Moving Away From Gmail is Harder Than You Think

Back In June, I wrote about how I wanted to bring it all in-house and host all my own cloud services. So far things are going well, and Iโ€™ve replaced a lot of my previous 3rd party cloud services. But moving away from Gmail is the holy grail of hosting my own services โ€“ but I just canโ€™t do it!

So hereโ€™s the deal, as with most people who are heavy online users, Iโ€™m a big email user. I have multiple email addresses, my personal mailbox, RefuGeeks, MakeUseOf, and KQ Creative are all separate email accounts that I need access too from one interface. There are also some other features that are a must have for me:

If an email service canโ€™t do all of the above, then itโ€™s no good for me โ€“ and I quickly found that most of the self-hosted webmail interfaces like Roundcube are nowhere near to the standard of Gmail. So, I stated looking for โ€œpremium email servicesโ€.

Over the last few months, Iโ€™ve tried a number of premium email services. FastMail, Office 365, and AtMail are the only ones that I found to be in the same ball park as Gmail. But to be honest, the only one that really came close to Gmail, in terms of features, was FastMail โ€“ but the interface is just horrible. On the flip side, their privacy policy is very explicit and protects their users well.

Office 365 is Microsoft, so I might as well stick with Google Apps โ€“ that was quickly brushed aside; finally came AtMail. The interface is gorgeous, and it works extremely well. However, the lack of multiple email accounts is a complete deal breaker for me unfortunately.

AtMail web interface

How do they stack up to Gmail?

All-in-all, the cold hard fact is that they donโ€™t really stack up to Gmail. Theyโ€™re all missing at least one feature that Gmail does well. Whether that be the interface, or certain features, Gmail trumps everything Iโ€™ve found.

Couple this with the fact that Iโ€™m an Android user, so I would need to also faff around with CalDav and CardDav in order to sync my contacts and calendars to my devices. This isnโ€™t a deal breaker, more of an inconvenience really. As once itโ€™s set up, itโ€™s fine.

Google know the Internet, and they do it well; and at the moment, Gmail is still the king of email. So I wonโ€™t be moving away from Google Apps, no, scrap that, I canโ€™t move away from Google Apps, as there just isnโ€™t a viable replacement out there. Had I only the one email account, then I would jump ship straight away to Atmail โ€“ but alas, I canโ€™t.

I will be keeping a close eye on both FastMail and AtMail as theyโ€™re both great in their own way, just not as good as Gmail at the moment. If that changes though, Iโ€™ll be jumping ship immediately.

Are you guys using something different than Gmail? Or have you recently made the switch? Iโ€™d love to hear your thoughts on moving away from Gmailโ€ฆ

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