Help getting my head around free email solutions with my own domain name

[pullman]

Hello everybody

I signed up with InMotion last year but decided to use Squarespace for my photo portfolio, meaning that the name servers (I think it is called) point to a Squarespace site.

I kept InMotion because I wish to be able to use my own domain for my two email addresses.

Squarespace only offers GSuite which is 5 USD/month. My domain is registered with another registrar than InMotion but I've had the domain for 17 years and would like to keep it.

What I am wondering is if there is a way for me to get email with my own domain without being registered with InMotion, and then for free?

Thank you very much in advance
Philip

 

[McGiord]

I'm investigation for a similar reason, to get a domain and email accounts. So far I only had seen these:

https://domains.google
https://www.godaddy.com

I appreciate any suggestions, and if other members here can tell us on their experiences with these or any other. Thanks

 

[pullman]

I suggest you search for web hosting reviews. I went with InMotion and have been happy. Fast customer support and SSDs on all servers. But there are many others, and it depends on what you need the site for.

But we're not looking for the same thing, though. I have a domain, site and hosting. I'm specifically looking for a separate email solution using my own domain name without any other hosting than Squarespace. So perhaps best to start your own thread so we can keep this one email-specific?

br
philip

I'm investigation for a similar reason, to get a domain and email accounts. So far I only had seen these:

https://domains.google
https://www.godaddy.com

I appreciate any suggestions, and if other members here can tell us on their experiences with these or any other. Thanks

 

[BrianBaughn]

You're not going to find anyone that will host your domain name email for free, I'm pretty sure. Google used to do it but not anymore.

GSuite (Google) is fine for hosting. Other, comparably priced popular options are Microsoft's Exchange hosting ($4/mo) and Fastmail ($5/mo).

With any of those services you can leave your domains where they are. You can transfer your domains registrar to anyone you like in case you feel like you're being overcharged by your current one.

 

[pullman]

Thanks Brian, I appreciate your reply. I guess it could be worth it, then, to add 60 bucks annually for domain-specific email.

br
Philip

You're not going to find anyone that will host your domain name email for free, I'm pretty sure. Google used to do it but not anymore.

GSuite (Google) is fine for hosting. Other, comparably priced popular options are Microsoft's Exchange hosting ($4/mo) and Fastmail ($5/mo).

With any of those services you can leave your domains where they are. You can transfer your domains registrar to anyone you like in case you feel like you're being overcharged by your current one.

 

[IHelpId10t5]

You're not going to find anyone that will host your domain name email for free, I'm pretty sure. Google used to do it but not anymore.

GSuite (Google) is fine for hosting. Other, comparably priced popular options are Microsoft's Exchange hosting ($4/mo) and Fastmail ($5/mo).

With any of those services you can leave your domains where they are. You can transfer your domains registrar to anyone you like in case you feel like you're being overcharged by your current one.

BrianBaughn gives you good advice. There is no such thing as free email that you really want. If email through your domain is important to you (it should be) then you should be willing to pay a reasonable amount for modern, reliable email. The easy solutions are either through Google or Microsoft. Both provide relatively inexpensive business services that allow you to associate your domain name with their email services. Both have easy to follow instructions for configuring your MX records and even for setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for spoofing protection. Using either Google or Microsoft will give you reliable and modern email with great anti-spam tools.

 

[pullman]

Thank you very much. Perhaps just one follow-up query regarding which of Google and Microsoft would be the best from my perspective. I have used Gmail for many years to check my domain as well as my @me.com email addresses. I have roughtly two decades' worth of emails uploaded to Gmail so that would speak in favour of using GSuite, I guess? Or is there an easy way to migrate to the Microsoft service (provided that one offers something useful that GSuite doesn't)?

Thank you kindly in advance
Philip

BrianBaughn gives you good advice. There is no such thing as free email that you really want. If email through your domain is important to you (it should be) then you should be willing to pay a reasonable amount for modern, reliable email. The easy solutions are either through Google or Microsoft. Both provide relatively inexpensive business services that allow you to associate your domain name with their email services. Both have easy to follow instructions for configuring your MX records and even for setting up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for spoofing protection. Using either Google or Microsoft will give you reliable and modern email with great anti-spam tools.

 

[CaptainCaveman]

Hosting your website and your mail with different places shouldn't be a problem, just a matter of configuring the nameservers. If you absolutely need it to be free, Zoho offers a free tier of mail hosting, but I wouldn't recommend it. When I tried it, one of the accounts would not get mail from some senders with no indication on either side that messages were being dropped. (The sender would not get a bounceback.)

https://www.zoho.com/workplace/pricing.html?src=zmail

Right now I'm using http://www.mxroute.com and have been pretty happy with them. They have different plans but your best bet is the promo that I think is still active, $40/2 years https://billing.mxroute.com/announcements.php?id=81

(I'm not affiliated with mxroute in anyway, just a satisfied customer. I ended up switching to them last year after going through trying to find a decent mail host at a good price like you're doing now.)

As far as exporting your e-mail from GMail, if you have IMAP enabled, you should be able to use an IMAP client to download everything, then upload it to the new host. There are also utilities for doing that but I've always done it manually.

 

[BrianBaughn]

BitTitan has an email migration service. You give them the credentials for both accounts and they move all mail and folders. Last time I checked it they charged $15. Next time I move myself or anyone else I'm using them.

 

[Floris]

I'm investigation for a similar reason, to get a domain and email accounts. So far I only had seen these:

https://domains.google
https://www.godaddy.com

I appreciate any suggestions, and if other members here can tell us on their experiences with these or any other. Thanks

I honestly am going out of my way just to tell you to avoid godaddy if you are serious about your domain.
And that's a 12+ year experience opinion. Sure, sales and doing "the default" stuff with it will work fine, you will go 'whats the fuzz about'. But then you need to do something that matters, and you will regret ignoring the suggestion to avoid them.

 

[IHelpId10t5]

Thank you very much. Perhaps just one follow-up query regarding which of Google and Microsoft would be the best from my perspective. I have used Gmail for many years to check my domain as well as my @me.com email addresses. I have roughtly two decades' worth of emails uploaded to Gmail so that would speak in favour of using GSuite, I guess? Or is there an easy way to migrate to the Microsoft service (provided that one offers something useful that GSuite doesn't)?

Thank you kindly in advance
Philip

Consider the products like Office 365 Business Premium (https://products.office.com/en-us/compare-all-microsoft-office-products?tab=2) vs. G Suite (https://gsuite.google.com/pricing.html?tab_activeEl=tabset-companies). If you already like Google's offerings then that may sway you that way. However, consider that with Office 365 you also get the local Office suite to install as well.

As far as migration, just make sure that you keep both old and new mail hosts active for a while (overlap in time). You can then add both your old and new email accounts to an IMAP client and then drag and drop email from one to the other to migrate all messages. If you use Outlook, you could also use a local PST file as well for migration.

For an excellent domain registrar, Gandi.net is one of the best.

 

[kiwipeso1]

Hello everybody

I signed up with InMotion last year but decided to use Squarespace for my photo portfolio, meaning that the name servers (I think it is called) point to a Squarespace site.

I kept InMotion because I wish to be able to use my own domain for my two email addresses.

Squarespace only offers GSuite which is 5 USD/month. My domain is registered with another registrar than InMotion but I've had the domain for 17 years and would like to keep it.

What I am wondering is if there is a way for me to get email with my own domain without being registered with InMotion, and then for free?

Thank you very much in advance
Philip

I use the following method for my personal domain name :

I point the domain name MX record (mail record) to a gmail account.
I then use that gmail account with filters to create unlimited virtual email accounts on the domain name.
Which means I have a free group of email accounts which point at a single gmail account.
I don't pay anything for the unlimited email aliases, of which they are all set to reply from addressed email.

 

[BrianBaughn]

I use the following method for my personal domain name :

I point the domain name MX record (mail record) to a gmail account.

How, specifically, are you doing this? I understand that I can forward my email from the free, limited account provided by my domain host (if it's provided) to a regular Gmail account and do all the rest that you describe but I'm not understanding the MX forwarding of a domain name to a regular Gmail account.

 

[kiwipeso1]

How, specifically, are you doing this? I understand that I can forward my email from the free, limited account provided by my domain host (if it's provided) to a regular Gmail account and do all the rest that you describe but I'm not understanding the MX forwarding of a domain name to a regular Gmail account.

The MX record is able to either use an IP address, or any email address.
All that I do is point the MX record to my regular gmail account, and set the gmail account to filter based on incoming addresses.
That then lets me reply from that address as if it exists as a regular email address.
There is a minor setup in the settings under filters which lets you reply from any email address by confirming that you have it with a password, however as any email address on my domain name comes back through my gmail, it is trivial to wait for the email address confirmation.

So effectively with that specific domain name, instead of pointing it to my server, I just point it to my private gmail which is not used for anything other than the domain name.
That does what I need for personal email without on device storage.

 

[BrianBaughn]

The MX record is able to either use an IP address, or any email address.

That's interesting. I wonder if that ability depends on the domain host.

 

[hughm123]

That's interesting. I wonder if that ability depends on the domain host.

Don't think this is true.

Standard SMTP, at least, expects MX records to point to domain names (e.g. foo.gmail.com) not email addresses. And the SMTP server (e.g. foo.gmail.com) needs to be configured to know that it's supposed to accept email for yourdomain.com. Certainly in the past and apparently still in the RFCs there's no reference to MX being an email address, and since this would require changing existing email servers I would not expect it to be supported.

More specifically, if you expect *.gmail.com to accept email for your domain then you need to have GMail configure this, which they may ask for a paid subscription to enable.

FWIW for the original questioner - I personally use fastmail.com who seem to give good service for a reasonable price.

 

[fig]

The 4 bucks for Gmail is some of the best money I spent every month. Super easy to do, your webhost should be able to walk you through it if needed.

 

[jtara]

Email, domain registration, web hosting, and DNS are all completely separate things. And I like to keep them separate!

Currently, I use Moniker for domain registration, DNS Made Easy for DNS, Rackspace for email (I know strange, but they bought a company who bought a company that was my email provider years ago...), and Linode for web hosting.

If you want a custom domain, you need an email service that will allow it. Then you configure MX records on your DNS host as others have mentioned.

I STRONGLY urge people to use separate companies for each role, if there is anything critical or of economic interest. It gives you wiggle room to get out of potential binds. e.g. what happens if your: web host, email host, DNS provider, or registrar goes out of business? ALL have happened, and the registrar case in particular gets pretty sticky and can take months to sort-out. But if you keep the roles separate you have options, and can minimize the impact.

 

[jeremysteele]

The MX record is able to either use an IP address, or any email address.
All that I do is point the MX record to my regular gmail account, and set the gmail account to filter based on incoming addresses.
.

yeah, that definitely isn't a thing. MX points to an A record (hostname) which points to the mailserver's IP.

More than likely your domain registrar offers free email forwarders which you have setup to point to gmail (probably as a catchall, so it includes all of the domain's email) - that would behave similarly to what you described.

For the OP - I use namecheap for a lot of my domains. On a couple of them I use their private email service (~$10 a year per account). Haven't noticed any major issues in the past year or so.

 

[kiwipeso1]

Don't think this is true.

Standard SMTP, at least, expects MX records to point to domain names (e.g. foo.gmail.com) not email addresses. And the SMTP server (e.g. foo.gmail.com) needs to be configured to know that it's supposed to accept email for yourdomain.com. Certainly in the past and apparently still in the RFCs there's no reference to MX being an email address, and since this would require changing existing email servers I would not expect it to be supported.

More specifically, if you expect *.gmail.com to accept email for your domain then you need to have GMail configure this, which they may ask for a paid subscription to enable.

FWIW for the original questioner - I personally use fastmail.com who seem to give good service for a reasonable price.

It only depends on your domain name registrar, it does not depend on passing money to gmail for no reason at all.
However, as I only have been doing this for the last 7 years, clearly I'll take the advice of a newbie who is speculating

 

[jeremysteele]

It only depends on your domain name registrar, it does not depend on passing money to gmail for no reason at all.
However, as I only have been doing this for the last 7 years, clearly I'll take the advice of a newbie who is speculating

MX must point to an A record. (link to one rfc). This is part of the DNS standards... it is not a registrar thing.

As I posted prior - you are probably doing email forwarding through your registrar - which is completely different than "pointing an mx record to an email address".

Forwarding is a perfectly valid way of using your own domain on other services. However, sending email through forwarded domains can cause issues if your records are not setup correctly (spf, etc).