I'm thinking of buying a domain to use as an email forwarding address. Prob .uk or .scot. Thing is I've never bought a domain before and have no idea what I'm doing or who to get it from. Anyone got any advice? #deletegoogle
@domketley You'll need (1) to buy a domain name and (2) to host DNS somewhere and (3) to host your emails somewhere
Most places do all three, but you might have to pay for each one separately.
If you buy a domain, they'll put your real postal address on the public whois database, unless you get privacy protection. Privacy protection is often free (eg: dreamhost) or the only option (eg: mythic beasts) or it might be an optional extra (f'king godaddy). You should probably check!
@h2g2bob
This is all somewhat more urgent since I changed my Google password to something pleasingly random but somehow mucked up saving it to my password manager. At that point I discovered my backup email was pointing at a now non-existent hotmail address. Oops. At least I still have access on my phone for now...
@domketley Oh, wow! Perhaps make a filter that matches everything and forwards it to a new email address?
@h2g2bob
That's the plan, coupled with an autoreply with the new address.
@h2g2bob
I want to migrate off Google anyway. It's mostly annoying as I won't be able to delete my account. I *think* I can get them to autodelete it after a period of inactivity but not sure.
@domketley Fastmail looks like a good choice. You should be able to get a domain from anyone and set the MX record to, um, whatever fastmail tells you to?
Afaict, everyone who sells you a domain also does free dns hosting? Looks like gandi does: https://docs.gandi.net/en/domain_names/common_operations/dns_records.html
I'm pretty sure mythic beasts and dreamhost do too
@h2g2bob
Thanks. You've been a great help :-)
@domketley No probs 👍
@domketley I've had experience with:
dreamhost: buy domain, buy website hosting. Email is free with the website hosting. Large boring company doing a good job.
mythic beasts. Buy domain, buy hosting. Small company, loves IPv6, good customer service.
Both of these have crappy webmail interfaces, so forward using POP/SMTP to proper clients.
Gandi and Dnsimple also have a good reputation for domains, but don't do hosting.
There's probably companies which just do email, but not tried them.
@h2g2bob
Thanks! Thinking of Fastmail for (3) but the domain is key so I don't have to get my contacts to update their address books more than once...
I'll have a look at the two non-godaddy domain providers you mentioned.