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Email address question


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This is probably a stupid question, but here goes: my email address has the form "myname@ISP.co.uk" where ISP is the name of my ISP. If I change providers, can I continue to use the old email address somehow?

Pete

Edited by stillp
Finger trouble
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Some ISPs will sell you just e-mail access in which case you can set your new ISP as the outgoing server and pay to use the old one for incoming mail only but not many of them offer that I think.  

(As a 'for-instance', I use Plusnet for web access and outgoing e-mail but incoming is Freeuk.com which I have used for many years. It costs a small annual fee but the convenience of not moving address outweighs that.)

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That's why Gmail and Hotmail are so handy, use with any isp and work on all platforms, unlike that awful Windows mail from Microsoft, but then what else would you expect from that shower!!!! 

Chris

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16 minutes ago, Grahamgl said:

Pete,

AOL is totally free.

Graham

Yes but that isn't much use if you are looking to retain an address you already have Pete, to save the pain of changing everything and informing all your contacts. The same goes for Gmail of course. 

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A year or so ago I was forced to stop my Tesco email address because they decided to stop the business. I had to change to gmail & it as a nightmare notifying contacts etc etc. Tesco showed no concern or help whatsoever.

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Hi Pete,

The best way to avoid this problem in the future is to get yourself a domain name.  For example, if your name was John Smith, you could register smith.co.uk as a domain name and have john@smith.co.uk as your email address (actually you couldn't as smith.co.uk was registered many years ago, but you get the idea.  You may need to be a bit creative to find a domain name that is available).

Have a look at www.uk2.net.  It typically costs a few pounds a year to register a domain name.

You have the option of hosting your email with UK2.  Or you can use them to redirect your domain email address to an email provider of your choice.  I do this and redirect to a Gmail account.  The redirection is a bit fiddly to set up but means you get all the nice features provided by Gmail such as searching, tags and a good mobile app.

If you wish, other members of your family can have addresses under the same domain, e.g. jill@smith.co.uk.

Cheers,
Steve 

 

Edited by Steve Priest
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Timely question Pete and I too am interested in the answer. Broadband and Email address from Virgin. Broadband has become increasingly slow (although we are probably on the lowest speed available). So looking to upgrade or change and spotted this issue.

If you change provider, do you get any sort of time to notify and update everyone with a new email address?

We may criticise energy providers but the process of changing broadband provider looks far less transparent, more complicated and more expensive than simply flipping energy provider which I have done on a couple of occasions.  

Miles

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Most allow a few months grace to allow you to change things or the option of paying them to continue to use your old email address.

Virgin used to be good about this - kept my old virgin.net address going for around 10 years with the occasional email to say they would be closing it down. They did finally close it down just a few weeks before I returned to them when they put fibre into our village.

There are plenty of domain name hosts who provide email services.

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Most of the domain registration service companies offer up to 10 email addresses on the domain that you register. I have used Fast Host for a few years and had at one time more than 20 domains registered. There are various domains other than .co.uk including <your name>.me  The domain will need to be renewed from time to time, and generally this can be setup to autorenew. That way you have complete control of your email addresses. Email addresses can also be set as forwarding only, which means you can have multiple email addresses that can be set up to send all incoming emails to a single email address. There are lots of options, but be careful, The domain register company will be constantly offering you deals that are great but after a period of time the full cost is applied and are suddenly not so attractive.

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If you use Microsoft Outlook it's just a website that has nothing to do with your service provider.

It's free and OK.  Not too much advertising and hassle.

I collect/send mail using Thunderbird.  This is a free download from the Firefox organisation.

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