Personal domain registration & e-mail hosting info & advice

As this doesn't seem to have already been covered, i thought i would post hopefully this is the right place

OK as it is rumoured that my current isp is going to cease to trading during Jan next year, I'm now looking into setting up my own e-mail so it will work independent of any isp that i may choose in the future,

What i already know is that to do this i will need to register a new domain in my name ,and subscribe to a company that provides e-mail hosting , there seems to be quite a few companies that provide e-mail hosting, but some bundle with web hosting which i don't need,
So if anyone can help,by recommendations on who to choose for e-mail hosting and any advice on domain registration,that would be appreciated
Also if anyone knows of a guide on how to set it all up ie, configuration that would be good too ,
ie, domain e-mail host,be*there will most likely be my next isp

Edited by tommy45 (Wed 10-Nov-10 19:12:59)

First suggestion is - use different companies for registration and email/hosting.

The, if the hosting company start messing you about, you have control of the domain to go elsewhere

I use Heart Internet (for registration) and Nethosted (for email/web hosting). No trouble with either

Finally, I would suggest a .uk domain name.

Thank's ,Yeah i read somewhere that with a .uk registration you can hide your personal details from whois searches ect ,

Tommy

This is quite easy to do

I assume that dont want any hosting, so if you just buy a domain name of your choice, you can then set up email forwarding from the control panel of where your domain is held
You would do this as a forwarding email in the control panel
Eg [email protected] forwarded to say [email protected]
This would enable you to change the forwarding address at any time should you change your isp at any time.
If you want to fork out about £20.00 a year with some basic hosting, you can do alot more with your email

Hope this helps

Edited by Brugie (Wed 10-Nov-10 19:36:03)

I have several domains registered with freeparking.co.uk and just have the domains email forwarded to my email account (could be an ISP email address - but in my case is a spamcop.net account)

nethosted do an email specific hosting - link

Once you have a domain - use unique email addresses for each registration - e.g. [email protected]<domain> - then you can track who has sold address on! But domains can attract more spam

Think is be there don't provide a pop3 server, they do provide the option of a smtp server, but there are some restrictions on outgoing mails if used,
The cheapest e-mail host that i have found is this :1& 1 instant mail
so presumably the domain would be set up to use the e-mail hosting companies pop3 &smtp server adresses?

my suggestion would be a .uk domain with a good registrar like heart internet and google's hosted gmail service.

it's free, it takes a couple of hours to set up and it's gmail under your domain so you get all the gmail features, speed, anti-spam, reliability and lots of storage:

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/nonprofit/index.html

you also get the other apps like the calendar and documents which have integration with the iPhone and Android phones.

to set it up you have to add about 10 dns records to your domain and tweak things in the google apps control panel but after that there's nothing else required.

In reply to a post by Brugie:

so if you just buy a domain name of your choice, you can then set up email forwarding from the control panel of where your domain is held
You would do this as a forwarding email in the control panel
Eg [email protected]yone.co.uk forwarded to say [email protected]be.co.uk
This would enable you to change the forwarding address at any time should you change your isp at any time.

A good way to get started.

It can be expanded upon later, if requied.

Edited to get rid of the typo

Edited by Sandgrounder (Wed 10-Nov-10 21:25:17)

It would, but then i would have to be reliant of the likes of google , i don't really like the idea of that, just visited the free parking site can't find any info about the opting out of showing address on the whois database, or does that option only appear during registration process ?

In reply to a post by tommy45:

It would, but then i would have to be reliant of the likes of google

No, just forward your email to your ISP address.

In reply to a post by tommy45:

does that option only appear during registration process ?

It certainly does with Heart Internet.