In reply to a post by longedge:

I found out after some considerable hair pulling yesterday that PlusNet have stopped providing an email account to new customers.

I was a customer for 6 years and never had a PN email, so you probably started a while back. If you have a domain name and want super professional email, Microsoft Exchange Online is £3+vat a month per user/mailbox. Or their free outlook.com is pretty good. Or for less is the likes of Gandi, and 1and1 etc.

I was with F9 originally and been with PlusNet since the mid 90's. I made the mistake of using that email address for all my contacts but I've also got a hotmail account and email with webspace on tsohost. It's just the thought of having so many to change and the ones that I'll forget. To be honest I have never had an issue with PlusNet email and I like the ability to use anything at all before the @ which allows me to set rules up in Outlook based on the recipient.

In reply to a post by longedge:

To be honest I have never had an issue with PlusNet email and I like the ability to use anything at all before the @ which allows me to set rules up in Outlook based on the recipient.

I understand why you use it, just that given PN no longer want to be in the email business I would suggest looking at others in case they give you notice.

What you describe (*@domain) is known as a catch-all address, and they fell out of favour, as you don't want to receive to mailbox names you aren't using, you want SMTP to refuse the connection.

It shows how old their setup is - a bit worrying.

(and I remember SMTP email on Demon £10 a month dialup in the 1990s).

I also use the *@domain with filtering in thunderbird, which allows me to spot addresses which have been 'sold on' to remove any emails so addressed.

I also used demon as a dialup - seems like a very long time ago now.