I wonder if there will be a backlash against cloud services more generally? Could we see people return to buying their own servers and hiring network engineers again? Everyone I talk to is so concerned about where their data lives now, I could see it happening.
I moved off Gmail 6-7 months ago - I picked FastMail.
I've considered it but there are a lot more variables I'm concerned about than delivery.
Now, you're no longer tied to one company! When I decided to switch to FastMail, eighteen months later, I repointed the domain, and the vast majority of my email started flowing to the new service automatically! As a side bonus, if your email provider ever decides to ban your account (as Google has been known to do for spurious reasons), you can repoint your domain somewhere else, and you won't have to worry about losing access to all your other accounts and online assets.
You can use an IMAP email client to transfer your old mail, of course, and then I occasionally check my old mail account for stragglers. I chose not to auto-forward it so I'd clearly see what was or wasn't routing through my old Gmail account. I used to check it as often as I check FastMail. Then every couple days. Now I check my old Gmail account every week or two.
Notes from a happy user with no relationship to the company.
Or $50 / year if you want a custom domain.
It includes everything like automatic certs, SPF, DKIM and has imapsync with a simple admin interface built in. Also comes with SOGo for webmail.
It's a self-hosted email system built from pre-existing components (Postfix, Dovecot, etc).
So step 1: find a hosting solution that isn't on spam blacklists.
Only if you can trust the provider not to 'double dip' and sell your data anyway.