[timerol]

Effort, not money. As a Firefox/gmail user who routinely shits on Google, it's mostly the lock-in of any email address that keeps me coming back. I've actually opened a few paid accounts, but effort to switch is real. I gave up partly through switching over the dozens (100s?) of services that send me emails. I would never get to the point where all of my acquaintances and relatives actually use the new address.

[lotu]

Why not setup email forwarding and just wait a few years for people to get the message?

[mstade]

This is precisely what I have done and it's worked great. All services I use (and care about) I've changed to use service specific aliases now and it works fantastically well. Effort wise I'd say I spent probably a couple of days migrating some ten odd years of email from gmail, setting up domains etc. All in all, the migration itself was done within a week. Only maintenance I do on this setup now is send receipts to my accountant, and update credit card details when needed.