DISQUS

Benjamin Golub · 12 months ago

When we first got broadband I attempted to convince my mother that using her @adelphia.com email address across the web was a terrible idea as we'd eventually switch providers. Then my grandparents got dialup and I tried to explain the same thing. Now I have both of them on Gmail because, sure enough, they switched providers and came to me asking for help.

Switching away from a email address that you *pay* for is extremely difficult. At least with a phone number you can usually port to a new provider; you cannot do that with email. Migration will be extremely difficult for you but I'd recommend you setup louisgray.com with Google Apps for your Domain and being forwarding email from @mac.com to @louisgray.com immediately. Start only sending mail from @louisgray.com and eventually 99% of your contacts will switch over but it will probably take months. You will never hit 100%.

In the future moving away from Google Apps will be simple because you control the DNS for louisgray.com. Point it at whatever is the next hot free hosted email solution and your contacts won't notice a thing.

Updating your services will be annoying but not terrible. Consider the fact that you'll be forwarding @mac.com to @louisgray.com for months it'll give you plenty of time to move everything over.

As far as the extra services that MobileMe provides: if you want don't get rid of MobileMe. Just stop using it for email and forward it all to @louisgray.com. It'll cost you the same amount of money you're spending now since Google Apps is free.

Importing previous mail is also simple. Gmail can do this for you out of the box. You give Gmail your credentials and it uses POP3 to download your messages. It is how I migrated my @gmail.com emails to my @benjamingolub.com account. It took a few days but it worked.

Here's how I got everything switched to @benjamingolub.com: first I used hotmail, then yahoo. Then I went to CWRU and used @cwru.edu through IMAP. Then I switched to Gmail and finally Google Apps for your Domain. CWRU forwards (guaranteed for life) to @benjamingolub.com. Gmail forwards to @benjamingolub.com. I reply to all contacts from @benjamingolub.com so they eventually forget about my old email addresses and realize that I always reply from @benjamingolub.com.

Mark Trapp · 12 months ago

Like Benjamin explains, the switch to a stable and static domain is definitely the biggest hurdle, but once you have that problem solved, it becomes much, much easier to switch providers in the future.

For the import, even though it's probably going to be slower, I'd recommend using IMAP to import your messages from MobileMe to GMail. This way, you can import all your sent messages and folders without missing a step.

The final piece of the puzzle, contacts, sync your MobileMe contacts with your Mac's Address Book, and use a small program called "A to G." That'll import all your Address Book contacts into Gmail's Contacts program.

Switching email providers isn't so much complicated or hard as it is incredibly time consuming. Expect to babysit it for a few days.

Guido · 12 months ago

IMAP on Gmail is just plain terrible. I have tried it last week and compared to my own Communigate Server it is:

- slow like hell (try pushing some 30k mails to Gmail ...)
- stupid like hell (why do I have to see every mail at least twice - once in the actual folder, once in "All Mail")
- Deleted mail is actually not deleted (at least it didn't work for me)

And so on. For me, IMAP with Gmail is just plain unusable. And don't get me wrong - I love IMAP and I want it back, but not with the crap Gmail is providing there. Mobile Me works far better in that respect.

For my private mail I use "hosted domain" at Gmail now with POP which works fairly well. I can have backup'ed archives from everything I get and send on Gmail, but I store everything locally with Mail.app.

Mark Trapp · 12 months ago

IMAP isn't great on GMail, but I'm suggesting it as a means for importing, not as a final solution. Even given how slow it is, it ensures that every thing is moved to Gmail (folders, sent mail, drafts, etc.) instead of just your inbox. Being able to drag and drop folders makes the process straightforward, if time consuming (I've migrated several mailboxes with over 20,000 emails each, and it took days).

Peter Edstrom · 12 months ago

I'm with Benjamin. Start using louisgray.com exclusively for your email. Then forward all of your other emails to that address until you aren't using anything else.

I've had a static email address for almost a decade now, and it has be hosted in many places (from self-hosted, to spamcop, to gmail, to a few others inbetween). Right now, if I send email "from" my gmail account, it looks to the recipient like it came from my @edstrom.net.

Rishabh Mishra (possible248) · 12 months ago

Smart man. I was just going to comment the same thing, only discovering that you had beaten me to the punch.

While I publicly use a GMail address (possible248@gmail.com), I've set up forwarding to an email account on my own domain.

Jordan Hudgens · 12 months ago

I feel the exact same way, my @ME.com is tied to everything I touch online, the $100 annual fee is worth paying simply to avoid the hassle of switching addresses. I just can't believe how poor the web UI is, after all this time.

Phil Whelan · 12 months ago

I'd say there is a way, but I know from experience it is very hard. Some of friends still send email to an old hotmail address I stopped using about 4 years ago. I always reply from GMail informing them that I no longer use that email address, but it's makes no difference.

My advice is start now and hopefully in a few years you will have migrated 98% away. Possibly set up an auto-responder to email to the old address.

Here's a great post for importing your old email to Gmail...
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/tips-for-...

Good luck!

travis · 12 months ago

if you do ever decide to move, you should use a domain that you own. that way you can easily move from one email provider to another and keep the same address!

David Speiser · 12 months ago

Great post Louis - email accounts and identity juggling is a constant problem for me too. It's especially hard when you're dealing with businesses that have so much of a person's identity stored up, yet are also relatively new companies with start and stop revenue models (Facebook, FriendFeed, even Google and Apple.) Who knows what's going to still be around in 6 months, let alone 6 years. Thanks for sharing your story.

Michael Fidler · 12 months ago

You are such the fanboy! You just presented the most convincing argument to change email providers, only to conclude with the decision that your not going to change. It's the same logic that I've heard so many times when people need to rationalize keeping their AOL account, even when I tell them the email is available for free. Why not start a new account (your allowed to have more than one you know), and see if it makes a difference in your life. What do risk in giving another service a try? Earthlink?

Louis Gray · 12 months ago

Michael, if you read the post all the way through, you'd see I said I
have a GMail account (louisgray@gmail.com), and that I would strongly
consider moving to it, if I could 1) Import all prior messages, 2)
Update friends and family easily or forward my .Mac messages there,
and 3) Somehow update all my services.

It may have been about being a fanboy at one point, but given I just
ripped on Apple's implementation in 2008, I don't think that claim
makes sense any more.

Michael Fidler · 12 months ago

I did read the entire thing but, I was just expecting a different conclusion. The repercussions of loosing important contacts can be a nightmare. Trust me , I know!

Malinda Gray · 12 months ago

Am I the only person who never had or has a problem with MobileMe? (Knock on wood) Another amazing service that you are forgetting that your .Mac provides are all push features. Any contacts you add or change on your phone, online account, or computer are automatically changed in the other two. iCal events are also synced like that. That alone is enough for me to stick with .Mac. I hated it before when I had to keep track of which information was more accurate on which contacts, (phone? or computer?.)
I also love the web galleries, I know they are no SmugMug. But they coupled with iWeb make anyone look like they had professional help designing their webpages. Those are my two cents.

Guido · 12 months ago

I never had any one problem with Mobile Me. It's not the fastest service, but it always worked since I got my address in 2000.

rpetty · 12 months ago

Louis, I say use your own domain and have your mail forwarded there. Then you choose who/where your mail is hosted. My domain's email is hosted by Google. It has been very reliable, offers 25GB of storage and very good SPAM filtering for $50/yr. Since I use an iPhone, MobileMe is still useful for pushing/syncing calendar and Address Book updates automatically--that is all I use it for. Until someone else enables the same functionality, we are stuck with MobileMe. In the interim, forward your louisgray@mac.com --> @louisgray.com while you transition. Happy to talk to you about a smooth transition. I have done this a few times personally and at work.

RAD Moose · 12 months ago

$50/yr per user (or mailbox) is for the Premier version. The Standard version (which has the same storage limits as regular Gmail is free.

I ran into too many limitations of having just 1 user account on the Premier service (such as a low limit on aliases) so I switched back to the Standard (free) version.

Louis Gray - I would recommend using Google Apps for Domains for LouisGray.com and making that your primary email address. You can get your content into and out of Google Apps easily as other have said.

DGentry · 12 months ago

If you can bring yourself to go to the me.com webmail, in the mail preferences there is an Other tab which can be set to forward mac.com email to another address. You could renew it for one more year, with forwarding, and try to aggressively update your billing services and friends with the new address.

Also I'd second the notion others have suggested: if you're going to go to all this trouble, strongly consider moving it to a domain you control (louisgray.com or otherwise) not gmail.com. Google Apps can host your domain, either free or $50 for the Premier edition.

One downside of Google Apps for Your Domain: its awfully difficult to simultaneously use a gmail.com account and a Google Apps account in other Google properties. For example, iGoogle really only wants one account to be used at a time, even though you might like to have tabs for GMail access to both of your email accounts.

Punchinello · 12 months ago

I had the same problem with AT&T mail -- 15 years with the same address and now $7.95/month. Two months ago I pulled my head out of the sand and made a strategic decision to cut them loose and go with G-Mail. If you wait, it doesn't get any easier.

Punchinello · 12 months ago

I forgot to add that I reevaluated the need to keep all those thousands of messages that I've never looked at for years and just pulled the plug.

I realized that this didn't pose the danger I once thought when a couple of years ago, through a series of computer and backup failures, I lost thousands of old messages.

I didn't feel handicapped, I felt free. Old messages are simply old messages and if they're locally archived they just take up space and slow things down. They don't have nearly the value you think they do. I realize that's a generalization, but I believe that it's a reasonably safe generalization.

Des · 12 months ago

I do not use MobileMe for e-mail, but find it useful for syncing and Back to My Mac.

Check eBay for much better pricing on MobileMe.

victorseo · 12 months ago

Why in the world would you not use louisgray@louisgray.com ? Personally I don't "get" public domain email for business people who own a domain. I have 13 domains and 20 email addresses on those domains. (me@mydomain.com) All are POP on my host (1and1) and all are configured in my email client (MS Outlook) to neatly go into their assigned folders, and if I want one to go to my iphone, or blackberry I use the forward rule in the client, with instructions to continue delivering to my Outlook and continue storing a copy on the host server. My email address will never be at the whim of some provider who cannot decide what their domain name is today. I own it. It is mine. It will always be mine as long as ICANN exists. Incidentally, my primary email is victor at seowins dot com

oskar holm · 12 months ago

i am amazed that anyone stays with .mac for that reason.

i too signed up back in the itools era and i have also stayed with the .mac since. of all the services it provides, i find the email address to be the least significant and the one most easily replaced. (i also have gmail, and a couple of yahoos and my university provided account, plus one from my isp... email addresses are easy to come by. and migrating from one to another is much less of a hassle than you make it seem, though it will take time.)

the reason i stay with .mac is isync, web.mac.com, gallery.mac.com, and idisk. oh, and backup. every year, before paying the $69 annual fee, i have tried to find cheaper alternatives, but any savings in price are eaten up by hassle and inelegance. the fact is that dotmac does a lot in the background that i forget over the year that i am dependent on, like backup and syncing mail.app setting across my work and home computers. i am staying with .mac, at least for one more year.

i may be the only person who misses icards, those were fun, but really idisk and sync

DGentry · 12 months ago

I liked the iCards as well. I used them a number of times.