I must say, I concur with this person’s assessment of the Goog-exit feeling. I ditched GMail for Fastmail and my own domain last week. I had been putting this off for years because it seemed like such a massive pain in the ass and I was afraid that I would just end up with two email services.
In the end, it took me one evening to update every service that I cared about to use my new address. The rest (mostly e-commerce companies) I’ve been doing as I use them.
I didn't do any auto-responders. Frankly, email is kind of dead for p2p comms with friends so there's not many people to inform. Most difficult part I've encountered was getting my dad, who is old, on board. He keeps emailing me at my GMail.
In the end, it took me one evening to update every service that I cared about to use my new address. The rest (mostly e-commerce companies) I’ve been doing as I use them.