Its pretty easy to just redirect Gmail‘s messages to a new account. Some providers even allow you to import previous emails. My switch to Protonmail was incredibly smooth.
During Covid, I did some digital cleaning. It took me around a month (from couple of minutes, up to few hours each day) to clean up my gmail inbox. I had a gmail label where I placed all the emails received from any site where I created an account. I went one by one to each of them and either changed the login (to a non gmail address), or deleted an account (if I wasn’t using it anymore).
Now I use another email provider, and i pay for it. I use gmail for situations/accounts where i suspect that my email address could be spammed. Right now, my whole google space usage is around 50 mb. I stopped using google drive, I don’t use google search, I still use YouTube and pay to have no ads - because I just like YouTube.
It’s possible to disconnect oneself from Google services as much as one wants. Still, I continue to use an android phone (I like iOS, but it’s still too limited in comparison to Android).
If it’s any comfort I’ve spent about a year getting away from Gmail and I can report it is in fact doable.
Finding another email service and using a domain of my own with it was the easy part. The hard part was painstakingly replacing my address everywhere I was using it with new addresses.
Way more doable than YouTube, which I don’t foresee being replicated any time soon.
I would not forward anything from GMail to another email provider. Google is intrusive. They have no reason to know anything about my new email address. But I’m overreacting and that’s okay.
For me it’s gmail. I’ve disconnected from everything else, but I have WAY TOO MANY things connected to and through my gmail account.
Its pretty easy to just redirect Gmail‘s messages to a new account. Some providers even allow you to import previous emails. My switch to Protonmail was incredibly smooth.
During Covid, I did some digital cleaning. It took me around a month (from couple of minutes, up to few hours each day) to clean up my gmail inbox. I had a gmail label where I placed all the emails received from any site where I created an account. I went one by one to each of them and either changed the login (to a non gmail address), or deleted an account (if I wasn’t using it anymore).
Now I use another email provider, and i pay for it. I use gmail for situations/accounts where i suspect that my email address could be spammed. Right now, my whole google space usage is around 50 mb. I stopped using google drive, I don’t use google search, I still use YouTube and pay to have no ads - because I just like YouTube.
It’s possible to disconnect oneself from Google services as much as one wants. Still, I continue to use an android phone (I like iOS, but it’s still too limited in comparison to Android).
If it’s any comfort I’ve spent about a year getting away from Gmail and I can report it is in fact doable.
Finding another email service and using a domain of my own with it was the easy part. The hard part was painstakingly replacing my address everywhere I was using it with new addresses.
Way more doable than YouTube, which I don’t foresee being replicated any time soon.
You can also forward emails from your old Gmail to your new email as a bridge to ensure you don’t miss anything.
I would not forward anything from GMail to another email provider. Google is intrusive. They have no reason to know anything about my new email address. But I’m overreacting and that’s okay.
Just use an alias, it’s anyway a good idea to find a provider that lets you create unique aliases for each account.