Free resources
Leaving Big Tech, one system at a time
The free tools feel free because you and your data are the product. Big Tech reads your mail, tracks where you go online, and makes your work harder to move the longer you stay. None of that is the price of doing business. It is a choice, and you can unmake it.
You do not have to leave everything at once. Start with one system, get comfortable, then move the next. Below are the three places we usually start, because each one gives you a real privacy win for a small amount of effort. Each comes with resources you can act on today, and if you would rather hand it off, we can do it for you.
Your browser
Your browser is the window everything else passes through, and the default ones are built by the same companies that sell ads against what you do online. This is the easiest place to start because there is nothing to migrate. Install a private browser, import your bookmarks, and you are done in a few minutes. It is the fastest privacy win you will get all week.
Where to start
- Mozilla Firefox: independent, not run by an ad company, and easy to lock down with a few setting changes.
- Mullvad Browser: built for people who want strong anti-tracking out of the box, no account required.
- EFF Surveillance Self-Defense: plain-language guides from a nonprofit on browsers, tracking, and staying private online.
Your email
Email is where your most sensitive conversations live, and with a free or bundled service the provider can read all of it. Many scan it to build a profile of you and the people you write to. Encrypted email closes that door, so your provider stops being a reader of your mail. It takes a little planning, but it is more approachable than it sounds.
Where to start
- Our guide: switching your team to encrypted email, start to finish, without disrupting the team.
- Proton Mail: zero-access encryption, based in Switzerland, supports your own domain.
- Tuta: encrypted mail and calendar from Germany, with a real export so you can always leave.
Your website and hosting
Your website and your data have to live somewhere, and whoever controls that somewhere has real power over your business. All-in-one platforms make signing up easy and leaving expensive, often holding your content, your domain, or your customer list hostage on the way out. The fix is to own the pieces that matter, so you could move hosts tomorrow and take everything with you.
Where to start
- Who owns your website, really? The question to settle before you build anything.
- Reading a hosting contract before you sign it, so the exit terms do not surprise you later.
The tools you run your business on
Booking, scheduling, invoicing, file sharing, customer lists, the all-in-one suite that does a bit of everything. Each one is another monthly subscription, and many take a cut of every transaction on top. As you grow, the bill grows with you, and your data sits on their servers the whole time. You can run the same operations on tools you own, keep more of your own revenue, and stop renting the basics of your business.
Where to start
- How to move off a SaaS you have outgrown, the questions to ask before you cancel and how to get your data out cleanly.
- Booking systems built so you own it: one operation on a platform you control, not five logins and five sets of fees.
- A FareHarbor alternative you actually own, with no per-booking percentage skimmed off the top.
- Scheduling, files, and calendars on your own server, so you can retire Calendly-style and cloud-storage subscriptions and keep your data private.
Ready to start leaving Big Tech?
Pick one system or bring the whole list. We will map a plan you own and handle as much of the move as you want us to.
Book a free 30-min consult