alt Hacker NewsPlease Google let me buy my email and move it to my own service without any restrictions and I will be thankful. I am now in too deep to move away, from my govt licenses to banks to everything else.
Switching away from Gmail isn't possible for me, but I will keep trying, I won't give up but hopefully I would never have to realize how big a mistake this was.
I feel like I might end up on the streets if gmail goes away. Hyperbolic but it's insane how true that feels.
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Why can’t you migrate? It took me a year to move my business to protonmail. I had to change about 200 accounts but we finally moved. I’m curious what the hard limit is for you.
It's actually not as hard as it seems. Just set up forwarding from gmail to your new email address, then update your email everywhere at your leisure.
switching banks and govt accounts is easy. getting people's address books to switch is hard
create a new account elsewhere. set up a forwarder from gmail -> new account. create a filter/label in your new email. when you get an email at your new account, update the service to use your new email.
this way it doesn't all have to happen at once; you can take your time and just leave the old gmail account up as a forwarder. save all your old emails to your computer for historical stuff, then delete them from gmail if you feel the need.
it doesn't have to be a huge painful transition - you can do it slow and steady :) i've been meaning to do the same for a while but i need to find an email provider i like that lets me bring my own domain.
Much like planting a tree, the ideal time to use your own domain for email was many years ago, but the next best time to do it is today.
Do it! minraws.com (if that means anything to you) is available, you could be [email protected] as well as your @gmail.com before the sun goes down. Personally, I'd set it up to feed into a new mailbox with Protonmail, but if you like you can just have it forward to the familiar gmail inbox you're used to.
You can start moving your accounts over one at a time. It doesn't have to be instant. Yeah, there are probably IRL business cards in drawers and people you haven't contacted in decades that will mean that you want to forward all emails that go to your gmail to a folder/label in your new email domain forever, but that's OK.
Just start.