The goal is continuity, not a trophy migration
This guide is for someone who is done with a Gmail address as the centre of their personal or sole‑trader life, not for a board-level debate about the ethics of ad-supported mail. The outcome you want is simple: the same set of messages in a new home, contacts that still autocomplete, a calendar you can see on your phone, and a sensible period when nothing disappears into the void because DNS was cached for longer than you expected. The steps below apply whether you are moving to Proton Mail, Fastmail, a Kolab-style host, or a domain you control on a small Irish or UK provider.
Copy before you cut over
The rule that has saved more evenings than any brand name is: IMAP to IMAP copy first, and only then change the MX records. Modern clients such as Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or a purpose-built migration tool can pull a full mailbox over IMAP into a new account if the new provider already exists and is empty. If you are creating a new mailbox at the same address with a new provider, you cannot be clever with MX until you are ready for mail to land in the new place. For a @gmail.com address, the reality is: you are not moving the address. You are moving data to a new address, or you are buying a custom domain and then forwarding or migrating. Be honest about that up front, or the project becomes sour.
When you have your own domain, life is simpler
If you already have @yourbusiness.ie on Google Workspace, the professional move is: add the destination domain or mail hosting to your new provider, import mail with IMAP, then point MX to the new host at a time you can watch logs. The typical values go from a page your new host provides; never retype MX from memory. A single typo in priority or host name bounces every invoice for 48 hours. For .ie and .uk domains, registrars such as the usual Irish and UK shops will edit DNS within minutes, but the old TTL and caching resolvers along Vodafone or Eir mobile networks can still make “propagation” a fuzzy word.
Proton, Fastmail, and the “I want everything local” path
Proton makes sense when encryption at rest, jurisdiction, and a Swiss operating story matter to you. The client story on mobile is good but not identical to the Google stack; plan time to learn the bridge tools if you need desktop integration with a legacy that expects plain IMAP from anything. Fastmail is often chosen when speed, sieve rules, and calm support matter more than zero-knowledge than marketing. For KDE-friendly or self-hosted readers, a Dovecot+Rspamd stack on a Hetzner or Vultr €5–20 instance is not mad for a technologist; it is a maintenance contract with yourself, not a one-click toy.
Contacts: export now, not “after”
From Google, export vCard and CSV before you nuke the old profile. In practice, the contacts that “stick” in Android and iOS are the ones the OS is actually reading from, which can be “Google” in Settings even when you also use iCloud for other things. After migration, set the default account for new contacts in each handset so you are not back to a split-brain in six months. For iOS, check Default Account under Contacts; for Android, the UI varies by skin but the concept is the same: one primary store.
Calendars: read-only overlap beats double booking
CalDAV exports from Google Calendar to Fastmail or a Nextcloud at home work if you are disciplined about which calendar is the “source of truth” for invites. A safe pattern for a one-person firm is: import the next three months, read-only the old as an archive, and commit to new invites only on the new system once MX for mail is moved. If you are sharing calendars with a partner, agree where reminders live so nobody relies on a calendar you have just unlinked.
IMAP size and throttling: why “overnight” is a lie
A fifteen-year account can be tens of gigabytes. IMAP bulk fetch can be throttled by the source, and Wi‑Fi that drops during a long copy will not always resume cleanly. Start with a laptop on Ethernet, a client that can log errors, and a first pass of Inbox and Sent before All Mail if the UI labels matter less than speed. A one-weekend project with 300 GB is not a weekend. Plan 1–2 weeks of background sync and verify message counts by folder.
MX, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, without turning this into a whitepaper
SPF and DKIM tell others your mail is forged with less wiggle room. DMARC gives you a mailbox where providers send failure reports, which is a mixed blessing for a tiny account but a hygiene win if you are on a custom domain. Your new host will show three strings to add as TXT; add them, wait for the “verify” tick, then shift MX. If you are moving from Google Workspace, remember that the Gmail routing rules you set years ago to forward things to a printer or a long-dead contractor will still be there, quietly surprising you.
A realistic week-by-week plan
- Day 0–1: Export contacts and calendar, snapshot important labels as folders if the client can translate them.
- Day 2–4: IMAP copy to the destination; spot-check a random 2019 and yesterday message.
- Day 5: DNS changes in a low-traffic window, increase on SPF if you are leaving old forwards in place; ask your new provider’s docs.
- Day 6–7: Resend a test inbound from a Gmail friend and an Eir address; watch the header to confirm the path. Send out to a Vodafone test SIM if you are paranoid about mobile path.
Money in rough numbers, not a quote
Proton and Fastmail personal plans are in the €40–80/year class before optional domains and seats. A .ie domain is often a low two‑figure annual fee at an Irish registrar; .com and .uk vary with promos. Workshop time with an engineer to verify a migration is usually a few hours of labour in cities like Cork or Bristol if you pay a human rather than a checklist.
If this is too much hassle, we can do it for you — get a quote.