Ditching Gmail for Fastmail

Gmail is a good service. It’s fast, reliable, and I like the interface of their mobile app and website. But the cost for this service is too high, at least it is for me right now. Gmail is not free; you pay by allowing the service to show you ads based on what’s in your email, how often you open it, and what emails you read. You pay for Gmail by sharing your data and disregarding your privacy.

I started using Gmail when Hotmail became too annoying to use. At the time, Gmail was new; it offered 1GB of storage (an incredible amount when compared to what Hotmail and Yahoo Mail provided at the time), a clean interface, and of course, a fast and reliable search function.

Gmail was also always better than Yahoo Mail and Hotmail at stopping junk email from getting at the top of your inbox, and I appreciate that very much. The concern with Gmail is that they scan your emails to find keywords or phrases that are used for advertisement purposes.

I want to move all of my stuff under the same domain, my blog, email, newsletter, etc., and as I prepare to do this, I will use this opportunity to move my email to a paid service that offers privacy.

At this moment of my life, paying for an email service with dollars is more cost-effective than paying by sharing my data and giving up my privacy.

I’ve heard of Fastmail, Protonmail, and others for years, but I am choosing Fastmail for now. Fastmail’s privacy and security features are what I am looking for, and for $5 a month for their standard service, which includes up to 30GB of space, I am sold.

The good thing is that since I am using my domain name with my email, switching email providers won’t affect my ability to send/receive messages as it will always be the same email address.

My recommendation for everyone out there is to get a domain name, get an account with a paid email provider that respects privacy, and own and protect your data as much as possible.

¡Hasta la próxima!