When I graduated university, they gave me, and others, graduate email addresses with the domain @institution.edu. The catch is, it’s entirely based within Gmail, despite having a unique domain. I want to keep using this address, as it’s tied heavily to my professional career, but I’m not sure how to decouple it from gmail ecosystem. Would using a client such as emClient be sufficient in breaking Google’s monopoly?
If you have another personal email address, you can set up automatic forwarding. Google will still be able to read your emails you receive since it all goes into Gmail server, but they will be forwarded to your non-Google email address, and you can use any client for your personal email.