Adding a few other alternatives not listed on the website: Tuta, Mailbox.org, Mailfence. Thereโs also StartMail if you donโt mind a paid option.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2025
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Anyone know if someone has ever put together a checklist or routine to perform when migrating from one email service to another?
I'd love to get off of Gmail, but trying to wrestle with 20 years of account signups, purchases, subscriptions, etc. is a Herculean effort I'm struggling to put into practice.
Same here. The other worry is how many of these smaller companies will be around in ten years? Will we be able to move again if they go under?
I would really, really like a self-hosted solution where I can search my Gmail archive at the same time as my current email account. So I just have to search one place for "emails."
It's not a particularly nice way of doing things, but worst case: if you can add both your old and new accounts in, say, Thunderbird, you can literally drag your emails from your old mailbox and drop them into your new one.
A better option might be to see if whatever software/host you're looking at supports gathering email using IMAP - that way it can migrate all your existing emails autonomously and periodically scrape your old mailbox for new ones.
Most providers will provide migration tools, including the ability to periodically scrape your old mailbox for new messages. I migrated from Gmail to Proton a while back and it was shockingly easy even with custom domains.
The flip side is, migrating off proton is an absolute shitty experience.
Move and use both for a bit and let it be gradual.
Set a forwarding address to gmail and use your new going forward.
No one mentioned Posteo yet. Web interface for mail, calendar, etc has 00s vibes, but as it uses standard protocols you can use any client/app. Costs 1โฌ/month, and more if you like to have more storage or features.
Personally, if for some reason I can't pay for that period, I need them to have a "free" tier just to keep my account. If I need to pay a higher monthly fee, I'll do so. I just don't want to change my email address because for example my credit card was renewed and I forgot to update it.
Now do YouTube ๐
We have peertube. AFAIK mostly done by French framasoft and it's federated
It even has option to mirror yt account but I guess doing so without consent might be a netiquette problem
Mailo.com from France!
I like this topic, and articles like this one. They're fine for single-person migration from Google etc to alternatives.
The problem hits when it is not one user, but a whole family with a custom domain name on those services, and they want to move to another provider including their family domain name.
I haven't figured out how to do that, barring a big-bang all-at-once everyone-at-once switch during some holiday or something. And I am terrified of breaking it completely.
Most providers have a way of performing a staged onboarding. So Proton, for example, lets you:
- Add a custom domain name
- Add mailboxes with the custom domain
- Periodically gather emails from GMail, etc, to your new mailboxes
- Create DNS records to allow email to be sent from your custom domain.
...and you can do those in any order at any time without changing the MX records, so your users can switch across to Proton when it suits them. Once everyone is over you can throw the switch on the MX records and kill the GMail service with essentially zero downtime.
I've got a bit of experience with migrating to Proton and Microsoft Exchange but I imagine the vast majority of providers - and certainly those that target enterprise - will support similar workflows.
Thank you! That makes it sound a lot less painful. First I've seen of a way forward.
Personally not sure what provider to go to yet, but seeing that Proton has a plan, it proves that there's a good solution, so others might have similar. Feeling more optimistic now.
My experience with Proton was not great. I signed up, with the intention of switching. Had some IRL stuff come up, so while I was using it, I hadn't migrated everything and it was a good thing I didn't. I had a password issue. I couldn't sign in. I admit, I should have setup the recovery email, but I'm a dumbass.
So, I opened a ticket, and in the end, they couldn't help me. Even though I had the recovery phrase (which didn't work), and I had the email verification they sent me with the date, time and header info showing it came from them to me, and the mail ID. Even though I had that, they wouldn't consider it proof that I setup the account and wouldn't recover it for me.
And because they won't reuse email addresses, I lost my email address.
To me, the only part that was my fault was not setting up a recovery email. I still have my username and password in my password manager. But not being able to recover it, when it just stopped working, and I couldn't get my account back, is on them.
Nope... I'd still say it's on you. They really go for zero knowledge encrypted email. You are the only owner of any and all ways of recovering your account. And under no circumstances they should have any way to access your files or emails. This obviously increases privacy... But also the risk of losing everything.
Tuta also blocks reusing addresses. It also screwed me because i used one for a quick test, and i didn't properly keep the credentials. Now i can't use that address ever again. I guess it makes sense to avoid impersonation.
I'd say if this is not your threat model, you might want to check less restrictive options, maybe mailbox.org.
And don't get me wrong, I have a long list of pet peeves with Proton. But i think that part works as designed.
When they say they can recover it, but will not recover it, it is indeed on them.
Especially since, I have the password. It didn't work and my recovery phrase didn't either. That's a technical issue. Something happened to my account.
And they told me that the email they sent me about the account validating it was mine, was not proof enough that the account was mine. Still on them.