Don’t use Gmail.

I found an article about migrating away from Gmail this week. I was struck by how painful it is to move away. Login and contact details all over the place.

I’ve never used Gmail. I run my own mail server(s). Always have. I still have all my email archived from 1996 days. Recently I’ve been tinkering with a few mail server configs and I realised, this stuff has become pretty complex.

I’d really like more people to use distributed, self hosted email systems, but we have some problems:

• Things like Gmail are very easy, convenient and free
• People are trapped in free email services – it’s very hard to migrate away
• Self hosted email can be complex, and not free (costs maybe 5 USD/m in virtual server hosting)

Why I don’t use Gmail:

• I can avoid it. I find it fun to maintain my own email services.
• I hate web based email services. Give me IMAP mail clients and mutt.
• The advertising business model behind free email can only have bad incentives – I don’t like the idea of surveillance capitalism
• I really don’t like the idea of some big evil empire having easy access to a large part of the communications in my life
• I would find it scary to not be in control of my logins details around the web
• The potential effort involved in migrating scares me – and the more you use it, the more you dig a hole for yourself
• Email is a network, if one person in the network hosts their email in a compromised place, it impacts the rest of the network – I don’t want to be that guy.

Don’t use Gmail.

You might also like:

• Why I Don’t Use WhatsApp
• My conversion to the Dvorak keyboard layout
• More Strong Opinions by Joe.

ps. if you find this topic interesting, let me know and I’ll write a post about how to host your own email services.