Can anyone reccommend a personal email hosting service?

Mad Mike

Short version - can you recommend a company who offer good value low volume email hosting ("personal" email hosting).

Long version - read below:

Several years ago I set up an email domain for my own and my family's use. Even though I now use gmail and various other "cloud" services I still like having this personal email domain. It gives us a family identity. It gives me more control over important emails and reduces my exposure to providers going out of business or changing their terms and conditions. It is also very easy for me to create mail aliases for logging in to web services which is a great way of controlling spam.

Anyway I have been using Register365 to host my email on a low cost "personal" email plan since I started. Recently I have become concerned however that my package does not offer an encryption facility (SSL/TLS etc.) Unfortunately my current package is on a legacy system which cannot be upgraded.

Register365 have offered me a new system that does offer SSL but this will cost more than double. It is still not that expensive - less than €60 per year but since I would have to go through the hassle of setting everything up again manually I thought I might as well shop around for alternative personal email hosting.

Unfortunately I can't find many companies offering low volume personal plans and I don't need a business package. Do you know anyone I should check out?

trad

mad.mike@ireland.com

Duckjob

Redirect your domain to use Google Apps ?

Mad Mike

Hi Duckjob.

I do actually use gmail but I do want to keep my own email as well. You have a lot more control if you "own" the email and you can be sure that you will always have that email address. I actually started this some years back before the days of free email when my previous email company went bust and I lost my main email address. Even then it was a nightmare because your email address is the key to so many online services. Today it would be even worse. I am not suggesting that Google is likely to go bust but there has been some disturbing stories recently about Google closing peoples accounts.

Duckjob

Mad Mike wrote: »

Hi Duckjob.

I do actually use gmail but I do want to keep my own email as well. You have a lot more control if you "own" the email and you can be sure that you will always have that email address. I actually started this some years back before the days of free email when my previous email company went bust and I lost my main email address. Even then it was a nightmare because your email address is the key to so many online services. Today it would be even worse. I am not suggesting that Google is likely to go bust but there has been some disturbing stories recently about Google closing peoples accounts.

Nor sure I understand you, or you don't understand me. Most likely both

I'm talking about pointing yourdomain.com at Google Apps so you are essentially using Google mail. In effect it is Google Mail that is "branded" as proper domain email, so you can have email addresses like madmike@yourdomain.com.

As long as you maintain ownership and control of yourdomain.com, you can ensure that the madmike@yourdomain.com exists as an email address, because if Google did go bust or close the account on you, you can always just re-point your domain to another service and set up your mailboxes there.

Maybe you're confusing the domain registration with the hosting of email services. As long as you control the domain registration, you can point it anywhere you like for email.

Mad Mike

Ahhh

That sounds more like it. I didn't realise you could incorporate a private domain with gmail like that. I will check it out. Thank you very much for the suggestion.

Duckjob

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
Google Apps is free and good for up to 10 mailboxes.