What is my best option for managing multiple Gmail accounts?
September 30, 2020 12:14 PM Subscribe
My main email address is from a personally owned domain (e.g. bove@lastnamefamily.com) hosted by Google, and I use Gmail to run that email address. I use that same account for my work email (using IMAP). I am running out of space on this account.
However, in the last year or so my employer started offering Gmail accounts with unlimited Drive space. I am trying to decide if I should make that account my main account. Can I use Gmail to check another Gmail account?
I can't tell if it would be better to pay for extra storage space with my personal account, or to switch over to my work hosted Gmail account. I am not even sure how to make the decision.
Best answer: Ditto. Your employer probably has a policy prohibiting that, or they should. And, the employer has unlimited access to all the content in that kind of company account, so they could read all your private email. Plus, if you were to be terminated, you'd lose access and they might just delete it all. Absolutely keep these accounts separate. Pay for the extra storage or do some serious deleting. (Me, I'd just pay for the extra storage.)
posted by beagle at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by beagle at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2020 [1 favorite]
I just keep mine separate and I have two windows open all the time. My personal email gets a bunch of cruft anyway that I would never want junking up my work email -- I use them so differently - I skim my personal email for relevant messages I need to actually read, and bin or ignore the rest, while my work email, virtually every one needs to be read. I would just use differnt accounts and not try to mix things together.
posted by Medieval Maven at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by Medieval Maven at 12:29 PM on September 30, 2020 [2 favorites]
Best answer: I concur with yeahlikethat and beagle. It might be worth figuring out what is taking up space in your Gmail account, maybe it's old work powerpoint decks or something that are easily deleted or moved to your work Google Drive. However I also run multiple Gmail accounts and will answer those other questions.
- you can forward all of your Gmail from one address to another pretty easily. It's also fairly straightforward to set up a filter so that all of your email from another account would go to a certain folder or receive a certain tag.
- Gmail has a multiple inboxes option that I haven't explored much but might also work okay.
posted by jessamyn at 12:30 PM on September 30, 2020
- you can forward all of your Gmail from one address to another pretty easily. It's also fairly straightforward to set up a filter so that all of your email from another account would go to a certain folder or receive a certain tag.
- Gmail has a multiple inboxes option that I haven't explored much but might also work okay.
posted by jessamyn at 12:30 PM on September 30, 2020
Response by poster: I have cleaned out my email a couple of times when I've gotten close to the storage limit. It gets full because the storage is shared across Gmail, Drive, etc. I am a university professor and I receive and send all of my work stuff through this same account so I have lots of powerpoints, word documents, and datasets that are in my old emails.
But I think you are all probably right that I should just pay for storage. I pay for Dropbox storage without thinking much about it. It is likely better not to have my employer controlling my email account.
posted by bove at 12:35 PM on September 30, 2020
But I think you are all probably right that I should just pay for storage. I pay for Dropbox storage without thinking much about it. It is likely better not to have my employer controlling my email account.
posted by bove at 12:35 PM on September 30, 2020
There are a number of legal reasons for keeping your personal and work emails separate, without going into all the details, some of them just protect the employer but some of them do also protect you.
posted by Lanark at 12:46 PM on September 30, 2020
posted by Lanark at 12:46 PM on September 30, 2020
I recently tried to combine my "online" (screen name @ gmail.com) with my personal (realname@gmail.com) accounts so I could use the one to check both.
Google lets you set it up in multiple ways, but I started loosing emails, they would show up in one account in one folder, but the other account in a different folder. Responding to emails was tricky because I had to take time each time to double check which address it was sent to, and which address I was using to respond.
In the end, I decided it was not worth it. I use the google account switcher to click between the two accounts now.
posted by rebent at 2:10 PM on September 30, 2020
Google lets you set it up in multiple ways, but I started loosing emails, they would show up in one account in one folder, but the other account in a different folder. Responding to emails was tricky because I had to take time each time to double check which address it was sent to, and which address I was using to respond.
In the end, I decided it was not worth it. I use the google account switcher to click between the two accounts now.
posted by rebent at 2:10 PM on September 30, 2020
I'll echo the advice above to not intermingle the two. I have my own business and domain and I have work email using Gmail for my *work* stuff on that. Under that account, I can set up sub accounts for any of my employees. I caution them not to use the GDrive for personal things because, if and when they leave my employ, I can just change their password and go in and retrieve their documents, check their email for any client issues that still need to be resolved and set up an auto-responder that they are no long at that email address. I would assume that your employer would claim similar ownership of any work product stored under the work Google Account.
I still use a personal gmail account for everything else including the endless amounts of spam and advertising I get there. And I still have two other accounts that are also gmail accounts for different organizations. I use the account switcher tool and often have multiple accounts open at any one time. It's fairly easy to keep them separated.
posted by amanda at 3:14 PM on September 30, 2020
I still use a personal gmail account for everything else including the endless amounts of spam and advertising I get there. And I still have two other accounts that are also gmail accounts for different organizations. I use the account switcher tool and often have multiple accounts open at any one time. It's fairly easy to keep them separated.
posted by amanda at 3:14 PM on September 30, 2020
Consider Kiwi for Gmail to manage multiple accounts.
posted by megatherium at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2020
posted by megatherium at 5:18 PM on September 30, 2020
Keybase currently offers 200GB of encrypted online storage per account at no charge. There is no way at all to decrypt what's stored in the private sections of that without keys that exist only on your own devices.
posted by flabdablet at 8:02 AM on October 1, 2020
posted by flabdablet at 8:02 AM on October 1, 2020
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posted by yeahlikethat at 12:21 PM on September 30, 2020 [10 favorites]