Email provider advice please

From my email provider BT yesterday:

From 6 May 2016, we're changing the price of BT Premium Mail from £1.60 a month to £5 a month.

Maybe I'm being unreasonable in objecting to BT trebling their Mail price, as their multi-million TV sport deals must be paid for somehow. I left BT after many years because of unreliability and have been satisfied with Plusnet for the past 18 months, but kept our BT email for continuity. Anyway we found it very difficult to set up PN's own email service and its support staff were unhelpful and totally disinterested.

I would like to keep our existing mail system as my wife and I are too long in the tooth to change. We use Thunderbird and have two addresses/boxes, one for me and one for my wife. The past seven years' emails are stored in folders and the Thunderbird program folder contains 80MB, I don't know if this includes the years of stored emails or not. We do not need webspace, sync across devices etc. just the handling of say 10 emails per week. We seldom send attachments.

Free providers such as Gmail might do but Google's snooping gives me the creeps. I do have a couple of disposable gmail addresses to keep RL info offline on occasion and I'm amazed to see these entities pop up together whenever I watch Youtube, with appeals to SIGN IN NOW for an even better experience ...

I am considering Fastmail, which offers a $US10 annual 'Lite' package which meets my needs, and TSO, which at £10 monthly is very expensive for all we want. I would be very grateful for the advice of all you TBB posters.

Edited by Malwaremike (Tue 22-Mar-16 12:30:45)

TSOHost is used a lot around here - £15 per annum for that sort of lite hosting (which includes a lot more than just email). Another £7ish will get you a domain name so you can then change providers if you want in future without having to change email addresses again.

You made the mistake on TSO of looking at Exchange hosting - that is way over the top for what you need. All you need is the basic lite "cloud web hosting" that will give you 10 mailboxes, 500MB web space, 5GB data transfer per month and a few other bits and pieces.

I've used FastMail for both business and personal email for 10 years now and would be reluctant to change if I had to.
The service is reliable with a good web interface and quite extensive configuration options. There's also the opportunity to set up a forwarding service to pull your mail from your BT account in the changeover period. Plenty of FastMail domains to choose from if you don't have your own.
Go for a trial and try it out!

1&1 is another option which I have experience with and works well. £0.99 per month for 1 mailbox, £1.99 for 20 (exc. vat and domain cost). Make sure whatever service you choose supports SSL/TLS for client connections.

Edited by Oliver341 (Tue 22-Mar-16 13:38:59)

I agree Tsohost is excellent, not least because of the superb support if ever needed.

Lite hosting is £14.99pa and a .uk, or .co.uk, or .me.uk £7.19pa. Set up and running within minutes.

The hosting does of course also include hosting for two websites (domains) should that be desired.

Thunderbird will work exactly as the OP is used to, and can have the new addresses running for sending and receiving on the new domain simultaneously with continuing to read on the BT one until all contacts are notified.

Edited by RobertoS (Tue 22-Mar-16 14:00:06)

1&1 get my vote too.

+1 for TSOhost, I have several Mailboxes for convenience and it all works well with Thunderbird on the PC and AquaMail on the Andorid smartphone.

I have Plusnet email working with Thunderbird without any problems. I even retained the service after leaving Plusnet.

If you can't get Plusnet email to work with Thunderbird you may struggle to get any other email service to work with it.

I would suggest having your own domain name and using an email forwarding service such as 123-reg. This allows you to change email service providers whilst retaining the same domain name.

I would like to thank the OP for asking that question as I am looking for a new host myself after the price hike.
Thanks to all the info guys

To be honest most people will be just fine with Gmail, there's no need to pay for a host unless you really must have your own domain name. I can't fault their service.

I too deeply distrust anything Google, to the point of blocking anything it touches at the firewall and black hole any DNS calls to it...I realise in the face of the Windows 10 data scraping Microsoft is carrying out, my preferred email provider being Outlook.com might seem a bit two-faced, however, I have not had any phishing or spam emails to any of my three Outlook.com accounts save for one account where it was easy to identify the company selling my details by using the '+nnn' sub-addressing in the local part of my email address (I'm looking at you Royal Mail!)
Storage is generous for a non-business user, access via web interface or various clients works well across a mix of devices, the option of shared calendars is a big plus for us too.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-Mar-16 21:12:09)

Gmail mail is fine but never really liked it. I would need to have mine associated with a domain name from now on for my own benefit.

Edited by derekdel (Tue 22-Mar-16 21:25:50)

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

I would suggest having your own domain name and using an email forwarding service such as 123-reg. This allows you to change email service providers whilst retaining the same domain name.

if you have domain and email hosting, as some of us have recommended to the OP, you can change provider at will with no problem.

You don't even need to have the domain and mail hosts with the same provider.

I have my own domain for all the reasons that others have given. It puts me in control, without depending on any particular ISP or selling my soul to google. Actually I do have gmail and hotmail addresses but regard these as disposable.

When you have your own domain it can help with spam prevention. When I register with a company, let's say Amazon in this example, the email address I use is [email protected]. if the company gets hacked (several have been, though not amazon) I simply chnage to a different email address with them and set up a rule in Thunderbird's spam filtering.

I use 1&1 for a cheap and cheerful basic domain registration and email hosting package. Works fine. My webspace is free from Plusnet - I've been with them for rather a long time from the days when it was standard for all users.

In reply to a post by derekdel:

Gmail mail is fine but never really liked it. I would need to have mine associated with a domain name from now on for my own benefit.

I have several domain names and they all point to Gmail. But, if I get issues with gmail I can shift them off somewhere else easily (I do also have TSOHost account but I have that for testing a website at the moment rather than for email).

I have been a Fastmail user both personally, and in a number of businesses, since 2000.

They are now, I believe, one of the world's top 10 email providers and I really can't recommend them enough.

RunBox is a good alternative, but IMHO Fastmail is streets ahead.

NJSS

I use Runbox. I liked Fastmail when I tried that, but I'd been with Runbox for years and I didn't want to move everything over. Besides which, I've always been happy with them. RB and FM have forums at email discussions if you want to find out more about either. Lots of other email providers are discussed there too, as well as at the main website, email addresses.

I also use 1&1 but only for the domain.

1and1 for me, I have used them for several years and it has been faultless.

At last! I chose TSO's Lite package and have had a fine old time over the past couple of days trying to get it to work.

As I explained at the outset, I'm an internidiot wanting the simplest possible email system. On first visit to the TSO homepage I could see only the Exchange plans with no reference to the Lite package, until ian72 explained it in his post. I signed up and struggled for an hour before phoning support and being told that I needed a domain name as well � after this setup went fine and my new account was working well until I made it the default in Thunderbird and it ceased to work on either desktop or iPad.

At times like this one needs support and the TSO team (based in Bulgaria) has been patient and helpful. They had to be, as I spent an hour on three calls (all swiftly answered, it must be said) before it was sorted out. It seems to have been some inexplicable password issue. I might have been better with Fastmail which hosts its own email service with no need of domain or website etc, but I noticed they are based in Australia with no apparent phone contact.

After a long walk to cool down we set up my wife's account without problems so hopefully we can avoid electronic struggles for a while. As Bob suggested, both TSO and our outgoing BT accounts run together in Thunderbird until we quit BT next month. I'm pleased with TSO and very impressed with their service, which began with a welcome phone call the day after I signed up with them.

My thanks to everyone for your generous advice, it's great to know we can count on such a kindly community.

You did the right thing by getting your own domain name. Signing up with Fastmail and using a fastmail.com address is a bad idea, it puts you at the mercy of one company for email provision.

Edited by Oliver341 (Thu 24-Mar-16 20:45:16)

Just like being with BT mail.

Thanks for the update - all interesting stuff.
I see a few people here mention TSO and hadn't realised their support is in Bulgaria. Good to hear it works well though

FWIW (might be teaching you to suck eggs...)
It's worth knowing that now you have your own domain it's not as anonymous as email using your ISP. People are able to see possibly personal information using WHOIS. Depending on how your domain name has been registered everyone can see your home address etc.

If it's a co.uk domain then you are able to hide your address (for non-business domains) for free (other TLDs are paid for options) but your real name can't be hidden.

Probably not important, but worth a mention...

This is the forum for facts and frights! B4dger sent me scurrying off to Whois where I was relieved to find that my new domain is registered to Paragon, TSO's parent company, with none of my own details listed. I'm currently working through my lists to advise everyone of my new address, amazing how many contacts build up in a decade. Then I'll call BT and give notice of departure after 40+ years. Regards to everyone and thanks again.

In reply to a post by b4dger:

If it's a co.uk domain then you are able to hide your address ....

In fact, any .uk

Keep BT running as long as possible until 1 May, but only reading from it. As I suggested earlier. That way some may pop up that you've missed.

I hope you are sending from the new one to tell people, not the BT one. That makes it so if they reply it will tend to go into their address book automatically.

PS - I've sent you a PM.

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 25-Mar-16 19:29:08)

I just checked the whois for my domains registered with TSOhosts on the Lite package,
They show with my own name nas Registrant , address withheld and Registrar: Paragon Internet Group Ltd t/a Tsohost

Not wanting to highjack the OP thread, rather add to it.

Can I ask [as a complete novice] about fastmail user accounts?

If I buy the fasmail service as a 'me and my family' option will i be able to add my wife as an alias rather than having to pay for another account?
I have a few email accounts I need to move over, 8 in total so buying a separate account for those starts to get a bit high price wise.

I want to get the enhanced package so the master user is:

derek @ fastymail..ccom

with my wife & other family members as alias:

wife @ fastymail..ccom
cat @ fastymail..ccom
dog @ fastymail..ccom
kids @ fastymail..ccom

I am trying to get this sorted as quickly as possible so any help would be appreciated.

Used to provide hosting back when I was in college to a few friends.etc but with work commitments.etc decided I no longer had time to maintain a shared hosting box so moved it to a reseller plan on tsoHost rather than just ditch the sites.

They're certainly not the cheapest around but they've always been decent to deal with if I have a problem. Don't really use their email system that much but I think a couple of my friends do I've not had any complaints about it.

Another one to look at if you only want a single mailbox is Office365, it's more expensive than standard email hosting (Afaik something like 3.50 a month) but it's good if you work across multiple devices and want to sync contacts/calender.etc with your phone. Works out to expensive for most people if you have a lot of mailboxes though.

Normally one thing I would recommend doing is registering the domains through a different provider to the one you use for the hosting/email service then if you decide you don't like the service provider it's much easier to move.

Now in the case of someone like TsoHost it doesn't matter quite as much as they've proven themselves themselves to be reputable and I very much doubt they'd hold your domain hostage but some less scrupulous providers would register the domain to themselves and then try and charge you considerably for releasing it if you wanted to leave them.

The problem with the hosting industry is it's very easy to set one self up as a webhost, so you get a lot of kiddies doing it during their summer holidays only to vanish when they get bored of it or the money runs out since unless you are offering something different people are prepared to pay for there's no margin in it.

I'm surprised that's the case, did you sign up to use a 'privacy' service to hide your details?

In normal circumstances you always want a registered domain to be registered in your name and not those of a provider. That way you shouldn't lose control of it if the provider has problems or disappears.

i.e. If it's a .uk TLD then you can go to Nominet and prove who you are etc. to get control back. If a domain doesn't have your details then you would have trouble getting control of it.

Personally see few problems with using Google Mail for free...

It should be able to import all the mail (from POP or IMAP services) and while there are plenty of critics of Google for their adverts on the browser using the content of the mail messages you get, with ad-blocking extras for most browsers, you don't need to see those ads at all (I started with one account several years ago and not seen ads since - I don't, frankly, even know if ads are still displayed!)

Spam filtering works very well, in my experience, multiple GB of storage without any fees at all... For info, I've previously paid for use of Runbox and Fastmail, and considered using Runbox hosting with one of my domains but with dozens of domains it was less awkward to collect my mail in one GMail account (though I now use at least 8 for various lists, work, alerts, etc).

I have a reseller hosting account with Xilo, which provides mailboxes and / or mail forwarding. I tend to use forwarding for myself and clients. Although it is a reseller account, it is essentially shared hosting where I can add multiple domaiins and allocate disk space and other facilities as I wish.

They have a cluster of mail servers for sensible and reliable handling of incoming mail, something which is rarely provided when one has shared hosting and might not be done by as many providers as one might hope...

In reply to a post by ppppenguin99:

... email address I use is [email protected]. if the company gets hacked ...

I have been using Spamgourmet.com for some years for free. It allows mail addresses of the form
<word> , <count> . <username> @ <domain>

<domain> can be spamgourmet.com or one of a number of others with registrants worldwide, but pointing to the spamgourmet.com mail servers.

<count> used to be from 1 to 20 as the number of messages you wanted to accept - a larger number was acceptable in the address but capped at 20. The situation has changed to allow a larger default but I don't recall it off hand.

<username> would be my login username and is associated with a real mail address. I have a few usernames 'hiding' different mail addresses.


Just as you have used 'amazon@ domain' I could use 'amazon' as the 'word' I wanted for a new e-mail address.

Domains and specific mail addresses can be 'whitelisted' so I will always get mail from domain firms, and even if the count reaches '0' then wanted mail from a known address/domain would arrive. An individual 'word' can have only one whitelisted address / domain


The <count> can be altered to 0 (if I want spam eaten) or reset to the max (if I have a need to reset a password on a little used account and want to be sure not to miss any support messages).


The main difference is that unless the whole domain is taken over by a spammer, a few messages might get through and then when the count hits zero, only a whitelisted address or domain will get through, without me having to change a thing. Some spam comes through (usually into GM's spam folder) but the stats show quite a lot of mail never reaches me


30,870 forwarded, 37,006 eaten. 33 trusted 377 disposable addresses

7,582 forwarded, 104,733 eaten 20 trusted 284 disposable addresses

24,451 forwarded, 52,585 eaten 19 trusted 316 disposable addresses

9,567 forwarded, 58,142 eaten 20 trusted 535 disposable addresses

No need to configure anything to create new address, just type it and then Spamgourmet adds it to the list of addresses. In a way I'd like to be able to zap some (which only get spam now) but appears not possible at present.

You need to have your own domain.

See https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing.html

I have my own domain at 123-reg and then forward mail to my ISP's email servers.
Costs very little, very flexible as incoming emails can be forwarded to more than one email server account, but a little more complex to set up.

Post deleted by HarrysPlusnet

If it's a co.uk domain then you are able to hide your address

Total disaster. B4dger's warning came too late, I simply picked the .Com suffix from the top of the box, in my ignorance I did not realise that my details would be published around the world: RL name, full address, phone number, and RL alternative yahoo email which I have used for 11 years. I discovered this only through Bob's kindly PM.

Over the weekend I have had more spam/scams than I have in a year, including one very convincing scam that would certainly tempt the unwary to part with CC details. Even more worrying has been a couple of phone calls though these may have been our friendly Microsoft team offering to fix my computer for only £120.

TSO agreed to an immediate refund on the hosting package and undertook to cancel the domain. Meanwhile I stay with BT and have spent the day reverting my address changes and changing all my passwords. The old say If it's not broke, don't fix it was never more apposite

Of course a Gmail address avoids any needs for information to be published in domain whois. A lot of people seem paranoid about Gmail, but thankfully I'm not one of them, I don't trust them any less than any other email host.

Sorry to hear that, but pleased I mentioned how this works!


For a .com you can hide your details if you pay for the service. For a .uk you can hide everything but your name if you aren't a commercial outfit.

I'm often recommending Gmail as their spam filters are so good and your data is backed up, but I see you mentioned you weren't keen.

To answer my original question of March 22 regarding an email programme for dummies after BT's price increase:

I would like to keep our existing mail system as my wife and I are too long in the tooth to change. We use Thunderbird and have two addresses/boxes, one for me and one for my wife �.. We do not need webspace, sync across devices etc. just the handling of say 10 emails per week. We seldom send attachments.

The solution is Fastmail. Just eleven minutes to set up and pay for two accounts, one each myself and wife, auto-install on both of our desktops (Thunderbird) and iPads, and to send tests to and receive replies from our alternate addresses. Cost $US10 (about £6.50 including bank charges) each for the year compared to BT's £60. Fastmail seems much faster than my other providers, mail going and returning as fast as we can hit the send and reply buttons.

For those requiring a domain and all that goes with it, TSO's service was excellent, phone support waiting times only a couple of minutes, mail response within the hour, immediate refund for the hosting package when I realised my mistake, and my new domain deleted by the following morning.

Finally, my letter from BT says: As we recently upgraded you � When I went to BT Checker I wasn't surprised to find I wasn't 'upgraded' and am still on the old BT Yahoo email which gave such problems a couple of years back. But I suppose inertia will ensure that thousands of customers will still pay BT its trebled charges.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

I am considering Fastmail, which offers a $US10 annual 'Lite' package which meets my needs, and TSO, which at £10 monthly is very expensive for all we want. I would be very grateful for the advice of all you TBB posters.

I'm a long time Fastmail user and big fan (well, to the extent one can be a 'fan' of an email service).

In reply to a post by binary:

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

I am considering Fastmail, which offers a $US10 annual 'Lite' package which meets my needs, and TSO, which at £10 monthly is very expensive for all we want. I would be very grateful for the advice of all you TBB posters.

I'm a long time Fastmail user and big fan (well, to the extent one can be a 'fan' of an email service).

Re the OP's quote you give there, the cost of the package he would need on Tsohost is £7.19pa for the domain and £14.99pa for the mail (including web hosting and free blogging/forum/CMS/ecommerce such as Wordpress). That's £1.85pm.

Four months on and our two Fastmail accounts have been faultless. I phoned BT and told them to end my email contract and was offered continued service at same price £1.60 but no way. Oddly enough my BT a/c still works to send and receive emails, not that it matters as all my contacts use fastmail.