So I have been using a Sky.com email address for my personal email address, mainly because I have a my.name@ email address so it was easy to remember and Sky were using the Gmail platform so it was a good service, sycned to my phone, ipad etc.

But now Sky have announced they are changing to the Yahoo mail platform which sucks big time.

So I’m looking for a new solution for my home email.

Gmail would be perfect but unfortunately I appear to have a relatively common name so there a no addresses remaining that are sensible an don’t involve a load of numbers or other unprofessional things that would look crappy on a CV and be hard to remember.

So what other options are out there that offer the type of tools given by Gmail? I don’t mind paying a small annual fee but if I’m paying I don’t want my email address to be held hostage by a service provider who can change there service as has now happened with Sky.

Buy a cheap domain name you like, and forward it to a whatever Gmail account you can get.

So, for example, you could buy:

…and set up all email to ‘anythingyoulike’@jamesfletcher.’domain’ to be forwarded to your jfletch2847948437@gmail.com account.

Or just suck it up and stick with Yahoo. How bad can it be?

I’ve had the same Hotmail address since 1992 or so with no issues at all.

Can’t beat gmail. I would rack my brains a bit harder and try to come up with a decent username. Failing that you could purchase your own domain name (so you could be jfletch@whatever.co.uk) for a nominal yearly fee.

Yeah, just think a bit harder about a gmail name. I had to go for

firstnamesurnamemail@gmail.com

It’s what I use on CVs and it’s not stopped me getting work…

At some point I’ll get round to registering a domain name.

My mate with a common name made up a middle initial to get a good Gmail address. Could you make that work?

jxfletch?

Top tip, NEVER use the e-mail address your ISP gives you. I have a selection of e-mail address for various purposes, so I have a choice of yahoo.co.uk, gmail.com and outlook.com. None of these are tied to any particular supplier so in theory can never be lost.

The trouble with going with something like Sky is what happens when you cancel your Sky contract? That and it looks crap if you’re using it on any professional level.

Buy a domain. It’ll cost you about £10 for a year or two. Set up a Google Apps account and use that.

In the meantime you can have your current Sky address forwarded to your nwe one while you phase it out, all under your control.

Fastmail is good. It now costs about $5 per year for a basic account. They have a few different domains to choose, so you can probably find one where your name is available. Or you can buy your own domain and use that.

outlook.com is a million times better than hotmail and as its pretty new you have a good chance of getting your name

I’ve had the same Hotmail address since 1992 or so…

Are you sure about that?! I had one before Microsoft took over which was pretty early on.

Hotmail (officially Microsoft Hotmail, previously Windows Live Hotmail and MSN Hotmail) is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of Windows Live. One of the first web-based email services,[3] it was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as “HoTMaiL“.[4] It was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, and shortly after, it was rebranded as “MSN Hotmail”. The current version was released in 2011.[5]

– Wiki

Buy a domain. It’ll cost you about £10 for a year or two. Set up a Google Apps account and use that.

This is what I did/do. It works really well.

Sadly for you, you can’t – well not for free. As of last month Google apps became a chargeable facility for new sign ups. Still might be worth it though. Or buy a domain and host it through someone like 123-reg.

I went with my own domain. Found the old registration certificate the other day; it’s ten years old.

Has the advantage that with whatever@domainname.com, the ‘whatever’ bit can be tailored to who you give it to. This means that if it gets spammed a) you know where your address was harvested from / sold by, and b) you can assign it to the bitbucket. So for example, the address on my profile here is stw@… and my CV lists work@… (or cv@…, I can’t actually remember now).

Also, of course, it’s provider-independent, so if you change broadband providers you don’t have the hassle of changing every web site login you’ve ever created ever, and password resets going off into the ether to non-existent accounts. Though that said, I use a popular webmail provider for all my web signups (and a separate disposable one for places I don’t really want to give my details to).

Hotmail works for me. Always synced with different mobile platforms, no problems.

The outlook is really nice to use. I managed I get my name as it is still new.

I just registered on Outlook.com seems nice looking. Does it do threaded mails like Gmail and Outlook 2010/365?

outlook.com is a million times better than hotmail and as its pretty new you have a good chance of getting your name

Really? I switched from hotmail so I could get a better name (easier to type on iPhone) but I find it really crap – pages often rendered wrong, etc. What do you like? Maybe I am missing something …

Top tip, NEVER use the e-mail address your ISP gives you. I have a selection of e-mail address for various purposes, so I have a choice of yahoo.co.uk, gmail.com and outlook.com. None of these are tied to any particular supplier so in theory can never be lost.

Sky isn’t really ISP email. Anyone can get a Sky.com email address, not only sky customers. Its just another service from another giant faceless corporation, just like Yahoo, Google or Microsoft. These compaines also can and do make big changes to the service that customers can’t opt out of. The only truly safe way is to disconnect your email address from the service provider by having your own domain.

However that isn’t free.

It’s exactly like Google, because that’s what it is.

Looking at domain names it seems I have to pay a yearly fee.

Is it possible to own a domain name outright? If so how do you go about doing it?

It seems if I’m paying a yearly fee to someone I’m just beholden to them instead of Google or Sky.

Looking at domain names it seems I have to pay a yearly fee.

You can pay for a few years upfront for very little.

Is it possible to own a domain name outright? If so how do you go about doing it?

If you buy one, you do own it outright. You have full control over it, and you can move it from one hosting company to another. Somebody has to provide the infrastructure (DNS etc) to point the mail where it’s supposed to go, that’s what you’re paying for. However, if you leave it unattached to a host it’s like a bike left in the street…

change your name to something obscure? 🙂

change your name to something obscure?

That’s how I got my personalised number plate.

Cheers,

Jamie PN06 UIK

I hire a sub domain for email, so I have firstname@surname.net (I won’t stick it on here as I get enough SPAM as it is).

Got mine from: https://www.hover.com/

What’s wrong with Yahoo?

Syncs to my iPhone & IPad just fine – try the rocketmail.com extension for a better selection of names.

Mate of mine has had (firstname)@rocketmail.com for forever, despite Yshoo’s efforts to deprecate it. I’m shocked they’re still accepting new signups.

Outlook.com and think sideways – we have emails with underscores and hyphens etc in. Works well.

the Yahoo mail platform which sucks big time.

have you actually tried it ? I also have gmail and outlook accounts but yahoo has been my preferred option for 12 years it’s actually very good.

I use yahoo and find it great. Even better with recent interface upgrade.

I have a domain name forwarded to my yahoo account. Filing of both accounts is handled in the yahoo account which is the one i have enabled on my iphone but this means I cant send from the domain account on the phone. Is there any smart way round this problem?

Yahoo mail is bobbins because it doesn’t support IMAP to non mobile devices. So I can sync properly with my phone and tablet but can only use POP3 on my desktop for Outlook. Also from looking at my wife’s account it doesn’t appear to arrange emails by thread which is very 2002.

For me I have two email addresses
One for personal use and the second one for buying items
or giving out to persons I don’t know.
So I can get rid of any spam or adverts after purchasing online.

Both are gmail and wouldn’t bother with hotmail