It is time for me to evaluate my custom domain email service. I had the original/free Google workspace with custom email domain. In 2021, they charged me $6/month to keep that option afloat. To be honest, I think $6/month is a bit expensive for just email usage. I don't even use any other stuff coming with Suite. My question for this group: how do I get out of this without losing my email domain?
You could sign up for fastmail and point your domains DNS records there. It's $5/mo and they make it easy to import your existing emails from gmail. I switched to them when Google stopped offering free workspace accounts. It's been great so far.
I also switched to fastmail with my own domain and also have had a great experience with it. It was super simple to import my data over from google and it's all still there and searchable.
For me it wasn't really anything to do with the cost, just a token decision to opt out of the google hegemony over email to some degree. Been well over a year at this point and I don't miss gmail at all.
One thing that people are surprised by when I tell them is;
Apple iCloud+ will let you have up to five custom domains, with up to three personalised email addresses per domain for just 0.79p (UK)
If you are just looking for email, that's shockingly good value. You do get iCloud Docs with that too, but that product offering is a bit naff and iOS/iPadOS/macOS only.
If you are using Apple products, it's very good value for money.
> Apple iCloud+ will let you have up to five custom domains, with up to three personalised email addresses per domain for just 0.79p (UK)
I migrated from Google Workspace when Apple added custom domain support. The email migration itself was simple — I used `imapsync` and followed the instructions below. It's been several months since the move, and I can report that it all "just works".
Zoho is a good option if it's just you and you want a custom domain for your email. Used them for a few years without needing to pay. Moved over to proton mail (paid) for my email now, it comes with cloud storage, calandar, and VPN too. You also get simpleLogin included, a mail forwarding service for your custom domain names so you can make burner email addresses if you want.
I migrate my family to zohos family plan when all the crap started with the free google plan. Been about a year and no complaints. Zohos spam filters are much better too imho.
I've had the same free Google Apps account with forwarding for me and couple friends on my custom domain. We didn't use the mail boxes themselves, only forwarded email from the custom address to our free mailboxes. When they moved me to a paid plan, I researched multiple options to keep forwarding for multiple users and ended up getting a forwardemail.net service for 3 EUR/mo.
I migrated to Midagu and am very happy with it. It has a nice logical volume strata pricing model which works perfect for a small company like us.
Granted we're a bootstrapped business so our economics are important to me. Workspaces was just too expensive for the service provided. Microsoft Office was cheaper back in it's hayday.
The article that you linked shows how to "Allow Gmail to receive emails using POP3". That is to say, your mail should already be hosted elsewhere, and you'd be using the Gmail web app as a client for your email hosted on a different server.
Yes, Google Domains allowing for email forwarding sounds like a reasonable feature.
But when it comes to sending mail, the support pages say:
> While these directions let you send emails from a custom email alias at your domain, email recipients can still find your personal Gmail address if they inspect the email headers.
To me, this is no replacement for a mailbox on my own domain.
Pay another provider to host it (I assume you own the DNS domain). Running your own is also an option but honestly if you don't have knowledge to set it up right now it's probably not all that great option.
