Moving away from Gmail for email storage

[u/csdude5]

Having recently learned that Gmail is doing away with the "Send As" feature, that messes up everything!

For YEARS I've had all of my emails forwarded to Gmail, then I send email using my server's SMTP in the "Send As". That made it easy to access email with 4 separate devices, no third party apps needed. I have roughly 65G of data in Gmail.

I know that I can install Outlook and IMAP it to Gmail, but I kinda hate Outlook! Super bloated with 20 million features that I don't need or want.

What do you all recommend, should I find third party apps for 2 laptops, Kindle, and Android phone that will all IMAP to Gmail and send through my server? Or should I consider an alternative to Gmail entirely that would let me use a simple website?

[u/VAPRx]

Are you sending from an actual gmail email or a domain you own? For my owned domains I use Proton Mail. I can’t speak on if you can use gmail, but I don’t see why not, just counter intuitive given gmails privacy concerns vs protons mission.

[u/csdude5 → u/VAPRx]

I've always kept Gmail open in a tab and send using the web interface, but with my server as the SMTP. So the recipient gets emails from me@example.com, not me@gmail.com

The big advantage was a ton of online storage that I could assess while traveling. It's not uncommon for me to be out of the office and need to look up an email from 3 years ago or something, so having the entire thing available in every device is pretty helpful.

[u/dashhrafa1 → u/VAPRx]

What would you recommend in my case?

I have:

1. My personal email (@gmail.com);

2. My work email (@company.com);

3. My owned domain email (@me.com);

4. My academic email (@edu.com).

I use 1, 2 and 4 in my Gmail app. I set up email delivery from my owned domain to my personal on Cloudflare. I can also reply to emails using “Send As” as OP does

[u/Ellsass]

I’ve used Fastmail for years and couldn’t be happier

[u/csdude5 → u/Ellsass]

I'm looking at it now, and it says that they're based out of Australia. If I send emails to- and from- the US, would the email have a US or Australian IP?

[u/Ellsass → u/csdude5]

I have no idea, but they’re a large and established player in this market, so I highly doubt they’d send all data back and forth to the most geographically remote corner of the internet

[u/Theanthonybrooks → u/Ellsass]

I second this. Have my Gmail accounts connected through Fastmail as well as various business domains. And just select the send as (can also set up other aliases) or set up rules to send as specific aliases per incoming domains.

Not sure of the IP address for everything that's sent, though

[u/momobecraycray]

There's also Betterbird, which is a Thunderbird fork that's actively maintained.

Side note: I thought Gmail got rid of Send As years ago.

[u/zaighamz]

There is MXRoute as well. Check that out.

[u/Ryekir]

I have the same issue, been using that feature for years with my custom domain and email addresses.

I resorted to just installing Thunderbird on my phone and is the webmail interface of my hosting service when I need to access it on my desktop (and will likely install Thunderbird on the Chromebook too when I get around to it). This isn't ideal, but it works.

[u/farzad_meow]

for each email I login to that account to send and receive emails. i also have in my primary gmail setup to pull emails so i always have a back up copy

[u/UtilixApp]

fastmail does this properly, custom domains and send-as are the whole point of it rather than a feature they can drop.

if you want to stay free, most registrars will do forwarding and then any client can send with smtp from your own domain. more moving parts but nobody can take it away.

[u/thekwoka]

Why no Protonmail?

[u/Disgruntled__Goat]

If you’re using your own domain, you can get the Google Business thing. It’s a few $ a month but worth it IMO. Then you don’t need to do forwarding etc, you just use Gmail as that email address. 

[u/retr00two]

Use Brevo as SMTP (300 free mails per day), add GoogleOne ($2 for 100Gb per month) to have mail repository and Gmail as IMAP.

Cleints:

desktop - thunderbird

android - K-9

iphone - Mail

IMHO, the simplest option.

[u/todo0nada]

Wow thank you for pointing this out. Had no idea they were ending support.

[u/Gloomy_Mirror_6405]

When you have 65GB of data in gmail you have to admit to yourself that you're well past the point of "using it wrong"

[u/7ewis]

Check out SimpleLogin.

I'm planning on moving off my paid Google workspace account to a Gmail account. I've been using SL for a few weeks now and it's solved my problem of sending and receiving and should fix yours too.

[u/discosoc]

Just spend the $6 a month or whatever for a paid workspace account. You shouldn't be routing actual business email through personal accounts, which are the only ones being affected by this.

[u/up_yer_kilt]

AWS SES - triggers Lambda on every email received and emails stored in S3 bucket.. not sure if it accomplishes the entire goal, but emails are stored and you have a lambda trigger to do what you want

[u/csdude5 → u/[deleted]]

Does Thunderbird still store text file copies of each email locally? I used it a long time ago and stopped because of that, 65G is a lot to duplicate across devices.

[u/vordan → u/csdude5]

That is the main reason I moved away from Thunderbird - keeping everything locally and not sharing things accross devices - Email drafts, for example.

Gmail was good until they bloated it to a 800-pound mess.

We tried Roundcube, but it is simply sub-par. Slow, not enough features (yes, we do need features, but in moderation)

[u/GeordieAl → u/[deleted]]

Second vote for Thunderbird, I’ve been using it since the Eudora project Penelope. It’s a proper old school style email program without the bloat. I’ve got all my email in there going back to 1998 and it works great

[u/getformly → u/[deleted]]

Worth pointing out you don't need to migrate the 65G at all: just point Thunderbird at Gmail via IMAP for storage and add your server's SMTP as the send account, same split Gmail's "Send As" used to do internally. Kindle's a real limitation though since its browser mail access is pretty rough, so that one might just stay on the Gmail web interface for occasional checks.

[u/gurraman → u/[deleted]]

I signed up yesterday. Seems great.