@Leo Just wanted to say a big Thank You for your Fastmail recommendation. I just switched my business domain to them and cancelled my Google Workspace subscription. The process was fast and super easy and I’m discovering a rich Reddit community full of tips and some custom domain plus email masking tricks that are going to change my world for the better.
Now I just have to figure out how to migrate my personal @Gmail account that’s been around since their inception. That thing is tied into just about every aspect of my life and I think the process is going to take a little bit longer.
Anybody else migrating away from Gmail? Who do you use and what has your experience been like?
I migrated my G Workspace domain as well. I was using it for personal email. Very happy with the service.
Unfortunately, while you can create a personal account in Fastmail and have it pull in your Gmail, you won’t be able to migrate without letting everyone know your new email address.
Yeah, The plan is to slowly do that over time. The good thing is I can still forward emails to the new address from the old Gmail address, so I can start the vetting process of who gets it and who doesn’t. Even after getting rid of everything before 2016, I have nearly 50K emails. This is going be fun. Next cut-off is going to be 2019 before I make the migration…along with a lot of deleted junk.
First, I also want to express my gratitude to Leo for recommending Fastmail - it seems like a great option for me and my family!
I’m currently exploring alternatives to move my personal domain away from the “legacy” G Suite/Workspace solution. Initially, I considered Protonmail, but Fastmail appears to be a better fit for my needs.
However, I have some reservations, especially regarding the lack of offline support in the Fastmail Android app.
I’m curious to know how you manage (or work around) the missing offline functionality in the Fastmail app. Do you have any solutions or suggestions?
Regarding the OP comment regarding migrating the primary gmail address away - I was planning on just setting up a mail-forward rule in the gmail account (possibly with local deletion) - and still keep my phones etc. logged in to my gmail account to avoid it being marked as not-in-use and up for deletion. But I’m open for better suggestions
I have just taken the plunge (over christmas, since entire family was together) into Fastmail. So far everything seems great. It is easy to add rules etc to keep email organized, and aliasing works like a charm. All family members have been positive, and no complaints have reached me.
However - I would like to add a tip that I did not find anywhere and that I ended up solving with sieve code in stead.
Default you have 2 options for “wildcard” emails (lets say you want to register on facebook):
and both would give away the username (in addition to the “+” being prevented lots of places)
I took this to mean that you had to use your specific username for this to work - but that is not the case. (That’s why I added sieve code to filter and pass on to correct user)
This also works with aliases, so the easy solution is to create an anonymous alias for each user (i.e. snowcat → user1, bear → user2, kitten → user3, etc) and then all emails to whatever@kitten.mydomain.com would end up in the mailbox of user3. Simple and elegant.
I solved “off-line local access” by also setting up FairEmail on my android phone.
Yeah Sieve is one of the main reasons I love Fastmail. It’s easy for newbies but has considerable power under the hood. I also love the support for custom domains.