I'm losing my e-mail address on June 30. Need suggestions on what to do

[ron_newman]

Galaxy Internet Services, the company that has provided my e-mail service for over 16 years, announced last Friday that is is going out of business. I will suddenly lose my e-mail address, rnewman at theCIA.net , on June 30. I've had that address since May of 1997. I have no idea how many places I have registered that address with over the years -- LiveJournal, Facebook, Boston.com, my bank, utilities, lots of mailing lists....

So, I need a new POP and SMTP email provider, and I need it pretty fast. I probably should start giving out rnewman at alum.mit.edu as my new address, but that is only a forwarding service, not a mail server. Any ideas where I should go, either temporarily or 'permanently' ?

Several years ago, I registered a domain, RonNewman.info, but it is currently dormant. Ideally I should make that domain 'live' and somehow associate my e-mail with it, but I need a bit of advice and hand-holding from people who are more experienced with such things.

[Some background: I signed up with Complete Internet Access (TheCIA.net) as a dialup customer in 1997. Soon after that, Galaxy Internet Services acquired TheCIA.net, but kept it going as a separate service. In 2006 I upgraded from dialup to Galaxy's DSL. Last year, Galaxy offloaded all of their residential DSL customers to ExtremeDSL, but allowed me to keep the e-mail address.]

Comments

[yendi]

Beyond POP and SMTP, do you have any other requirements? Gmail handles those and obviously is cheap.

Pretty much any host (mine is Dreamhost, and I do have a referral link that you can use or ignore) also offers POP and SMTP along with custom mailboxes, and most will take care of domain registration and maintenance as a part of their hosting fee.

[ron_newman]

I don't currently have other requirements, but some folks elsewhere are telling me I should consider switching from POP to IMAP (something I've never used).

While I do have some files being web-served from Galaxy, they are very old and I'm happy to let them die rather than transferring them to a new host. At some point I'll want to start fully anew with HTTP service.

[avjudge]

I've been using my MIT alum forwarding address pretty much since they came out, and in that time have occasionally used my ISP, and then, probably for nearly the last decade, Gmail for the actual mail server (and yes, I still use old-fashioned POP). It's worked fine for me, and I like not having my address tied to a commercial service I might want to dump some day.

If you do continue using your alum address, MIT provides an SMTP server and I'd recommend using it because I've found spam filters are happier if your SMTP server and the from address match.

[sairaali.livejournal.com]

Ditto all of this. Every few months I think that maybe I ought to get all my data out of the google ecosystem and somewhere I control, but I've always had better things to do than learn how to run a mail server. So instead I periodically download everything I have in gdocs/drive and open Thunderbird every few weeks to grab local copies of email.

[gingicat]

I would definitely recommend just finding a new place to host your domain.

[ron_newman]

Any suggestions on how and where to do this (especially if you've done it yourself), I'll greatly appreciate.

[pekmez.livejournal.com]

But thecia.net isn't his domain, it's their domain. Once upon a time they were a decent-sized local ISP and many people were users with email addresses in thecia.net domain. (I had one at one point, I think, but didn't start using it as my primary email address.) So i don't think he can just wave some magic dollar bills to make rnewman at thecia.net continue to send him email.th

[cos]

Can you call their customer service and find out what their plans for the domain name are? Might they sell it to someplace that will offer email forwarding? Or if they have no plans, might they be willing to sell it to someone who'd do that?

[ron_newman]

I sent e-mail asking if they were planning to sell TheCIA.net , and got back an answer of "no". I suppose I could phone them and make a proposal, but I have no idea if they are receptive.

[lizzielizzie.livejournal.com]

I was just coming here to suggest this. :-)

[keithn.livejournal.com]

IMO Gmail is the best e-mail option out there and has been for a few years. It's free, 15gb of free storage, supports POP and IMAP, good web interface (which is all I use), mobile apps designed specifically for it, etc.

I believe you can use your own custom domain with gmail, although I don't know if I'd want a .info e-mail address given that .info domains seem to primarily be used for spam and scams. You might find many of your e-mails hitting people's spam filters instead of their inboxes if you have a .info e-mail address.

[ron_newman]

I got the .info domain a few years ago for a Harvard Summer School class on web development. I couldn't get .org or .net or .com (all were taken by other people with my name), and .info was cheap and available. It pointed to a Harvard server for that summer, but has been dormant since then (renewed annually, but unused).

The only .info domain I've run across besides mine is mta.info which is the website of the New York City transit authority. That doesn't strike me as spammy or scammy.

[jwg.livejournal.com]

If you use IMAP instead of POP your email stays on the server until you delete it from your mailbox copy on your own computer. This is useful if you access your mail from several computers as I do.

I have been using a2hosting.com for my own website and for a non-profit who has email lists and a web site and uses other web-hosted applications.

[londo.livejournal.com]

I own a domain and have had really good experiences with forwarding from there to my gmail account. I could offer you some handholding on that; I am reasonably competent as a Unix user, but not a sysadmin or able to tackle the really hard stuff, this might make me more or less useful as a handholder.

[frugaljoe.livejournal.com]

I've helped a few folks on the Davis LJ set up sites, and repair broken sites over the years. I'd be happy to get everything up and running for you if you'd like for free. Let me know if I can help?

[ron_newman]

Possibly, yes. (Do we know each other?)

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

Nobody takes you seriously unless you use gmail these days.

[ron_newman]

But isn't gmail the new hotmail?

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

o.O

I can't tell how sarcastic you are being here.

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

Why would not you use Gmail?

[ron_newman]

That may be the way I ultimately go, but I wanted to explore other possibilities first. I'm used to reading and sending my mail via Apple Mail and POP/SMTP, not via a website.

(Also, doesn't Gmail edit all of my incoming and outgoing mail to insert advertising?)

[xuth.livejournal.com]

As someone who hosts my own mail but doesn't consider myself a real sysadmin, I will say that there are definite benefits and downsides. The biggest benefit is that I can be my own control freak. The biggest downside is that occasionally large mail providers (yahoo seems to be the biggest thorn in my side but most of those interactions are from many years ago) decide they don't want to play ball with you and all of your mail goes into spam folders on their system until you jump through their hoops.

[siderea]

1) Apple's Mail.app is reportedly compatible with both POP and IMAP, so you don't need to change.

2) Gmail can be your endpoint for email (your user interface) if you like, or you can set it up to interoperate as Mail.app's IMAP server.

3) Most domain hosting companies are happy to provide you with either POP or IMAP for email addresses @yourdomain.tld as part of their hosting packages. I'm paying something around $40 per year for unlimited email addresses and domains.

4) There is a difference between having your own domain hosted and running your own mail server. The first can be accomplished with mere "shared web hosting", like I have (the aforementioned $40/yr). I certainly don't have the spare time to be running a mail server myself. These days, most shared hosting provides the customer with cPanel, which is a control panel for domains -- both email and web. It's very easy to figure out and to use.

5) There are two reasons you might want to have a @yourdomain.tld address. First, you keep control over it (so long as you pay for it), regardless of what the various businesses providing you services do. What is happening to you with GIS can't happen if you have your own domain. Second, there are some very cool things you can do to protect yourself from phishing if you have your own domain. Gmail and Fastmail also support some of these things. If you are going to have to move all your subscriptions to a new address, this is in fact the moment to consider these things and set up a more powerful system. I did this when I moved off Athena, and it was totally worth the extra investment of time and energy.

6) If you want to return to nmh, let me know. I have a host who can set you up. :D

[penk.livejournal.com]

Ron, you're welcome to host your domain and email on Homeport's servers. Contact me off-LJ if you want to vhost + pop + imap on our servers.

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

ditto kzinhome

[aredridel.livejournal.com]

Gmail is reliable and has a good spam filter; one's feelings on big companies and the attendant delights might kill that for you.

pobox.com is utterly solid.

Or you could fire up a Joyent SmartMachine and host yourself for $5/mo or so.