I'm not sure if you have to use the domain registrar holding your domain, or if you can use another company to host your email. I suspect this is a simple question, but I'm not in IT.

I'm certain many of you have a better, more secure suggestion than I can find through a google search. I want to migrate my family's emails away from gmail and use one of the domains we've had parked for years.

Thank you for your help.

Think of everything as separate pieces.

The domain name.
Name hosting.
Website
email
and any number of services/sites.

You can have them all "in one box" (so to speak).
Or you can have them each in different places/companies.

Easiest if you can have everything in one place.

Some hosting solutions are easy, and intuitive, and others require some knowledge to get everything configured.

Do you have a name?
Do you already have hosting?

That will help folks help answer your question.

I have a lot of names registered, some since the mid-90's. I haven't decided yet which one to use. As for the registrar, everything is parked with namecheap.

All of these companies had a different way of dealing with email. I can go with namecheap. They aren't that expensive. In the past, I remember seeing threads which dealt with who to use for email, but I do not believe those threads dealt with hosting email for a specific domain.

Yeah, sigmonkey has covered it all pretty much.
If you aren't IT savvy in this space it can be quite cumbersome and confusing.

You could start with the registrar first.
They usually have it all DNS, Email and even website.

If you are going to cherry pick each service individually not knowing what to expect it could become a nightmare.

Good Luck.

I hosted with yahoo and used their business email platform for several years, until it became unreliable, down times happen but long recovery times, shutting down your company, since moved to gmail for business, it's simple easy to use, they do offer some setup support.

Sure there are others out there, you get several levels of options with these services.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
If you are going to cherry pick each service individually not knowing what to expect it could become a nightmare.

This is exactly what I was wondering about. Simple would be great for what I am interested in doing right now.

I understand there is likely no such thing as secure or private email, but I prefer to use gmail less than I am using it now.

I rregistered my current domains with GoDaddy, but the sites are hosted on TMD Hosting.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:
I'm not sure if you have to use the domain registrar holding your domain, or if you can use another company to host your email. I suspect this is a simple question, but I'm not in IT.

I'm certain many of you have a better, more secure suggestion than I can find through a google search. I want to migrate my family's emails away from gmail and use one of the domains we've had parked for years.

Thank you for your help.

I used to host everything at GoDaddy, including domain registration, DNS, email, and web site. I have since moved my domain registrations, DNS and email to OpenSRS. I would move the web site, too, but I am prepaid until 2021 at GoDaddy, and they won't give me any refund of the unused part of the contract. Since my web site is not much to begin with, I'll just leave it at GD until the contract runs out.
 
For my low volume of email, it runs <$2/month at OpenSRS. It is based on usage.
 
 
 

I use GoDaddy for website hosting and name registration. For email I use mail.com. Due to my website name I don't have part of the website name included in my email address. I realize this is desirable for many but for me it was not an option. Mail.com has many email address extensions to choose from. They have a free as well as a paid service.

I've used their paid service for about 5 years now. The email web interface is clean and easy to use but they also work well with the Outlook client.

Good luck with your search.

I use:
Network Solutions to register Domain Names
Zoneedit for DNS Hosting.
WIX for Website Publishing.
MXGuarddog for Spam Gateway and filtering.
I host my own Microsoft Exchange Email Server or use Hosted Microsoft Exchange (O365) for most clients not having their own server.
For clients that don't want to setup static IP's > NOIP.com

Plenty of other choices, so YMMV.

I've had a couple domain names for decades, one I use for my primary email. Recently switched my email service to Microsoft Exchange. Much happier with that compared to the old POP configuration. Now email/contact/calendar/etc. changes are propagated between devices in seconds, very convenient between phone, laptop, etc.

My old email host offered Exchange for a while but it was $300-400/yr, too expensive for what I wanted. Microsoft's direct service is MUCH less expensive and included pretty good Help for setting the domain records to point to their service. I should have made the switch years ago.

My domains are registered at Godaddy, however, the email and web for these domains are currently hosted at HostGator because it is significantly cheaper.

quote:

Originally posted by henryaz:

I have since moved my domain registrations, DNS and email to OpenSRS. For my low volume of email, it runs <$2/month at OpenSRS. It is based on usage.
 

Do they deal with consumers? They appear to be a wholesale operation.

Looks like you may have email and other services with namecheap. But without knowing what service level you are paying for, it's hard to be certain.

If you want, email me what you need/want to do, and I'll see if I can help you get it set up, (anything you wish to keep out of public view) or post here.

You should be able to use whatever domain you wish for email, and you can likely create as many alias names to one account, or set up multiples.

Then you can use about any client of your choice.

Thank you, sigmonkey. All I need is simple email. Compose email, attach photos, documents, etc., and send. Receive the same. Dependable enough to be used for small business purposes. Set it up, it runs in the background, and just works.

Thank you all of you who are taking the time to reply. I appreciate your thoughts, experience, and opinions.

quote:

Originally posted by deepocean:
Thank you, sigmonkey. All I need is simple email. Compose email, attach photos, documents, etc., and send. Receive the same. Dependable enough to be used for small business purposes. Set it up, it runs in the background, and just works.

Thank you all of you who are taking the time to reply. I appreciate your thoughts, experience, and opinions.

You have the name registered.
You then need to get the namespace hosted (DNS).
Then setup the email with whoever.
Most who host email with your domain will handle the DNS too at the same time, in fact most prefer it.
Once the above are set up you logon to your Registrar account to point the domain to your DNS Server.
Then you logon to the DNS (if handled separately) to put in the mail server address (MX address) and sometimes a couple other things like SPF files.
Like I said whoever that will set up a domain email will usually handle all three components.

I use protonmail

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:

You have the name registered.
You then need to get the namespace hosted (DNS).
Then setup the email with whoever.
Most who host email with your domain will handle the DNS too at the same time, in fact most prefer it.
Once the above are set up you logon to your Registrar account to point the domain to your DNS Server.
Then you logon to the DNS (if handled separately) to put in the mail server address (MX address) and sometimes a couple other things like SPF files.
Like I said whoever that will set up a domain email will usually handle all three components.

So in an ideal world, if I were running an enterprise and there were technical reasons to be in control of everything, I could divide things up and deal with whichever companies suited my needs. Given the demands on my time, the best option is to pay my registrar to do it and they will take care of all of it.

Hats off to those of you who work in IT and handle issues a lot more complex than this every day.

^^^

Do you have a hosting account with namespace?

If so, do you have a "user control panel"?

If yeas to both, then you should be able to set up your email yourself.


You may also be able to set up another "admin privileged" account, temporarily, for the purpose of having someone access your hosting account and set everything up.

I can do that, or walk you through things, but need to know what you have to help.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
^^^

Do you have a hosting account with namespace?

If so, do you have a "user control panel"?

If yeas to both, then you should be able to set up your email yourself.


You may also be able to set up another "admin privileged" account, temporarily, for the purpose of having someone access your hosting account and set everything up.

I can do that, or walk you through things, but need to know what you have to help.

Thank you, sir, you are very kind. I can add email from the control panel that lists my domains. I did that with the one domain I have for which namecheap hosts an email box for me. There is a cost for the first email box, and an additional fee for each additional email box. The costs seem reasonable. Setting it up is simple, at least on my end. I checked into it after starting this thread, and Namecheap uses Ox App Suite by Open-Exchange.

This link is how I add email boxes from the control panel:

https://www.namecheap.com/supp...echeap-private-email

My purpose in posting this thread was to make sure the simplest solution of using my registrar wouldn't be a mistake versus some other unknown option which might be better.