[mastazi]

I recently closed my Google account after a few months of an automated message informing anyone that the address would be closed soon (using the "Vacation responder" functionality from Gmail settings). In the meantime, I started using my new email address for all my online accounts and I passed it on to all my contacts. Another thing I did, was to download all my Google data (I saved the archives on my NAS at home and on my Nextcloud instance on Digitalocean).

Since then, the only time I needed a Google account was when someone wanted to collaborate on a Google Docs file. I created a "burner" temporary account for that, which I subsequently closed.

Every now and then I might watch something on Youtube, but I never really need to be logged in.

It's funny because before closing my Google account, I imagined it would have been so hard, when if fact it was quite uneventful.

During the last 12 months I also closed Reddit, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. It feels really good. I don't waste time during the day, I'm more focused during working hours and after work I have more time to do whatever I really like doing (as opposed to wasting time watching someone else doing those things on Youtube or Instagram).

[jrib]

What did you end up using for email?

[theshrike79]

Not the parent, but I switched to Fastmail. It was the only one that provided large enough storage quotas for my Gmail inbox at a reasonable price. 5€/month for 30GB of storage + domain aliases + native iOS application.

Protonmail is SuperSecure and all that, but they only have 5GB of storage and for the 4€/month account, getting it close to 30GB would be 6x that. (The quota was much lower when I evaluated the services around 4-5 years ago)

[roblabla]

Big +1 on fastmail.

However, the big upside is that I have my own domain now, so if I need to migrate to something else (be it self-hosted or another provider) I can easily do so without losing all my contacts.

[theshrike79]

Exactly, I've got a filter in Fastmail that collects mail that's still delivered to my old @gmail.com account (I still have forwarding there).

When I get bored, I wade through it and either change the address to my current one (with my own domain) or unsubscribe.

[tmarice]

I also switched to Fastmail 6 months ago, and I'm content. It's not bad, but the UX is nowhere near Gmail. I didn't understand how useful was automatic email classification (Updates/Promotions/etc.) until I stopped using it.

[johnbrodie]

I've made the same switch and had the same thought. In response I just unsubscribed aggressively from most everything. Much cleaner mailbox now, and I really never took any action on almost any promotional/update style email anyway, so less noise overall than Gmail now. It's actually been a good switch.

[shrew]

Not sure if Fastmail's filtering is as extensive as ProtonMail, but it seems there are several common headers that do a fairly good job of sorting emails into types. ProtonMail suggests filtering based on these headers[0].

For updates, I've got a filter based on substrings in the subject like "receipt", "invoice", "latest bill" which does fairly well at catching that transactional type of email.

It definitely takes more time than Google's implementation, but in curating the filters myself I've found I've been left with a cleaner, more organised inbox.

[0] https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/sieve-advanced...

[kingosticks]

I know it's not the same, but after going on an unsubscription drive, I've had pretty good success with simple address-based rules to move new mail to folders.

[system16]

I also switched to Fastmail and love it. Is their iOS app really native? It's my only real gripe with the service - I find it has a web/hybrid app feel to it. The components don't feel native, and I find their table row swiping gesture to be a bit flaky.

[theshrike79]

"Native" as in "not limited to just a web UI". Not sure about the underlying tech stack.

[mastazi]

I'm using my own instance of mail-in-a-box, of course this is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, because you basically become your own admin. But personally I enjoy doing that, and the maintenance required is really minimal.

If you are looking for cloud/managed alternatives you can have a look at the list here https://degoogle.jmoore.dev/

[2Gkashmiri]

i am interested in mailinabox. i think next month i am going to take the plunge but i need a webmail. my question, how much of a vps server do you need to set one up? 1Gb ram for miab+roundcube? any better foss webmail like roundcube or squirrelmail? also, have you looked into oracle always free ? would that work?

[mastazi]

Regarding the VPS: It requires 512 MB RAM minimum, but 1 GB is recommended, that would be e.g. the $10/month Digitalocean VPS. MIAB will do automated backups of everything that's on the machine, this means that it will use more than double the space on disk (compared to just the space that it would be required to store your email + attachments), that's if you choose to store the backups on local disk (but why would you?). The alternatives are either not doing backups (bad!) or storing backups on a different machine using rsync, or on an S3 bucket. Personally I use DigitalOcean Spaces which is S3 compatible, and I store backups from the last 3 days. The Spaces bucket was an additional $5 in my Digitalocean bill. So you should consider the backup storage cost as well.

Regarding webmail: MIAB includes Roundcube by default, which is OK on desktop but basically unusable on mobile, so on mobile I just use the built in client that came with my iPhone.

Of course you can use whatever webmail client you prefer, you just install it on a different VPS though (because MIAB will pretty much take over the whole VPS for itself; the only thing you can have alongside it on the same VPS, is a purely static website).

MIAB also includes Nextcloud [ * ] where you can add an alternative webmail client [1]. In order to install that client you need to unlock the nextcloud admin by executing a script that is included in MIAB [2].

[*](in MIAB, Nextcloud is intended to manage calendar+contacts but you can also use it to store files or as an additional webmail client, even though those two use cases are not officially supported by the MIAB devs; this means that, if you have an issue related to storage or webmail, you should seek help from the Nextcloud community, not from the MIAB forums).

[1] https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/mail

[2] https://github.com/mail-in-a-box/mailinabox/blob/master/tool...

[2Gkashmiri]

oh. i don't need contacts or calendar. just plain vanilla email with a webmail. i think any client on fdroid should work for mobile. backups are interesting and important really. vultr "seems" cheaper. will have to investigate

[Anarch157a]

Take a look at Mailcow too. I've been using it for more than a year now (was using Redmail before). It works pretty well, incuding the Spam filters.

[momirlan]

Porkbun: email for $24/year + domain registration

[phendrenad2]

Be careful with Google Takeout. I've found empty archives in there. Sometimes redownloading fixes it, sometimes not. (My chat messages from <2019 are permagone it seems)