this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Well, I hate Google too. I just can't divorce because of email reasons
Yes you almost certainly can. It's less painful than you might imagine. I used Gmail since it was launched, and now that account is unused except for a couple of mailing lists I don't care about. It just takes a bit of time, but you can do it bit by bit.
Which reminds me, I need to get back to that. I still have some more stuff to move over.
I’ll still keep it for maps and earth when necessary. I wish there were professional grade replacements for Earth but there isn’t unfortunately.
Most websites allow you to change your email address, get one from somewhere else and slowly start changing them over until there are no more you can move. If you get your own domain you can ensure you are never trapped in any particular email provider ever again, though you will be playing about $50/year for a domain and email service. I have maybe a handful of things that still use Gmail.
Starting a new email with Tutamail or Protonmail and slowly making new accounts with those emails is not difficult. Not sure about Tutamail, but Protonmail allows for easy migration from Gmail.
Proton has a smaller storage limit and I refuse to pay for any monthly subscriptions.
Then self host your own email. If you are not the customer, you are the product, and that applies to digital infrastructure. No credible VPS or domain registrar will let you have amazing service for free without hidden costs.
that's a whole lot easier said then done, especially with gmail's dominance and strict filtering, and of other even obscure providers. mailbox.org then or something like that
I would love to host my own email but PC parts are outrageous right now and I can't even afford to update my main rig.
Everyone degoogles for their own reasons. For me it's not even about privacy, I just really can't stand ads, enshittification, or paying subscription fees.
I get what you're saying, but paying 8 USD annually for a Tuta mail account doesn't seem unreasonable in my eyes considering that's just the costs of services rendered (no bullshit, but not free).
There's a lot of great, free software that allows you to have a functional life on the internet without any of those issues, but if you're logging in to a mail server maintained by anyone, you pay with your money or your data.
I have two things I pay annually (and nothing else): My email provider, and for my domain registrar for my self hosting needs. Less than 20 USD a year combined.
Edit: three, forgot to include mullvad. Still under 20 USD tho total.
If I missed a payment does my email get deleted? Or is it just held until I pay up again? My fear is losing my stuff because I forgot to pay after a card change or something.
I eventually want a NAS to self host cloud storage and all that too but costs are a big problem so I'm stuck with Google for the meantime anyway with 14 gigs of stuff.
Free accounts get removed after an inactivity period, but paid accounts remain (Relevant FAQ). You can also check on other providers' policies like Proton to see how they handle things if you'd prefer them instead.
In my experience I haven't had any issues even after changing payment methods.
(Also, as for hosting stuff, MEGA is encrypted and gives you 20GB off the bat without a google account requirement)
Must be nice to own your house and live off grid, but I can imagine that it's annoying to have to visit the library to use the internet.
Some things, such as water, internet, electricity, and even Email have constant costs. Sometimes subscriptions are dumb, yeah, but I very much like having electricity and stuff without having to generate my own.
VERY big difference between necessary utility bills for life and random subscription shit like Netflix, don't you think? Stop being pedantic.
Yes, I do. I wasn't the one who said I don't have any subscriptions.
I have my own domain and pay for a hosting service, don't miss using big tech email services a bit.
Be careful where you place your email address, and even so you can create blacklists on the hosting service. Never had to yet, and in almost 10 years only 1 phishing email 2 weeks ago.
Another fun thing to do when you have your own email on your own domain is create all sorts of fun little forwarders/aliases so you can give out addresses that aren't your main one, track who passes the address you gave them along to spammers, and delete the alias addresses whenever you like.
For example, you want to buy some cheese from the site Cheesemonger.foo and you need to give them an email address when creating your account. So, you give them cheesemonger@yourdomain.foo which is an alias you set up to forward to your real email inbox, and you receive mail from that site as normal. If you then start getting spam email sent to cheesemonger@yourdomain you know for a fact where the spammers got the address, and you know to delete that forwarder and buy your next batch of cheese elsewhere because screw those address-selling jerks at Cheesemonger.foo.
Catch-all is what you need
I personally don't like using catchall for this, I prefer to play with aliases, but it's certainly another way to do it depending on the result you want.