All,

My apologies if this has been discussed previously.

I think I am in need of my own hosted domain with e-mail services. There are several companies out there that provide these services, but I am an absolute noob and am not familiar with any of them.

Can any of you "in the know" recommend 1 or 2 providers that you have used with success for a family or small business type application?

In all, I would probably only need 5 (7 max) e-mail addresses.

Again, this is all new to me, so forgive me if ask any stupid questions.

Thanks in advance,

Inexpensive way to do it: Pay twelve bucks a year to Google Domains, to register your own domain, for example, TheBoz.com

Then create email addresses like user1@TheBoz.com and set that email address to forward to a mailbox that you already have.

I do this with my small business -- I registered the domain name and created email addresses at that domain that just forward to my iCloud email account.

This way I do not pay for mailboxes at a hosted domain service, my only cost is $12 / year to "own" the domain name.

AWS is $6/yr for domain hosting iirc

This came to mind immediately...

https://epik.com for the domain registrar
inmotionhosting.com to host web sites, email and images
https://cloudflare.com for DNS proxy and certain country blocking

Google, godaddy and Amazon hate you.

I was quite happy with Yahoo web-hosting services at about $120 per year. Built my own website using the Yahoo tools, had it up and running in a few hours, easy to manage and maintain. Multiple e-mail accounts linked to the website for customer inquiries and orders.

I've been retired nearly 7 years now, so I'm sure things have changed. The folks who purchased my business have switched to another web-hosting service. I'm sure there are lots of options.

I thought about the same issue for years and finally, about two years ago, did it.

My problem is that when/if I move I loose my e-mail I have had for 20 years. I wanted an e-mail address (non-google) that would follow me. I do not trust the google style addresses to not read and track my every e-mail.

There are many options on how to do it, but the main point is to get it done. It is more costly than a free account but you will not have to worry about a myriad of other issues.

Good Luck.

Is this simply for email?

The basics are:

* You need to buy or rather register a unique domain name from a Registrar.
* Registrars like Network Solutions, Go Daddy or others.
** (then) You need to control DNS.
** There are independent DNS Hosts or these services are widely available from the same place you register your domain.
** It does not have to be at the same place of registration. I use ZoneEdit but there are plenty of others.
*** Then you purchase you Hosted Services such as Email, WebSite, etc.
*** Even these all don't have to be at the same vendor or may be if beneficial.

Once you have your domain, DNS Hosting (needed to tell the IP world where your services are) and services Email then you edit the DNS settings.

Note: Once you register you have to provide them with who is doing the DNS Hosting (server IP) > must be updated on your Registrar Account ~ basically you are telling everyone who is providing your DNS records.

For Email you would create a MX record from the IP your Email Vendor gives you.
For a website you would create an A Record that alerts everyone to your Website.

For the complexity most people will stick with the all-in-one vendor (Registrar/DNS/Email/Web/other).

However, I just wanted to give the basics:
1) Register [First]
2) DNS
3) Services like Email, Web, Etc.


Before you register I would look over first who you get to provide the services for pricing and features etc and if going AIO then let them do the other two above.

Email Microsoft Exchange Online (O365) is the most robust but more expensive.
Other simple Email will work but base on your needs.

.02

When I was looking for my own domain to use as an email address, I ended up with ionos.com.

They offer low prices, I pay $12 for my Domain each year and $2 a month for email. They can host your site, etc.

All,

Thank you so much for the information so far. I have not read through all of it, but I will this evening.

I am mainly trying to prepare for switching ISP's. I, like several of you, have had the same ISP provided e-mail since 1998. Everything is tied to that e-mail. I want my own domain so that when the ISP goes away, I have something more secure and long term than outlook.com, gmail.com, etc.

I also have several family members that could benefit from this.

Lastly, I have a small business with my family. It would benefit from a web presence and to have a contact/e-mail that has a domain name that was a little more professional.

Moving all of my usernames and current login credentials will take weeks, possibly months, so I want to start now. I will have fiber, gigabit cable and StarLink all available to me soon and I want to move locations once the housing bubble pops, so I do not know what I will have at the new place.

Those are my reasons for asking.

Thanks again. I may have some specific questions for some of you tonight or tomorrow.

Regards,

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
This came to mind immediately...

Coincidentally this episode was next in the queue for me tonight.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
This came to mind immediately...

This is literally the very first think that came to my mind as well. Literally when I saw the thread title, before even clicking, that Seinfeld episode popped up in my head. Good to know I’m in good company.