welcome back to the american product institute.
we recently triumphantly returned.
this week, we provide a couple of viable alternatives to gmail and some tips for making the switch. it’s the first entry in a new series of alternatives. watch this space.
the alternatives to gmail
you probably have gmail because everyone has gmail. there are myriad reasons to leave gmail, but this isn’t that essay. let’s just say you’ve found one of those reasons compelling. what do you do next?
we’ll start with the bad news: moving to a new email service isn’t easy.
but it’s also not that hard.
here at the american product institute, we’ve done it twice. here’s how it goes:
it starts with a signup. that’s the easy part. you signup for one of the alternatives to gmail below. the good news is your name is probably available. just your name without any numerical suffixes or funky formatting or anything like that.
next, send an email (from your new email) to your friends and family. tell them, “this is my new email” (feel free to add color).
from there, just use your new email whenever you’re asked for an email. one tip, though: when you’re saying it out loud to someone, in a brick & mortar retail context, for instance - you’ll need to really enunciate the name of the new service. consider spelling it out, letter-by-letter. because everyone has gmail and nobody expects anyone to have anything else.
finally, whenever you check your email, check both. that’s two tabs instead of one, but you’ve got a bunch of tabs open anyway - what’s one more?
and that’s it! that’s how it happens. a new email.
it’s not easy but it’s not that hard.
once you have it, be patient with the login migration process. you don’t want to go change your logins all at once. that would be impossibly tedious, so do it gradually. next time you login to something, pop over to the settings and change the email. it only takes a few seconds. or do it the next time. whatever you feel like. it’s just a username.
and when someone reaches out to your old email, forward it to your new email and reply. mention that “this is my new email address” (or something like that - feel free to add color).
it’s quite simple. it’s not nothing, but it’s quite simple.
but what are the alternatives to gmail, anyway?
hey
hey is the email client created by the team at basecamp - now re-rebranded back to 37signals. they got quite a bit of coverage in tech media when they launched because apple tried to paulie walnuts them into handing over 30% of their revenue for no good reason. but hey didn’t flinch and apple backed down (for the time being). since then, the team has been hard at work shipping genuine innovation to your inbox, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the early days of google mail. it’s not a gmail clone - it’s different. and here at the american product institute, we think it’s better.
protonmail
hey isn’t the only alternative out there. protonmail is a privacy-centric, end-to-end encrypted email provider based in switzerland. an upgrade to both desktop and mobile that was rolled out in early 2022 has made it a perfectly viable email provider in every way. proton also offers cloud storage, a calendar, and a vpn, as they build out an encrypted alternative to the g suite.
ironic hotmail
if you’re sitting on an old hotmail account, you could always hook it up to outlook and fire away. the two above are the best and coolest new indie emails, but what’s cooler than defunct?
there are others out there too - just don’t switch apple or yahoo! or the real outlook. you’d be missing the point entirely.
cover art by vincent van gogh - the postman (joseph-étienne roulin) - 1889 - public domain
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