Using own domain name for e-mail

[jtbell]

I'm switching my personal e-mail to an address @ the domain name that I use for my web site, so that in the future I can switch e-mail providers by pointing the address to the new provider instead of having to tell everyone a new address. Of course, this time I still have to tell everyone, but at least there's no great urgency because the new address leads to the same mailbox as the old one.

Right now, my new address points to a mailbox on my web-hosting server, which forwards everything to my Yahoo account. This is a paid Yahoo account, not a free one. I have my new address set up as an alias in my Yahoo account, so I can send mail from there.

I can also connect directly to my web-hosting e-mail account with Thunderbird, but I prefer seeing everything together in one place and I'm familiar with the Yahoo interface.

This works (so far), but it leaves a copy of all my mail (to the new address) in my web-hosting account so I have to clean it out occasionally. Also, I'd prefer to have my e-mail and web hosting separate so as not to put too many eggs in one basket. So eventually I'd like to bypass my web-hosting e-mail account by pointing my DNS to something like Gmail in G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Work), or Fastmail. Both of them allow custom domains and cost $5/month or $50/year. That kind of cost isn't a problem for me.

If you use a personal domain, which e-mail provider and what kind of arrangement do you use?

 

[TurtleMeister]

I've been using Fastmail with my own domain for about two years. I've had no problems with it. The plan names and prices have changed since I first signed up. Apparently they're letting current users keep they're original plans because I'm only paying $25 per year, but now you have to buy the $50 plan to be able to use your own domain. However, the $50 plan gives you more storage space than the plan I have.

The user interface for mail and account settings is fast and mostly easy to use, but I remember that getting everything set up was confusing and time consuming. But that was probably because it was my first time setting up something like this. Fastmail is the only service like this that I've used so I cannot do a comparison. All I can say is that I have been satisfied with the price and service.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

PF uses G Suite. It's easy and I'll not use anything but gmail these days.

 

[jtbell]

A plus for G Suite: the college where I work uses the educational version for students/faculty/staff, so I'm familiar with it already. I originally got the Yahoo account mainly for things like registering for commercial websites.

 

[nsaspook]

I have a personal domain that's so old it's listed in the old .uucp "Bang-path" UUCPNET address directory. I still used it for official email with my own personal mail SMTP server with pop3 and imap services using UUCP over TCP/IP via ssh. I have a GoDaddy domain account (registering for commercial websites, etc ...) that forwards e-mail to my personal domain. For a client I use anything that has smtp, pop3 or imap.