In my case it's Kagi and Fastmail. Fastmail primarily because I don't want to support Google and Kagi because it's genuinely better than the alternatives.
Kagi and Soverin for me. I bailed from GMail after the AMP-in-mail proposal,[1] and EU hosting was a bonus; ended up blogging about my choice back in 2018.[2] If there was a good EU equivalent to Kagi I’d be definitely interested.
Not the GP, but I pay for Fastmail because it's just so much better than Gmail, and I pay for Kagi sometimes because it's generally better than Google.
I never found gmail particularly convenient. I still have a google account with an @gmail.com address, because Android basically doesn't work without that (you can make a personal @whatever else address, but that doesn't work with Android; you can also make a workspace @whatever else address, but that requires payment or time travel, and doesn't address the core issue).
The only inconvenient thing is people know how to spell gmail.com and have to be told how to spell my personal domain, but my preference is to use my personal domain anyway, I've been using my personal domain for email since before gmail launched; if I used gmail, I'd be forwarding my mail to it, rather than using my gmail address. Fastmail for mail just works, and I don't remember if I had to turn conversations off, but I only had to turn it off once (I detest the conversations feature, but if you like it, I can't tell you if Fastmail has a good one or not :P). Actually, the second inconvenient thing is the Android app doesn't really do offline content; I think gmail is better at that; I griped about this for a long time, but now I just accept it --- offline content is a good match for email, but it doesn't bother me enough to do anything about it.
I do use my gmail address for something things where I feel it's a good thing to "present as a normal person", or where my email domain might be embarrassing (I have some other email domains, but one of them is a .is, which is even worse for getting people to spell). I used to use my yahoo address for that, but I got tired of logging into yahoo just for that, and google has successfully tied me into their account system.
I do not use the Fastmail calendar. Android calendar is convenient, and tied to google calendaring.
No, the only difference I noticed was that it was faster. I still use Maps and have my Google account, but I don't use Gmail (or Google calendar). I made the transition years ago and it was really painless for me.
Transitioning from Gmail was painless? What approach did you take? I think I would have hundreds, if not thousands of services I would need to change email on.
I did it little by little, no need to rush it. Just start changing some main ones and as you log in to the others take the min it takes to change it.
On top of that I moved services to their own custom email like <service-name>@<my-domain>.com. That way it's all neatly sorted inside Fastmail in different folders (and I know who is selling my data)
My approach has been simply signing up for new services on my non-Gmail addresses, and occasionally switching important ones over. Nobody's making you delete your Gmail account, so you can still keep it open for legacy stuff as long as you need to (especially since it's free).
Not parent, but: The primary inconvenience I see with de-googling is just the sheer number of things that become just slightly harder. For one, Login with Google. Now, I know people de-googling will probably want to have separate accounts rather than SSO anyways, but it is an important consideration. You also lose GDrive and the GSuite in general, which alternatives exist, yes, but IMO not as good. Also, most people who work online on GDocs will now find it inconvenient to collaborate with you.
All great points. I try to de-google mostly from a personal perspective (though still haven't gotten off Maps or Android). I use loads of Google products at work though because I'm not the decision maker there.
I do use personal Google Workspace now--in part, because I used to use it extensively at work. But even if I used something else, people casually share GDocs with me from time to time.
Fastmail for me. Switching was easy. For existing services/logins, I just added forwarding from gmail and didn't bother changing addresses except with the most important things. Most services from back then no longer exist anyway, or have turned into spam, so I eventually turned off the forwarding.
I don't yet pay for search (mostly using duckduckgo), though I am considering it.
I pay for Kagi because it is a genuinely good search engine. I pay for both because I de-googled my life and I understand that one needs to pay for a service one way or another.
The price is negligible in the grand scheme of things. I've had nights out that cost more but gave me less.
I stopped self hosting when my host got blacklisted and I lost about a year of emails with my grandmother… I just thought she was reading them but not having the energy to respond but when I visited at Christmas I saw that all my emails were in her spam box.
The unfortunate thing is that more than any other service, email feels like the one on which I cannot risk to compromise reliability. This sort of story (thank you for sharing) unfortunately fits with my own experience managing my University's undergraduate society's local email server. Non-stop headaches and complete indifference from every group which affects your setup.
I don't even routinely use my undergrad's email forwarding address. It's probably better than it used to be but, at one time, it definitely caused more stuff to drop in the bit bucket than emailing directly. And I assume, at this point, that my Gmail account isn't going to go away.
Fastmail and Kagi. The former is amazing – Gmail UX and speed is atrocious in comparison, and the latter is amazing to find reliable, to-the-point results.
