Online Services Diversification
Overview
I wanted to go over an initiative that I have been working on since the fall of 2024. Recent events have forced me to prioritize some of these tasks, as I really want to complete these tasks sooner rather than later. I am attempting to migrate as many of my online services as possible away from services based in the US. This is not an easy task which will require certain concessions on some things, and I am prepared to deal with that. It is impossible to avoid US services, but I will try my best to avoid them for critical services.
Background
I started working on this earlier in 2025, knowing it would take some time to migrate services and properly test them. I did not want to rush through any testing, and I didn’t want to use test accounts for anything. For personal projects I have no issue with going “all in” knowing that things may be broken. If things don’t work out, I will try something different, and it is not really a big deal. I have no timeline for anything, and I was open to trying anything if it worked. However, something I never expected to happen was at the end of 2024, and that changed my attitude on the entire goal of this exercise.
I am Canadian, and a lot of online services that I use are based in the US. The constant economic threats and threats to Canadian sovereignty has been quite off-putting, and as a result I am working to migrate all my essential services to other providers in other countries. As part of this exercise, I had been using iCloud Mail for several months in 2024 up until the beginning of 2025, but I moved away from this service a few months ago as a response to those issues. I eventually settled on Proton, which is an EU-based email solution. This platform also allowed me to migrate other services as well, and it has worked exceptionally well.
When I created this website, I told myself that I was only going to write about things that interested me and share things that other people in IT might be interested in. I rarely write anything about myself, as I prefer to keep my personal life to myself. This is the reason I don’t have a social media presence, and why I ensure that I am careful about everything that I put online. I created a Bluesky profile last year, but I do not find it particularly engaging, and I got rid of it. I am currently giving Mastodon a try as it is similar in nature, and it is hosted in the EU. I have a LinkedIn profile, but I have gotten into the habit of leaving it hibernated most of the time as I find the platform to be extremely unprofessional and using it is a waste of time.
The European Alternatives website has been an invaluable resource for this initiative, and certainly helped point me in the right direction for some of the services that I needed to move. Not that I only wanted to move services to the EU, but there are a lot of options available.
Progress So Far
There was a lot of services that I was using that I needed to migrate to other providers in other countries, and all major tasks are completed:
| Task | Progress | Completed |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud VM Migration | Retired | Yes |
| DNS Migration | Migrated to ClouDNS.net | Yes |
| Domain Migration | Migrated to Webnames.ca | Yes |
| Email Migration | Migrated to Proton | Yes |
| Git Migration | Migrated to Codeberg and Forgejo | Yes |
| VoIP Migration | Migrated to VoIP.ms | Yes |
| Website Analytics Migration | Migrated to Simple Analytics | Yes |
| Website Domain Migration | Migrated to mjcb.ca | Yes |
| Website Host Migration | Migrated to StormWeb | Yes |
Services
Cloud VM Migration
I was hosting several virtual machines in Azure that I no longer required. I exported the data I needed from them and deleted the virtual machines, so I no longer have an active Azure subscription for personal use.
DNS Migration
I have used many DNS providers over the years, and for the sake of simplicity it was usually linked to the domain registrar that I was using at that particular time:
- GoDaddy DNS
- Netlify DNS
- Cloudflare DNS
After some investigation I moved my main DNS provider to ClouDNS.net, which is an EU based provider for my primary domains. It works exceptionally well, and offers a lot of customization options. I was able to migrate a few dynamic DNS hosts to the service as well, as it was supported. It is not the cheapest solution out there, but I feel as though I am getting what I need out of it.
Domain Migration
I have used a lot of domain registrars over the years (and I am most likely forgetting some):
- Sibername (which no longer exists)
- GoDaddy
- Google Domains (until the Squarespace sale)
- Namecheap
I ultimately settled on using a Canadian registrar for my domains, and I have moved all of them to Webnames.ca. I am not exactly happy with the cost increases, but I will pay the difference if it means using a Canadian service.
Email Migration
I used Office 365 Microsoft 365 for many years, and in the middle of 2024 I switched to Apple iCloud Mail for a while as an experiment to see if I missed the features of Microsoft 365. I did not miss any of those features at all, and I ditched it entirely. As part of this I also ended up purchasing a standalone copy of Office 2024 which doesn’t rely on any Microsoft 365 subscription and lacks a lot of the Copilot features. I have been using LibreOffice a lot as well, and eventually I will completely move to that platform.
I have settled on Proton for email, and I am very happy with how it has worked out. It meets all of my requirements, and the fact that I can send and receive encrypted email with zero hassle is the best feature.
Git Migration
I have used Bitbucket in the past for hosting my Git repos, and I moved to GitHub several years ago due to my intense dislike for the Atlassian corporation. I thought about moving to GitLab when I started this entire project, but I settled on using Codeberg for all of my public Git repos. It works exceptionally well, and I have already migrated all of my public repos without too much hassle.
For my private Git repos, I decided that I wanted to host that myself. Since I liked Codeberg, I am using Forgejo with AlmaLinux. Overall, the results have been great, and I have very few complaints. I might make a post about it in the future.
Telephony Platform Migration
As part of the migration away from Microsoft 365, I also moved all of my DID numbers to VoIP.ms. No issues so far, and the softphone options make the platform very flexible to use, and I can do a lot of DID customization that wasn’t possible with Teams.
Website Analytics Migration
I was using Google Analytics for several years. It worked fine but it was absolute overkill for what I needed. For small websites like mine there is little to no value in using such a complex solution for analytics purposes. It also required cookies to operate, and I was not a big fan of that requirement.
I moved to Simple Analytics in February 2025 and it has worked very well. It doesn’t use cookies, it gives me enough data, and is based in the EU.
Website Domain Migration
Back in February I talked about the domain migration from my original mjcb.io domain, to the mjcb.ca domain. I had been planning on making this change for some time, and I was planning on making the change later in 2025 regardless of what was going on.
Just some background on this, I have owned the mjcb.ca domain since 2012 and I bought the mjcb.io domain in 2018. When I decided to launch this website, I was undecided on which one I wanted to use as the primary domain. I thought I would get better visibility using the .io domain over the .ca domain. I certainly regret choosing the .io domain, and I am glad that I switched to the .ca domain even if it caused me issues.
I definitely took a hit in my SEO as a result, but after six months it seems to have returned to normal.
Website Host Migration
This website was originally hosted on WordPress.com until the end of 2021, and the move to Hugo was easier than I thought it would be. A few months later I migrated from Bitbucket to GitHub, and I had no issues with that as well. At the same time as the Hugo migration, I moved my website to Netlify which worked out well.
After some back and forth with trying different solutions, I ended up migrating all of my websites to StormWeb. I am still using Hugo for my domains, and to make deployment of my websites easier I ended up creating a small script that automated the deployment whenever I made a change.
Outstanding Items
I have a few services and subscriptions that I still rely on that are based in the US, mostly iCloud and Xbox, which I will keep. There are some services that I can’t migrate away from unless I completely abandon the platform. As time goes on, I will determine if I really need them, and make decisions as they come up.
For my MacBook Air, I am still using it as my daily driver. As impressed as I am with Apple Silicon, the success of it has forced other vendors to actually start offering their own solutions (which is fantastic). When this laptop is finally retired, I will not be getting another MacBook, I want to move to a different vendor and use Linux.