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Not a big one if you e.g. have someone else provide the backing email service. I bought my own domain back in 2002 or so, and note it's important that you own
by hga 10y ago
Not a big one if you e.g. have someone else provide the backing email service.
I bought my own domain back in 2002 or so, and note it's important that you own it*, and then set up email with a quality shared hosting service company. At some point I noticed this well recommended Fastmail company, which was lots cheaper than the shared hosting, the other features of which I no longer needed. Which has now been providing my email service for years, and I note they also do contacts and calendaring. And have really good customer service. And are reliable, including not having GMail's sometimes too aggressive spam filtering. Etc.
Although if I remember correctly they were pants at accepting notifications from Fanfiction.net, which is not something I really worked at fixing since it prompts me to regularly check my backup Hotmail (Live, whatever) account. Which emphasizes one thing, if you do this, make very sure to maintain another email account in case you have any problems with your personal domain.
You also ought to get treated more seriously by various important others if you have your own domain instead of a generic GMail or other big free email provider account.
- mahyarm 10y agoFor me the big pain is moving off all the stuff referencing a *@gmail.com address to something else. There is no real such thing as 'phone number portability' in email. Even if you forward everything, you can still lose the forwarding.
- ori_b 10y agoAnd that's why you do it sooner rather than later -- as time passes, it gets harder.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoI set up my new domain email address as an email forwarder to Gmail, and used it like that for nearly a year. When signing up for things, I'd just use that address instead of the Gmail address. When I moved to FastMail, I set up that email address to go to FastMail instead. Most of my inbound mail instantly came with it. It's been a couple weeks, I still get stuff on my Gmail. So I check it once or twice a day still at the moment, and when I get something from some website, I go log into that account, and change my email address.
- josephb 10y agoFastmail can also pull in from your gmail account. You could do that and tag the emails. It might be a good time saver and save you from having to do manual checks.
- ocdtrekkie 10y agoYeah, I know. But my concern is if it's 'too easy' to just handle my Gmail messages in Fastmail that I'll procrastinate changing over the accounts properly. Once I get down to a minimal amount I'll forward and tag.
- wongarsu 10y agoThe 'phone number portability' of email is you owning the domain, and pointing the mx record to whatever mail provider you like. To switch providers you simply register an account somewhere else and change your dns record. By starting with an "@gmail.com" address you willingly give that up, but that's not the system's fault.
- Dobbs 10y agoI did this a few years ago. I don't know if I'm 100% transitioned but I'm just about. I setup the forward from <name>@gmail.com to <name>@<mydomain>. I then flagged things that are coming from gmail and slowly updated addresses on those websites to point at <name>@<mydomain>. You don't have to be in a hurry to get it done you just have to be working towards the end goal.
- josephb 10y agoYeah it's just a matter of making a start and doing a bit each day/week. It's surprising how much you will achieve over time.
- greenshackle2 10y agoI can also vouch for Fastmail. On top of everything mentioned by hga, as the name implies, the web UI is fast, and their calendar is good. Another nice thing with owning the domain is that you can set up a catch-all, then use unique addresses to sign up for stuff. I sign up with <service>@mydomain.com now, so when <service> sells my address, I know who to blame. I still receive stuff on my old gmail, so I do POP retrieval from Fastmail.