@hosford42 @ppaluchowski64 @Em0nM4stodon I (mostly) deGoogled earlier this year. I moved my active email to two services: (1) Fastmail for fairly general purposes, and (2) Mailfence for more critical accounts where a more explicitly privacy-oriented server is appropriate. Most of my everyday mail goes through Fastmail.

In both cases I was more worried about avoiding adware, feeding generative AI, and other big-tech ickiness than obtaining extreme privacy orientation.

Mailfence seems to be similar to other privacy-focused services like Proton, but without some of the baggage. (I used to have a Proton account, but dumped it when it turned out the CEO was Trumpy, and I've seen some rather uncomfortable stories recently where Proton definitely did some sleazy shit, e.g. https://theintercept.com/2025/09/12/proton-mail-journalist-accounts-suspended/). Mailfence's main drawback, for me, is that it's a little less full-featured than some other more mainstream services.

Fastmail has an extremely simple "import from Gmail" option -- better than most others I've seen out there -- which significantly eases the burden of switching over. It also feels more like Gmail/Apple/etc than some of the smaller, more niche services out there. The one big concern I have with Fastmail is that the service has at least some servers in the US, and if avoiding any US territory in your email service is important, you may want to look elsewhere.

In either case, migration can take a while. I used the opportunity to archive a lot of old email to files I can still read with an email client, but don't need to actively think about, and also to more fully flesh out email rules to organize all the different organization I've had email contact with over the years. Migrating goes a *lot* faster if you're willing to delete or archive everything but the last 2 or 3 years of email.

Some others I considered, and which have their points, but ended up not using: Mailbox.org (HQ'd in Germany; seems to be popular there), InfoManiak (Switzerland), and StartMail (Netherlands).

As for replacing Google logins: this is going to be a migration, a lot like email. I fortunately didn't have too many logins tied up there, but the principle is the same. The good news is you can do it gradually as you run across services you need to switch to a new account. Be sure to use your new email's version of "masked" or "hidden" addresses that forward to your main address, and only give your main address out to people or organizations you trust. You can set as ridiculously high a barrier for "trust" as you want, including "nobody".