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?
It’ll be painful, but I recommend moving away from that .edu address. Universities are notorious for causing headaches for grads trying to access their .edu addresses in the long run. Register your own domain, create an email under that domain, then use whatever email client you choose.
Worked in UK universities as an Enterprise Architect. Can confirm you can’t rely on those email addresses. It is a gift most Unis provide to graduates, but they’re not obligated to maintain it, or fix it when it goes wrong.
As per above, register your own domain name (I use my own full name .co.uk). This allows me to have lots of email addresses for (shopping@ work@ games@ amazon@ etc etc). Also, if the email host gets too expensive, does something you don’t like, or just cuts you off, you can point your domain name to another host and pick up from there. Obviously it is a good idea to keep a local backup of your emails (thunderbird or outlook) just in case.