I have degoogled myself when it comes to email, running self-hosted email & calendar (not my own server). Did it two years ago, and up to now it has worked very well. I don’t miss anything from Gmail and have all the features it offered, plus some extra ones (like deleting email attachments via an email client – Gmail never deleted them, just archived them).
It’s good, however, always to have a backup email address that’s not connected with your hosting service. Up to now I’ve been using Gmail for that, but in view of recent developments, I just want to ditch the whole Google business.
I’ve seen that many people use Protonmail for this, and that’s what I’m considering. I’d like to hear about more possibilities and experiences though. Maybe there’s another provider that’s friendlier or more consumer/internet-freedom oriented?
I’m very security minded and email is a really tricky one. I’ve moved search and browser easy. I moved from Android to GrapheneOS. Email I am more reluctant because I have had it a very long time. I have been trailing Proton Mail for about 8 months now and have been very happy with this. I’m now at the place to migrate most of my activity towards it. The only hesitation I have is probably banking, which may lag behind, but it is always about taking steps on this journey. I am in a weening process ;).
It’s a big and stressful transition and people will go at whatever pace they are comfortable. As long as we all work together and support each other through this journey, awesome.
I don’t know enough about Proton alternatives so I am more reluctant. Proton is a combination of credible yet trustworthy that works for me, but as I say, everyone has different levels of comfort.
Having your own domain name makes changing email providers much easier.
My transition was quite smooth, but everyone has different circumstances. It wasn’t a problem with banking in my case, I just changed my email at the bank. But probably your bank works differently?
In my case the good thing is that my email is hosted and handled by me, so I need something like Protonmail just as an emergency email in case my hosting server is down. (Sure I could use Google that way, but I just don’t want to.)