My Recommended Software Stack for Leaving Gmail and Google Workspace
My Recommended Software Stack for Leaving Gmail and Google Workspace
A lot of people want a simpler, more private, less Google-dependent setup without giving up the tools they rely on. Here’s the stack I use.
The philosophy: pick the best option per category, keep your computer at the center of your data. Favor local over cloud, speed over latency. Unix philosophy — do one thing well.
What this is NOT
A guide for self-hosters. If that’s you, see 1.
Email and Calendar
Use: Fastmail 
— fast, clean, focused on doing email well. Calendar works well enough.
Don’t use: Proton 
— was a customer for years. Expensive, slow, web-only, bloated.
Fastmail’s web app is faster and supports IETF standards, so you can drop the browser for a native desktop app.2
!Important!
Domain Registrar: Porkbun 
Use your own domain. Switching providers becomes trivial — point MX and TXT records somewhere new and nobody notices. Your address is yours, not the vendor’s. Porkbun is cheap, simple, and supports WHOIS privacy.
Password Manager
Use: 1Password 
— pretty good UX, cross-device, just don't use passkeys3. And then in the future if you want to migrate you can export all your TOTP secrets and data. It makes for a pretty good general purpose database too. Has native apps for all platforms.
File Storage
Don’t use: Dropbox 
— billing is a labyrinth, they won’t delete your account, only cancel the next subscription. Prisoners, not customers.
Storage should be local first. For sharing on your network, NFS or SMB/CIFS does the job.4
External Transfers: Filemail 
— simple, end-to-end encrypted, simple. You already have internet and storage; you don’t need the cloud to rent your files back to you.
Video Meetings
Use: Signal 
, Zoom 
Signal is peer-to-peer, end-to-end encrypted, and simple — but only reaches other Signal users. Use it where you can; fall back to Zoom for everyone else.
Writing and Notes
Use: Obsidian 
+ Markdown — portable, durable, not tied to any vendor. Use .docx when compatibility wins.
Native editors beat web ones:
| Linux | macOS | Windows |
|---|---|---|
LibreOffice 
, OnlyOffice 
| Pages, Word 
| Word
, LibreOffice
|
Spreadsheets
Use: Grist 
— treats data like a database, not a grid. Typed columns, Python formulas, lightweight apps on top.
Chat
Use: Signal
, Slack 
Signal for direct messages. Slack for teams. I’d rather recommend a peer-to-peer, channel-based alternative — but unless you like IRC, there isn’t one.5
TL;DR
- Email / Calendar: Fastmail
- Domain: Porkbun
- Passwords: 1Password
- File storage: NFS / SMB locally, Filemail
for external
- Video: Signal
, Zoom
- Writing: Obsidian
, Markdown,
.docx - Spreadsheets: Grist
- Chat: Signal
, Slack
Index
| Logo | Product | Category |
|---|---|---|
|
| Fastmail | Email & Calendar |
|
| Proton | |
|
| Porkbun | Domain Registrar |
|
| 1Password | Password Manager |
|
| Dropbox | File Storage |
|
| Filemail | File Transfer |
|
| Signal | Chat & Video |
|
| Zoom | Video Meetings |
|
| Obsidian | Writing & Notes |
|
| LibreOffice | Office Suite |
|
| OnlyOffice | Office Suite |
|
| Microsoft Word | Word Processor |
|
| Grist | Spreadsheets |
|
| Slack | Chat |
I'm working on some new projects to serve these gaps. See my git repos.
The standards-protocol point is bigger than just native desktop software. It’s about having authority over your own data. That’s my biggest gripe with Proton and Gmail. You should be able to use your data the way you want — whether that’s through a desktop app or a CLI tool. Don’t settle for less, unless a better option simply doesn’t exist yet.
They purposely ruined them by making them unexportable.
microsoft Try To Name Something Challenge
Don’t email me about Matrix. Do email me about IRC.
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