Migrating from Gmail to Purelymail

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I've recently decided to DeGoogle my life. To be clear, I don't think I'll ever be able to completely succeed, but I think I can cut out a good chunk of it without too much effort. Gmail is an easy target for me since I don't send a ton of email and mostly just use my email address as my primary online identity. And therein lies the problem—I don't think that's so great. That, and the whole not being a fan of the convert-attention-into-money business model.

Enter Purelymail. Yes, I looked at a few other providers...

Purelymail is just dead simple and I love that. It lets me use my own domain and then some (literally, I can use as many domains as I want). It lets me have as many users as I want. It lets me store as much email as I want. And it's only $10/year. Yes, that price would go up if it ended up costing more than $10/year to operate my account, but that's not going to happen—I hate keeping email around.

It is operated by only one person, but they seem to subscribe to the Choose boring technology philosophy, so if they get hit by a bus (1) the service will keep running and (2) someone else could presumably come in and operate it before it falls over. And if not, they've written a nice import/export tool to get data out relatively quickly. And if that doesn't work, oh well, it's probably not a great idea to use email as your repository of important information.

Migration Process

But you probably give zero shits about all this and just want some instructions, so here it goes, with the following assumptions:

Here's the high-level process:

  1. Sign up for Purelymail
  2. Get a Google app password
  3. Import existing Gmail messages into Purelymail
  4. Setup your domain to point to Purelymail
  5. Update your existing Purelymail user to use your domain
  6. Forward Gmail to Purelymail
  7. Setup the Purelymail web client to be able to send emails from Gmail

Sign up for Purelymail

You can do that here. For now, just sign up using an @purelymail.com domain. We'll change that to yours in a few steps. Also, just sign up for the free trial. It's really just $0.50 worth of credits to try the service. No limitations. It's very simple to add your payment info later.

Get a Google app password

We're going to need this to import your existing messages and to configure the Purelymail web client to be able to send from Gmail.

Instructions
  1. Navigate to Google's page for generating app passwords.
  2. Sign-in to your Google account.
  3. Give the app password a descriptive name (like "Purelymail").
  4. Click Create.
  5. You'll be presented with your new app password. Copy it and save it somewhere (I added mine as a secure note in my "Purelymail" entry in my password manager). You can delete this later if you want.

Import existing Gmail messages into Purelymail

To do this you'll need to run the import tool using the app password you just generated. This might take some time depending on how many messages you have.

Instructions
  1. Sign-in to your Purelymail account here if you aren't already.
  2. Navigate to Tools → Mail import/export tool.
  3. Click the Start new import/export button.
    1. Select Import mail into a Purelymail account.
    2. For Source select "IMAP account".
      • Email address: Enter your Gmail address.
      • Password: Enter the app password you just generated.
      • Click the Autodetect button. imap.gmail.com:993 should show up in the Server/Port field.
    3. For Destination select "Purelymail user".
      • Select the user you created when signing up.
    4. Click Next.
    5. Configure your folder mapping preferences and click Start.

Setup your domain to point to Purelymail

Before moving forward, it's best to configure Purelymail to use your domain. This is a relatively straightforward process if you're familiar with adding DNS records to your domain.

Instructions
  1. Sign-in to your Purelymail account here if you aren't already.
  2. Navigate to Domains.
  3. Click Add new domain.
  4. Enter the name of your domain (yourdomain.com) in the Name field.
  5. Add the necessary DNS records using your DNS provider (MX, SPF, Ownership proof, DKIM, and DMARC records).
  6. Validate your DNS setup and configure your domain settings.

Update your existing Purelymail user to use your domain

Now that you've setup your domain, you can update your Purelymail user to use it instead of @purelymail.com.

Instructions
  1. Sign-in to your Purelymail account here if you aren't already.
  2. Navigate to Users.
  3. Click on your existing user with a Purelymail domain.
  4. Update the username and domain, and consider setting up 2FA.
  5. Save your changes.

Forward Gmail to Purelymail

Just because your Gmail messages have been imported into Purelymail doesn't mean new messages will end up there. We need to setup Gmail to forward those to your new email address.

Instructions
  1. Configure Gmail forwarding to your new Purelymail address.
  2. Verify the forwarding setup.
  3. Choose what Gmail should do with messages after forwarding.

Setup the Purelymail web client to be able to send emails from Gmail

Even if you no longer plan on using your Gmail address, it's going to take time to fully transition to your new one. So it's probably a good idea to be able to send email with it in a pinch without having to navigate to Gmail.

Instructions
  1. Configure a new identity in the Purelymail web client.
  2. Set up SMTP settings to use Gmail's servers with your app password.

Next steps

And that's pretty much it. You should now be able to use Purelymail with an online identity you fully own and still access Gmail if needed. That said, there's plenty of things I didn't cover. Here are some you could do next:

Was this helpful? Is there an error? Interested in hearing more about the process or next steps? Email me and I'll do my best to help you out!