 All of us that are using Google's grandfathered free email for a lot of things. You could certainly use it for a business. But there were many of us who were using it for our personal domains and then earlier or and maybe still are using it for our personal domains. And then earlier this year, we got the note, the note that said your free time has ended. They they ended new subscriptions to this program ten years ago. And for the last ten years, they've just let those of us that had them stay grandfathered in. And it was fantastic. I mean, I'll be perfectly honest. We use it for for backbeat. We use it for we used it for Mac observer. We use it for Mac e-cab and then I use it for my my personal domains, too. And those days, at least to be used freely, are coming to an end. So the question is what to do. And when this first came out, we sort of my advice to myself and I shared this with all of you was a pump the brakes here. They aren't going to be making any of these changes until June or July at the earliest. So let's see how things evolve based on the feedback that they are almost certainly going to get and that they were soliciting up until the beginning of this month from all of us. And so we did. We submitted our feedback and now we know some more details. So Google works, there are two things. Google is offering a free version of this, but it doesn't include email. It just includes like docs and in those sorts of things. So not entirely helpful for some, I'm sure. Not not at all helpful for those of us that need to figure out what to do with our email. The for the for the email, they have announced pricing and it is zero dollars for the first six months. Now, this is zero dollars per user per month. I realize if it's zero dollars for anything, it doesn't matter what you multiply it by, but bear with me because this is where the pricing gets in in in Google's email set up, you can have users which have separate individual accounts that they log into. I map addresses, storage, all of that good stuff with the free one you have 15 gigs of storage per account. And then you have groups which are effectively forwards. Right. You know, so for a quite some time, our feedback at MacGeekGab.com was just a group that went to two of us and then the three of us. The groups got a little weird with forwarding and some things weren't getting through. So we then made those actual accounts and then things, you know, and then just did some forwards from there. So you could look at this and sort of try to narrow down the number of actual accounts you need. And then forward into those from other things, which might be able to save you because after the first six months, it is what Google is calling half price. And that is six dollars per user per month. That still gets pretty expensive, right? Because, you know, you're looking at what, seventy two bucks a year for, you know, per user. There are other email services. And we'll talk about some of them in a minute here that are certainly less expensive than that. But the the lack of friction of just being able to say, oh, sure, yeah, seventy two bucks a year per person. Great, that like problem solved isn't a bad path for some. Right. And and certainly we've we've been we've been given a six month at least six month reprieve. Looking through the details of this, Pete, because I know you you're going through this, too. All of the time frames that they listed were were qualified with an at least. So it's zero dollars, USD for at least six months in the terms. And then it is half price, six dollars a user a month for at least the next twelve months. So they they are trying to find a path here where they can offer something that's actually competitive, which at the moment, I'm not convinced they're they're hitting. You do get two terabytes of cloud storage per user now with that seventy two bucks a year. So that's not a bad thing. Like you could use hyper backup, I think hyper backup on your Synology to backup to a Google Drive. And if you got two terabytes out there like this, now could become like, wait a minute, if I use my storage and all of this wisely, then maybe there is a cost savings by canceling something else. You know, if you're paying, you know, something like back plays or somebody one terabyte. OK, well, maybe, you know, you turn that off and you pay this and you get your email and your storage and you use, you know, ARC ARQ from from Haystack software on your Mac to do your backups to Google Drive, which I think it'll do. Like, like there's there's a path here where this makes a lot of sense. And I think Google is trying to make that argument for us to us. Who knows, I don't know. Yeah, it's still I guess I'm a I'm a cheap pilot. So I'm going to tell you that right up front. I don't mind the seventy two bucks a year for myself and two terabytes is great. But for instance, my wife, I have her on a four gigabyte a month phone plan. She might use half of that when she's really grinding out that data. So sure, who terabytes for her? She, you know, yeah, she's never going to use it in the mail and all that. So I wish, you know, my curiosity goes to, you know, what do we do as users like me? Really that much of a cost center to them? We're not. That's the thing like this. I get that they need to they need to solve this this free. They need to monetize it. They, you know, they've been carrying us for a very long time. And my my guess is through this, they are looking potentially for a few things. One is to just weed out the cheapskates, right? And and and also find but also find the businesses that happened to get in on this when it was free and didn't need more than free and say, OK, this is no longer free. Is it worth it for your business to pay seventy two bucks per, you know, per user, per employee, per month or whatever. Or per year, sorry, not per month. And and maybe, you know, maybe there's a maybe there's like, I think they're they need to learn and they can't learn it with the current scenario. So, you know, I get it. There's a couple that we have talked about on this show that might work and that came from you, our listeners. The first is PO box, couple of replacements or potential replacements. The first is PO box dot com. So a poll box. Yeah, exactly from the poll box. And and where it gets interesting is, you know, you can pay 50 bucks a year and you get an actual mailbox and forwarding. You can forward up to five different destinations using your own domain. You get outgoing SMTP access, which is super important because you're going to want to be able to see, you know, you're going to want to be able to send email from your custom domain. Right. But this is your mailbox. You can send and receive here. You get your vacation auto replies, filters, web mail, I map and pop access and 50 gigs of storage, which for email is is a lot. It's not two terabytes, though, so twenty two dollars a year more. Right. But so that's 50 bucks a year. If we go to the cheapest pricing for PO box and there is a middle ground, but for just twenty dollars a year, you get forwarding only and you can forward up to five destinations, but you can use your own domain and you still get outgoing SMTP access. So there is a world where you go sign up for a free Gmail account, not a Gmail account with your custom domain, but just a free Gmail account. You get your 15 gigs. You use PO box to be the front door that your email comes to for your, you know, me at my domain dot com behind the scenes that forwards to your Gmail. And then you can send from a free Gmail account through your custom domain if that custom domain has an SMTP server. And guess what PO box offers an SMTP server. Right. So for 20 bucks a year per user, you could do this. With PO box dot com. So there is that path. It's a little geeky, right? You've got to, you know, set things up and link all the things together and get the thigh bone connected to the head bone and whatever is in between. But it's doable and it saves you some money. That's path number one. And I think probably the one of the better paths. Then there's forward email dot net. I want to say, yeah, yeah, yeah. That also and these all come from you. I didn't find any of these. These are these are all from you folks and I've collected them as you've sent them in. The pricing for that is free or you get enhanced protection for three bucks a month or thirty six thirty six dollars a year. But you do get custom domains, unlimited email addresses, unlimited disposable email addresses. I don't know that they offer an SMTP server. I think it's just inbound forwarding, but they might offer SMTP. I don't see SMTP on their FAQ on on that page. Let's look at the FAQ. How to send mail as using Gmail. Yeah. All right. So evidently, there is a path to using this. There may be a path for for them to use SMTP with with forward email. So maybe that's maybe that's the truly free option. So the hard part I see with both of those save is saving what you have now already in the Google domains. That's a fair question. So it's it's not as bad as you would think there are and and I will offer the third option is I I'm super tempted to do this. But I need you guys to continue to talk me off the ledge, please. Is your own server, man. Correct. I while Synology's new like the new mail server, the new version of Synology mail server that's coming with DSM 71 is like it is it literally has been built for people in this scenario. It will auto slurp in all of your mail and and essentially replicate your Gmail config locally and data locally. I haven't tried it. So I am sure that I'm sure it's not quite as simple as I'm saying. But it is built to do this. And then you could just run your own mail server. I'm please talk me off the ledge on this, guys. I'm almost certainly going to wind up being stupid and doing it with at least one of my, you know, less important domains. Because that way, at least we can talk about it on the show. So what about your spam filter? Well, you can Synology doing that for you. It's your Synology doing your spam filtering for you. OK. But I bet you're in now. You're inviting the world to your doorstep. And some ISPs will not let you do this block inbound access on that. I think it's solid. Yeah, I think Comcast Xfinity does block it. I most cable companies block it. I believe Consolidated, which is the fiber provider I use. They don't block anything. They don't they truly don't care. They're just like, here's a connection. We don't know how much data you're using. Enjoy, you know, which is awesome. Yeah, it's great. So, but if you don't have and like also to be fair, like I'm using fast mail with my my my personal, well, I'd say it's my personal domain. It's really not everything that I do comes into fast mail. And so I am using fast mail as my primary. And fast mail's pricing is five bucks a month. So, you know, right in in that same realm, when I moved from Gmail to fast mail a few years ago, I gave them my Gmail credentials for that account and went to sleep. And when I woke up, all my mail was over. So they also have the importer. So bear that in mind that some of these and P.O. Bucks might have that, too. I have been super happy with with fast mail, by the way. And so it, you know, at five bucks a month, 60 bucks a year, maybe, you know, it's another right. That is 60 bucks a year from doing the math, right? So yeah, but it looks like they have annual prices, too, which may be cheaper. Correct. I'm guessing. Oh, that's right. You're absolutely right. Yeah, it's 50 bucks a year if you pay annually. So there you go. Nice catch, Pete. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So here's a little trick that I use. Yahoo email. They give you a terabyte of storage. So what I do and I just check my account and I'm using like one percent of it, but what I do is I'll take the mail that comes into my inbox and then I'll have rules and then I put them over on Yahoo because they give me a terabyte of space rather than storing it in iCloud or Google. Interesting. But you can't you can't do custom domains with Yahoo. So this would be yet another. This would be like your forward destination, right? Yes. OK, OK. Or I use rules to, yeah, reroute my mail. Yeah, it was just forwarded over. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Boy, it's been more than 25 years, but I think Yahoo may offer something where you can use your own domain. I don't remember. Yeah, Yahoo Mail, Custom Domain, right? I mean, why not? How to let's see, add free email and a whole lot. You are more with Yahoo Mail plus five bucks a month. And you get is there a custom domain here? I don't see it. Yeah, I had to tell customization. I don't know about your own domain. Oh, yeah, I said. Oh, yeah. Don't know domain blocking, oh, they might have it. It might like it might be here. I'm just not finding it as work as I'm searching while we're talking here. But yeah, interesting. All right, that's good to know. Huh, interesting, interesting, interesting. But as far as let's say you go with one of one service for whatever reason, doesn't have the ability to import mail. It's really not the most terrible thing. It depends on how many mailboxes you have, but you can connect mail like mail on your Mac to both IMAP servers and then take the you know, select all in the inbox from old server and move it or copy it. I would say don't don't move. There's no reason to cause deletes to happen. You know, but copy that to the new server and then do the same with your sent box. If you're only using one archive box, then your life starts to get really easy because you only have three or four mailboxes with which to do this. If you're using lots of different things, well, you might want to, you know, but if you're coming from Gmail, even if you use multiple boxes, it really is just one archive box, right? Like Gmail, IMAP boxes are just filters. So everything theoretically would be an all mail or archive. So there's probably a way of doing this that's not too terrible coming from Gmail.