I was primarily using Gmail and Youtube Music and the switch was fairly easy. Apple Music was a better replacement than the other competitors, and Proton Mail was super easy. Paying for both makes me "not the product, but an actual customer". Forwarded Gmail to Proton in about 30 seconds, and replaced Chrome with Firefox. Duck Duck Go isn't a "perfect" replacement for Google Search, but it's good enough.
Proton looks pretty good, but all the paid Google services show that paying is not enough to be seen as “not the product, but an actual customer” these days.
It's NOT a valid reason not to switch, but god that's a dumb name for a product. Again, I don't understand why I hate the name, but I do. Please help me.
Curious what you decide. I feel trapped. My Gmail has been my primary account for almost 20 years. With that kind of longevity, switching would be extremely disruptive.
When I did it I just forwarded my mails to the new service (fastmail) and changed mail address whenever a mail got forwarded in. When I didn't receive a forwarded mail for a year or so I deleted my old mail and never looked back.
If you use a password manager this get easier though, since you can just lookup where the old mail is used.
I kept Gmail, but gradually switched over to proton.
Eventually, year or two later, it's full of emails I don't glcare about.
Start now and take it slow.
I've heard good things about proton. Considering switching to that as well. Other than heading so many places use your old email until you update it is there any reason you did it gradually?
Try to create a new email on a privacy respecting service and start with setting up email forwarding from Gmail to the new email. Then you just kinda slowly move your accounts over for a period of months or even years. I still keep my unused Gmail forwarding just in case.