How to Change Your Email Address

There are many reasons why you may want to move to a different email service provider. For example, you may be unsatisfied with your current email service, your provider may be implementing fees for a previously-free email service, or your name may have changed since you created your email address. This moneyland.ch guide tells you what to consider when changing your email address.

How should I go about changing my email address?

Shutting down your old email address completely right from the start is not a good move. Instead, you should keep your old email address active for some time after you activate the new address. This ensures that you continue to receive mail sent to your old email address.

• Choose your new email address carefully: An address that is easy to remember is generally a good choice. Many people choose to use their first and last names, separated by a period. The part of the address that comes after the at symbol is determined by your email service provider.
• Compare email offers: Take time to compare service providers and individual offers. Look at how much storage space is included, and whether or not the offer includes any additional services. Often, email addresses are bundled with other services like cloud-based storage.
• Back up your existing mail: Make backups of mail on your old email service to avoid losing it. Ideally, you should keep your backups on an external hard drive or on cloud-based storage.
• Create your new email address: The next step is to create a new email address with a new service provider. Copy your existing mail to your new email service from your backups. Set up your new email service to automatically import all mail that is sent to your old email address.
• Update your contact information: Add your new email address to your contact information at relevant service providers. Examples include:
  • Social networks like Facebook and X.
  • Online stores like Digitec Galaxus, Brack.ch, Amazon, or Zalando.
  • Your health insurance provider, other insurance providers, telecom service providers, credit card issuers, public transportation, etc.
  • Your bank.
  • Payment services (mobile payments, for example).
  • Streaming services (Netflix, Disney Plus, or Spotify, for example).

Ideally, you should use a different secure password for each account.

• Keep your old email address: Keeping your old email account open is beneficial. That way you can continue receiving mail that is sent to your old email address. You can then inform anyone who writes you at your old address that you have a new email address, and update your contact information for subscriptions and online accounts. Doing this also prevents fraudulent parties from misusing your old email address.

What should you do if your service provider begins charging for a previously-free email account?

In 2024, Swisscom moved numerous customers from email accounts that had been offered free of charge over to paid email subscriptions. Affected customers can continue using their existing email addresses without paying fees, but this requires setting up a new email account with a free email service provider and automatically transferring mail to your new address.

That way, the very limited storage space of Swisscom’s free E-Mail Light service will be sufficient, so you will not have to use one of the paid plans.

Which Swiss email service providers are the most popular?

According to 2023 data, Alphabet’s Gmail (Google Mail) is, by far, the most popular email service in Switzerland, with a 30.7-percent share of the private market. It is followed by GMX (17.3 percent), Swisscom’s Bluewin (17 percent), and Microsoft’s Outlook email service (15.3 percent). Other well-known service providers like Apple’s iCloud (3.4 percent), Sunrise (3.2 percent), and Yahoo (2.5 percent) have much smaller market shares.

What do I get with free email offers?

There are numerous free email service offers around the world. The overview in Table 1 lists free offers from Swiss email service providers and the most popular foreign email providers.

Table 1: Overview of free email offers

How much do paid email services for private individuals cost?

Because offers vary broadly between service providers and email is often just part of a larger service package, there are major differences in pricing. The cheapest paid email service offers costs two francs per month or 20 francs per year.

Paid email services generally include much more storage space, and often also give you multiple email addresses and many supplementary features.

Table 2 shows the number of email addresses and the amount of storage that are included in the price.

Table 2: Overview of paid email services

Which other services do I get with paid email offers?

Each offer has its own bundled services and features. Here, you can find some of the key supplementary features that come with different offers:

• Proton
  • Supplemental mail aliases.
  • Dark web monitoring.
  • Support for one or three personal domains.
  • Up to 25 or 50 calendars, cloud storage space with an editor for online documents, a VPN service, and a password manager.
• GMX
  • 7 or 12 gigabytes of cloud storage.
  • Email addresses with seven supplementary email suffixes or 20 supplementary fun email suffixes.
• Google One
  • More storage space.
  • Storage space is shared by email, cloud-based services, and other Google services.
• Microsoft
  • Advertisement-free.
  • Various computer programs like Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Teams (does not apply to Microsoft 365 Basic).
  • 100 MB, 1 TB or 6 x 1 TB cloud-based storage space.
• Yahoo
  • Advertisement-free
  • Disposable email addresses.

How much storage space do I need for email?

This is an important point to consider when changing email service providers.

If you use an email service on which the mail remains online, then you need more storage space – compared to if your mail is downloaded to an email program and deleted from the server.

In that case, you should be careful to choose an offer with enough storage space. Between 5 and 15 gigabytes is generally sufficient for most people. When choosing a service provider, it is also good to check how much you would have to pay for extra storage space in case you eventually need it in the future.

The rules that apply to storage space vary between service providers. Some limit the amount of space available for mail for each email address individually. Others have a limit for all email addresses combined, or even for all of their online services combined.

While service providers let me create my own email domains?

Some service providers let you create your domain for your email address. For example, a person with the name Average Joe may want to create a personalized @averagejoe.ch email domain. This is only possible though, if the domain has not already been claimed by somebody else. If it is, you will have to try a different one like @joe.ch or @averagejoe.swiss.  

One advantage of having your own domain is that you can manage multiple email addresses via your email hosting service’s web portal using a single account. Additionally, the email address is personalized so that the email service provider you use is hidden from recipients.

If you choose to use these solutions, then opting for a domain hosting service is a good idea. Many service providers include an unlimited number of email addresses in their domain hosting offers, although are predefined limits for storage space. You should count on paying around 150 francs per year for domain hosting, plus the cost of the domain itself (fees start at several francs per year depending on the top-level domain and the service provider).

Some domain hosting service providers also give you the option of paying for each email address individually. In that case too, you pay separate fees for the domain itself. If you only need one or several email addresses, offers with per-address pricing can be cheaper than offers with a flat fee for a whole domain.

Apart from domain hosting service providers, there are also email service providers that let you use your own domain for email addresses.

Are there any other differences between email service offers?

In addition to the price, storage space, and features, there are several other differences between service providers that may be important to you:

• Privacy: Some email service providers like Gmail from Google scan your mail and use the information for targeted advertising. Other service providers like Infomaniak and Proton stress that they do not engage in this practice.
• Data protection: Service providers in the EU are subject to the strict European Union data protection laws. Swiss service providers are subject to the Swiss data protection law. Service providers from other jurisdictions – US tech giant Google, for example – are subject to the laws of those jurisdictions, which may be less strict.
• The location of Internet servers: Some service providers clearly tell customers which countries the computers that host their email servers are located in. Others do not.

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