My mom has been using an AOL email for 30 years… how can we switch her to something modern?

We want to stop paying for AOL altogether, but her AOL email is tied to so many things over the past 30 years. Is there an easy way to switch everything over to a Gmail account and make the change permanent?

AOL has been free for almost 20 years. She can stop paying right away.

I don’t think AOL has a proper forwarding feature, but there’s a ‘Vacation Response’ under Settings/More Settings where you can set an auto-reply to let people know about the new email address.

@Kim
Wait, people still pay for AOL? Does it even exist anymore? I thought it was just email now.

Emerson said:
@Kim
Wait, people still pay for AOL? Does it even exist anymore? I thought it was just email now.

Yeah, a few years back I heard AOL still had around 11 million subscribers.

@Landry
That’s wild to think about.

@Landry
They also offer free accounts.

@Landry
LOL

Emerson said:
@Kim
Wait, people still pay for AOL? Does it even exist anymore? I thought it was just email now.

Yes, there’s still the AOL Gold subscription. I have a few customers who pay for it.

@Reagan
My aunt still pays for an Earthlink email, and I can’t get her to switch.

Emerson said:
@Kim
Wait, people still pay for AOL? Does it even exist anymore? I thought it was just email now.

Yep, it’s still around. I think it’s $5.99 a month.

Emerson said:
@Kim
Wait, people still pay for AOL? Does it even exist anymore? I thought it was just email now.

AOL dial-up still exists. The email service is free, but they might still be charging for internet access.

@Kim
Thanks for the info, everyone.

@Kim
Do you think they can get a refund for all those payments?

Vanya said:
@Dustin
Forwarding might actually be a good way to catch which accounts need to be updated. As emails get forwarded, just switch over those accounts one by one.

You could even set up a filter to track the forwarded emails separately, so you know which accounts still need to be updated.

Sky said:
@Basil
+1 for this. Also, consider using a program like Outlook to download all emails, just in case the AOL account gets deactivated. It helps to have a backup.

If you save the mailbox locally, you can transfer it to most other email services.

@Basil
This is exactly what I did about 10 years ago. It took a while, but eventually, everything was updated.

@Basil
Thanks for the detailed advice.

You don’t need to pay for AOL email anymore. You can cancel the subscription and the email will still work. To get emails sent to a different account, you can set up forwarding.

@Dustin
Forwarding might actually be a good way to catch which accounts need to be updated. As emails get forwarded, just switch over those accounts one by one.

Vanya said:
@Dustin
Forwarding might actually be a good way to catch which accounts need to be updated. As emails get forwarded, just switch over those accounts one by one.

Yeah, it’s hard to remember everything that’s connected to it. This might work best.