Last Thursday at 11pm, Ajie sent a screenshot and I panicked

Last Thursday at 11pm, Ajie dropped a screenshot in WeChat: "Bro, my Google account got flagged. Client meeting tomorrow — what do I do?" I clicked through the file he sent. Three years of client contracts, quotes, chat logs — all sitting there. My palms went cold. I'm no different. All my eggs in someone else's basket.

What this guy switched to — I copied his checklist

lecaro is a French indie developer who replaced the entire Google stack: ProtonMail for email, Proton Drive for cloud storage, Immich for photos, Nextcloud for docs, Organic Maps for maps, Kagi for search. Proton's edge is end-to-end encryption — even the provider can't see what's stored. That matters a lot if you handle client data. I made this exact mistake once: dumped client ID photos straight into Google Drive thinking "cloud = safe." It wasn't safe. It was just someone else's cloud.

Replication cost — I did the math for you

Money: ProtonMail's free tier (1GB) is enough to start for a small team; paid plan runs about $4/month; Kagi around $5/month; Immich self-hosting needs an old computer or a small VPS at a few bucks a month.
Time: migrating old emails + contacts takes 1-2 weekends; retraining your search habit takes 2-3 weeks.
Technical barrier: Proton works exactly like Gmail, all mouse-driven; Immich self-hosting needs a little command-line, or one friend who knows their stuff for an hour.
First step: head to proton.me, grab a free email, migrate the least important account first as a test run. Don't touch your main email on day one.

What to do at each stage — my take

If you're just starting: don't overhaul everything. Just protect the email tied to your bank card and ID with a free ProtonMail. The rest can wait.
If you have 1-2 clients: move contracts, ID copies, anything sensitive out of Google Drive to Proton Drive or a local encrypted disk. One week, doable.
If you're scaling: consider self-hosting Immich for all client assets (lightweight on hardware), and Kagi for ad-free research.

One last thing: this isn't for everyone. If you only use Google for YouTube and a personal diary, you're fine. But the moment you hold someone else's private data, migration is just a matter of time. Tonight you could go register a free email and start.