Plain answer · independent alumni site

Can I keep my Purdue alumni email after 2026?

No. Purdue decommissions @alumni.purdue.edu on November 1, 2026. There is no replacement, no paid tier, and no published way to opt in and keep it. Purdue has not said why it is ending, and has published no guidance on what to do about it.

What actually happens on November 1

The address stops working. Mail sent to it after that date does not reach you, and — this is the part that does the damage — the sender is generally not told. A bank, a licensing board, a journal, or a company distributing a class action settlement sends once, to the address it has on file, and never learns it failed. You do not get a bounce, because you are not the sender.

And unlike a plain forwarding address, this one holds mail. Purdue's own FAQ describes the alumni account as a full Microsoft 365 mailbox with a 50 GB quota, so whatever is sitting in it — years of it, for some people — is stored on Purdue's side rather than yours. Purdue has published no retention commitment, no export instructions, and no recovery window after November 1.

Treat that as the deadline that actually bites. If you have ever used the address as a real inbox rather than a relay, export it before November 1: in Outlook on the web, open Settings, then General, then “Privacy and data,” and use Export mailbox. Do it early — the export is prepared in the background and can take days, and there is no guarantee anyone will be running the service to chase after the date passes.

Is there any way to pay to keep it?

Not as things stand. Purdue has not offered one. Several peer universities fund alumni email through an alumni-association membership or a small annual fee, and that is one of the five options this campaign has asked Purdue to consider — it would cover any licensing cost and shrink the service to the people who actually want it. Purdue has not said whether cost drove the decision at all.

Did every university do this?

No. Every Big Ten university faced the same pressure in the same window — storage stopped being free, and forwarded mail began failing authentication after Google and Yahoo started requiring it in February 2024. Nine of Purdue’s seventeen Big Ten peers still give alumni a working address anyway. Maryland’s own IT pages say alumni keep TERPmail “for life”; Rutgers calls its page “Rutgers Email for Life”; Northwestern faced the identical Google storage squeeze, ended the student address over it, and stood up a free alumni address instead.

Four peers did end it — Wisconsin, Nebraska, Oregon and Ohio State — so this site is not going to tell you Purdue is alone. What Purdue is alone in is the silence: each of those four published its reasoning on its own pages. Purdue has published none.

The full table of what each university did →

So what should I actually do?

Move the address off anything that matters, starting with the accounts you cannot fix later. A handful of services — a domain registrar with an unverified email, an airline loyalty account you cannot log into — require the old mailbox or a photo ID to recover, which means they have a real deadline rather than a nominal one.

The checklist: what to change, and in what order →

Is the decision final?

The date has not passed, and decisions like it have moved elsewhere. Harvard announced a shutdown in September 2022 and reversed it about six weeks later after roughly 2,800 alumni signed a petition. Colorado Boulder reopened its own after being sued, and now offers extended access through at least August 2027. Virginia Tech changed course too.

Purdue is a different case in one respect that cuts both ways: it has given no reasoning, so there is no stated rationale to answer — but equally, nothing has been publicly committed to that anyone would have to climb down from. Whether Purdue moves is not something anyone can promise. “Already decided” is not the same as “already happened”.

This site keeps a count of affected alumni, confirmed by a link sent to the alumni address itself — so unlike a petition, it cannot be padded. See the count, or add yourself →

This is an independent site run by Purdue alumni. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Purdue University. Purdue’s own announcement is on alumni.purdue.edu.