by bbkane 5y ago

What a nightmare. I really should start migrating from GMail to something else (or at least use my own domain in front of it).

Freak_NL 5y ago

Just do it! You'll have to choose anyway if you are one of the many folk here who use(d) a grandfathered free Google workspace plan with your own domain: it ends on June 1st, or thereabouts, and you'll be shunted into a paid plan (although there seems to be a waiting list for a free plan). I did it last week. I signed up for Fastmail, followed their excellent documentation, and now only have a mandatory (new) Google account for a few apps in the Play Store that are not available anywhere else (but nothing paid). If I lose access to my Google account, I lose nothing. My Fastmail migration basically went like this: * Clean up mailbox, truncate mailing list folders. * Copy mail to Fastmail using their importer. * Change domain settings at your domain host (changing MX-records and a bunch of others); mail now goes to Fastmail. * Set up mail and calendars in Thunderbird on Ubuntu and K-9 Mail on GrapheneOS.

stuff4ben 5y ago
The setting up part is easy. It's migrating user logins, subscriptions, and everything else tied to your GMail account that takes time and energy. Someone really aught to create a migrator app to get people off GMail and do the hard stuff.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  I dedicated most part of a day to migrate most of the subscription to a new email. Iirc, it took me more than 8+ hours.
- hyperman1 5y ago
  This might actually be a great service for fastmail et al to provide: after you import old mailboxes, they should scan them for signup mails and show you a list with to migrate accounts i.e. red marks. After migrating an account, they know it, as they can scan your mail. Slowly, each red mark on your dashboard gets replaced with a green mark.
  - stuff4ben 5y ago
    Actually I was thinking it would be a good idea for a password manager to implement. They have all of the credential information, they'd just have to implement "Change my userid" logic for all websites out there. That's definitely a hard problem to solve...

martinflack 5y ago

It's a good idea to use something like gmvault [0] to ensure you have regular downloads of your mail corpus locally. [0] http://gmvault.org/ http://gmvault.org/

thesuitonym 5y ago

Just start doing it. It's easier than you think. 1. (Optional) Register a domain (So if you need to migrate in the future, you don't need to change your email address!) 2. Sign up for paid service somewhere else. Paid email services are extremely cheap, and worth it to have a phone number where you can call a real human person. * If you wish to continue using the Gmail interface, skip step 3 * 3. Forward Gmail to the new account. 4. As you see messages you want coming to your Gmail account, switch them to your new account. 5. (Optional) If you really like the Gmail interface, use IMAP/SMTP to check your email in Gmail, even though it's really coming from/to your external account! It's really easy to get away from GMail, and definitely worth it.

anonuser123456 5y ago
I’ve had a custom domain for some time, but it has its own risks / drawbacks. 1. If your registrar account is compromised, someone can redirect your mail at will. 2. If your payment lapses you might lose the entire domain. 3. If you die, it’s unlikely your family will understand how to maintain the system. 4. Some systems will classify your email as spam even with the right MX configuration (DMARC,DKIM etc) I think the right choice is having a paid relationship with a mail provider that’s been in the business a long time, and use their domain.
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  Your concerns are valid, but at least for 1 and 2, you can be proactive about preventing them, compared to preventing loss of your Google account which is just... crossing your fingers. As for 3, well, I really don't care in the least what happens after I die. I won't be around anymore. I can't really speak about how much of a problem 4 is, because it's never happened to me. I suspect the people who get their email classified as spam while using a large email provider actually are doing something wrong.
  - MerelyMortal 5y ago
    As a sender, you don't know when #4 happens. Regular people don't check their spam folders. Regular people don't go out of their way to give the sender a head's up that it was classified as spam. I know it happens to me, because I have to verbally follow-up sometimes. The only way you would know if #4 doesn't happen to you, is if you're doing something wrong, like trying to track when people open the email.

adamc 5y ago

Recommendations for good commercial email services?

beardbound 5y ago
I switched to fastmail a couple of years ago from google and quite like it. I even switched some other people in my family too.
- f1refly 5y ago
  Isn't fastmail hosted in australia?

imtringued 5y ago

I use gmail because it has this obscure addon thing that shows the number of unread emails in the favicon. Default gmail and all other email providers I have tried show the unread emails count in the title which is invisible on pinned tabs. I have three email accounts outside of gmail that are forwarding to gmail so I can have a favicon counter. Those email accounts maintain their own copies of the emails. If gmail were to lock me out I would lose my favicon counter. I would need to get a new phone number to create a new account and set up the fowards to the new address. Why do I insist on this convoluted setup? My previous email client was a firefox addon that showed me that counter and it made me read my emails. Every email account that doesn't follow this set up that I have has lots of unread emails. I have a thunderbird instance with 140 unread emails open right now. I have 0 on gmail.

dmd 5y ago

I would love to do this - and it would be easy, as I'm already forwarding from my own domain and have been for 25 years - but I receive so much spam (>600 per day vs. ~20 non-spam per day) that only Gmail's spam filtering is good enough. I've tried others (like Fastmail) and typically ~50/day get through their spam filters, vs. at Gmail where on a typical day 1-2 get through. As soon as anyone besides Gmail can successfully do spam filtering, I'm stuck with them. (Why do I get so much spam? Because I've been using the same email address, never hiding it at all even on Usenet, for 25 years.)

wasmitnetzen 5y ago
Have you tried training a user-specific spam filter like bogofilter? You might need to save a few months of spam for training. I have a quite good false positive and negative rates.
- dmd 5y ago
  Yeah I’ve been trying various filters off and on for two decades.