How to move from Gmail to mello

Before you start

• A mello address. mello is invite only for now: request an invite, and sign in once at mail.mello.mx.
• A computer with Thunderbird or Apple Mail. They copy mail from one account to another. Both are free, and you can remove the accounts once you’re done.
• Time. Forwarding takes five minutes. Copying mail takes from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on how much you have.

Forward your new mail

First, have Gmail send everything that arrives on to mello. People can keep writing to your old address while you move.

1. In Gmail, open the gear menu, then See all settings.
2. Open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and choose Add a forwarding address.
3. Enter your mello address. Google sends a confirmation code there: open it in mello and enter the code in Gmail.
4. Choose Forward a copy of incoming mail to your mello address, choose what Gmail does with its own copy (keep Gmail’s copy in the Inbox is the safest), and save.

Gmail forwards only new mail, and not what its spam filter catches. Look in Gmail’s Spam folder now and then until you’ve moved over.

Copy your old mail

The simplest way is to add both accounts to the same mail app, then drag your folders from one to the other. The app copies the messages, read or unread, with their dates and attachments.

1. In Thunderbird or Apple Mail, add your Gmail account. Both sign in with Google directly, so you don’t need an app password.
2. Add your mello account: your name, your mello address and your password. Both apps find mello’s settings on their own. If one asks, they are below.
3. Wait for Gmail’s folders to load. Then select the messages of a folder, for example the Inbox, and drag them to the same folder in your mello account. Do the same with Sent Mail to mello’s Sent.
4. For each label you want to keep, create a folder with the same name in mello, and drag its messages there.

The same settings are in the mello webmail, under Settings → Accesses.

Labels, archived mail and big mailboxes

• Labels become folders. In a mail app, each Gmail label shows as a folder, and a message with two labels shows in both. Copy one label after the other, and a message with two labels is copied twice.
• Archived mail is in All Mail. Mail you archived in Gmail has no label left, so it is only in [Gmail] → All Mail. All Mail also holds everything else, so copy it last, into a folder of its own such as Archive, if you want your archive too.
• Large mailboxes take time. Gmail limits how much a mail app can download each day. If the copy stops on a very large mailbox, start it again the next day: the app picks up where it left off.

Or start from a Google Takeout file

If you’d rather download everything at once, Google Takeout makes one file of your whole mailbox.

1. Go to takeout.google.com, choose Deselect all, then select only Mail, and create the export.
2. Google sends you a link when it’s ready, from a few minutes to a day later. The download holds an .mbox file.
3. In Apple Mail, choose File → Import Mailboxes, then Files in mbox format, and pick the file. In Thunderbird, the ImportExportTools NG add-on does the same.
4. The imported mail appears on your computer: drag it to your mello account, as above.

Takeout puts every message in one file, labels and all, so you sort it into folders afterwards.

Bring your contacts

1. Go to contacts.google.com and choose Export in the menu on the left.
2. Choose which contacts (all of them, or a label), then vCard (for iOS Contacts), and export. You get a .vcf file.
3. In the mello webmail, open Contacts, choose Import, and pick the file.

A file can hold up to 5,000 contacts and be up to 5 MB. Contacts with an email address already in your mello contacts are skipped, so importing the same file twice does no harm.

mello also adds the people you write to on its own, so your address book fills in as you go.

Bring your calendar

Google exports your calendars as .ics files. The mello webmail can’t open these yet, so you import them through a calendar app that has your mello account. It takes a minute.

1. In Google Calendar, open the gear menu, then Settings → Import & export, and choose Export. You get a ZIP file with one .ics file per calendar: unzip it.
2. Add your mello account to a calendar app:

• On a Mac: open System Settings → Internet Accounts → Add Account → Add Other Account, choose CalDAV account, then enter your mello address, your password and the server mail.mello.mx. Setting up an iPhone or Mac has the details.
• In Thunderbird: add a new calendar On the Network, with your mello address and the location https://mail.mello.mx/.

3. Import the file: in Apple Calendar, File → Import; in Thunderbird, Tools → Import → Calendar. Choose your mello calendar when asked.

The events show in mello’s calendar right away, and on every device you’ve set up. Invitations you’ve already answered keep their guests, but other people’s calendars don’t learn your new address: they still send updates to Gmail, which forwards them.

Give out your new address

Forwarding catches your mail for now. Over the next weeks, move what matters to your mello address:

• The people you write to most. A short note does it, or simply reply from mello: your new address goes with every message.
• Accounts that sign you in by email: your bank, your phone company, the shops you use, work tools. Change the address in each one’s settings. Start with those that send password resets.
• Newsletters you want to keep. Subscribe again with your new address. For sign-ups you don’t want tied to your real address, use a private address.

A tip: when a forwarded message arrives in mello, its To line still shows your Gmail address. Each one is a reminder of a sender still to update.

Afterwards

Keep forwarding on for a few months: mail still trickles in to old addresses long after you move. When Gmail has gone quiet, you can turn forwarding off, or close the account if you like. Your Google account itself (and YouTube, Drive or Android) doesn’t need Gmail to keep working.

You can leave mello as easily: Settings → General → Download all my data gives you every message as mbox, your calendars as .ics and your contacts as .vcf, the same formats you just imported.