Gmail and Gcal ➡️ Fastmail

I’m moving away from American services in favor of European ones. It’s time to move from Google’s mail and calendar.

I have been using Google mail since 2004. 20 years! And now it’s time to move.

Requirements #

• As I have my whole life’s history in Gmail, I’d like to transfer my email instead of starting fresh
• My current inbox has 13GB of data, so I need to be ready for the next 20 years. A minimum of 20GB data or the option to grow
• I’m using both email and calendar from Google. But not photos or drive
• Email needs to be secure and simple. And as you’ll see, its hard to meet these two guidelines
• I’d like to setup multiple domain names to the email (either in one inbox, or multiple inboxes) and use mail rules to filter

Competitors #

The possible competitors are Proton (Swiss 🇨🇭), Startmail (Dutch 🇳🇱), Fastmail (Australian 🇦🇺, I know, not European), self hosted (with or without Nextcloud), Mailbox (German 🇩🇪) or Infomaniak (Swiss 🇨🇭).

I have been eyeing Proton for a long time. They combine a total commitment to privacy (with PGP) with user-friendliness. They have a complete offering, with calendar and drive for a fair price. But what is holding me back is that Proton is a walled garden, which makes sense from the encryption point-of-view. I have to use their email and their calendar app. Yes, it’s secure, but… I like the idea of being able to switch: from Apple to Linux, and so on. That’s not possible with Proton.

Startmail has no calendar-offering, but “it’s coming”. I don’t have time to wait for this.

Mailbox is a typical German offering. Overall it looks very decent and strong, but clunky. Transferring email from Gmail is possible, but uses a separate service called Audriga and it feels like a hassle. Mailbox offers other things like conferencing and drive, and Twitter-feeds and RSS-feeds and todo-apps and… It feels like I will need weeks to work out all the kinks with this tooling. I just need a calendar and email, okay you guys?

I decided to take a look at my “Archived mail” and I wouldn’t be missing much¹.

Infomaniak has an extensive offering. Email, VPS, domain names, document-editing; You name it, they have it. Similarly to Mailbox the offering feels overwhelming. It looks more polished, but… THE NAME! I mean, a rose would smell just as sweet, yada-yada, but how can I trust a company that names itself Maniak? It also names everything with a k: “kmail”, “kmeet”, “kchat”. I know Apple did it with an “i” and Google with the “g”, but it feels cheap. Plus, I get the feeling they are stretching themselves too thin. I rather have a company that does one thing perfectly.

Self hosting (either with or without NextCloud). I love self-hosting of my web content. I’m free from external services. But, self hosting email is another thing. I don’t want to deal with SPIF and DMARC and other technical things. I want my email to work reliable without doing anything. I trust my hosting provider can do this reliably, but I don’t want the hassle.

Fastmail is an Australian operator. Compared to the European offerings this one makes a lot of sense. It’s simple, feels trustworthy and feature-complete. No additional unnecessary cruft, just loads of storage for email and calendars. Easy migration from Google and Workspace. One click and done.

Choice made: Fastmail #

I prefer European services, but I’m not exclusive. The main goal was migrating away from Google. I chose comfort and ease of use over a complex offering, and decided on Fastmail.

Migration was painless and easy. I was expecting Fastmail to take days to import my 107.196 emails from Gmail, but it only took a moment. I don’t even know how long, but less than a couple of hours.

I also imported my work-email and iCloud. Everything is now in one account.

Migrating log-ins (OpenID) #

I can switch e-mail and calendar very easily. But that’s not the only things I used from Google. I also used their “log in with Google account” OpenID functionality for services instead of using a username/password combination.

This one is a PITA. I migrated all my work-logins (as I only had a handful), but migrating all my private logins will take a loooooong time.

Deleting Google Workspace Account #

It’s much easier to create a Google Account than to get rid of one. I had to dig deep into Google Settings and even in the Google Cloud Console to quit an Apps script that was running.

The account is not canceled yet: it takes 30 days for projects to fully delete…

Ah well, 30 more days and my Workspace account is gone.

I’m keeping my personal Gmail account so I can have it forward email until everybody knows I am now using a new email-address.

New mail, new rules #

Now that most of the migration is done I am setting up new rules for my inboxes. I’d like to keep my mailbox fresh and structured this time.

1. Everything a password. No more OpenID nonsense. I have a password manager and I’m not afraid to use it
2. You won’t get my private email-address. I have a private email-address and only friends will get it
3. Business partners get a business email-address.
4. Your app won’t get my url. So nice of you to have an app that requires an email-address. But your app will get an app-specific email-address from a domain-name I own, and a fake name.

After sorting through the past weeks of mail while setting up my mail-rules, I realize email is more for machines than humans. It’s a low-level notification api; a way for the computer systems to talk to their users. A sad realization, human communication has moved to walled off systems such as WhatsApp, Facebook, LinkedIn, and others.