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Leaving Gmail for Mailbox.org

(giuliomagnifico.blog)
351 points giuliomagnifico | 6 comments | 22 Aug 25 17:41 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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TranquilMarmot ◴[22 Aug 25 18:30 UTC] No.44988014[source]▶
I spent the past month "de-Googling" my life after I saw a notice in my Gmail inbox that it was 20 years old. I took a step back and realized just how invested into the Google ecosystem I was. Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, YouTube, FitBit, Android. Basically my entire digital life. My goal was more diversifying than security/privacy, but security/privacy is a really nice bonus.

I ended up going with Proton because they had a good solution for mail, calendar, and drive which I was looking to replace. I set up my custom domain to point to it and have my Gmail forwarding to it - any time I get an email to the old Gmail address I go change it on the website or delete the account altogether.

For Google Docs / Keep, I switched over to Obsidian and pay for the sync there. It's a great replacement for my main use case of Docs / Keep which is just a dumping ground for ideas.

For Google Photos, I now self-host Immich in Hetzner on a VPS with a 1TB storage box mounted via SSHFS. I use Tailscale to connect to it. It took a few days to use Google Takeout + immich-go to upload all the photos (~300GB of data) but it's working really well now. Only costs $10/mo for the VPS and 1TB of storage.

Android I think I'll be stuck on - I have a Pixel 8 Pro that technically supports Graphene but there are too many trade-offs there. Next time I need a new phone I'll take a serious look at Fairphone but I think the Pixel 8 Pro should last a few more years.

My FitBit Versa is really old and starting to die - I ordered one of the new Pebble watches and am patiently waiting for it to ship!

YouTube I'm stuck on because that's where the content is. I have yet to find a suitable replacement for Google Maps - OpenStreetMap is still really hard to use and gives bad directions.

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kogasa240p ◴[23 Aug 25 06:25 UTC] No.44993728[source]▶
>Proton

Using proton as well, but if you're stuck on the free tier you can't use any 3rd party email clients.

>YouTube

Using Google takeout for Youtube will give you a .csv of your subscriptions and playlists (just be sure to un-check getting a download of your videos). From there you can get the rss feeds and use RSSguard as a subscription viewer/media player, this site was a big help in figuring things out https://charlesthomas.dev/blog/converting-my-youtube-subscri....

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1. coro_1 ◴[23 Aug 25 11:44 UTC] No.44995264[source]▶
I love Proton but the idea of subscribing and committing to renew annually is a turn off. There's probably be a huge market behind the psychology of this.

They should offer a lifetime option for the core service and monetize the add-ons and new features.

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2. rpdillon ◴[23 Aug 25 11:57 UTC] No.44995313[source]▶
Paying for a service that you use on an ongoing basis and that is very important (like email) is probably the best possible choice, since it aligns what you're paying for and what the company is working on. In the model you suggest the core service will atrophy slowly because the money is in the add-ons. This is why I'm happy to pay annually for my Fastmail account.
3. nickserv ◴[23 Aug 25 12:08 UTC] No.44995383[source]▶
That's exactly the reason why so many people prefer giving up their data, their privacy, their freedom.

Personally I'm happy to pay proton a few bucks a month to not have to give up those things.

I'm not criticizing those that do, just that given my financial situation the trade off is simply not worth it.

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4. coro_1 ◴[23 Aug 25 12:43 UTC] No.44995590[source]▶
Hushmail was great for me, until I couldn't reclaim my inbox after the subscription expired (but there's no free option).

Other services deprecate or get weird. Hopefully Proton keeps going in the good direction.

5. UnhappyMeaning ◴[24 Aug 25 02:16 UTC] No.45000733[source]▶
Yea I’m in a position where I can’t splurge on things at the moment and basically I would be simply paying for email filters since Proton’s free tier only lets you create one.
6. kogasa240p ◴[25 Aug 25 22:22 UTC] No.45019842[source]▶
Agreed, even though I use the free tier. Ideally I'd host my own email server but that's not an option for me right now.