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July 21, 2011 7:24 AM   Subscribe

How can I change the manner in which I handle my e-addressing needs: 1. email address forwarding, 2. a couple of domains, where all I need is registration and the DNS mapping?

I currently use pobox.com ($26/year) for an email forwarding service, and GoDaddy (<$10/domain, but run by a jerkhole) for DNS.

pobox.com provides me an email forwarding service, basically so I can receive emails sent to my "lifetime email address", let's call it m.c.@mcstayinskool.com, in e.g. my gmail inbox. It's a very good service and just works, but perhaps slightly spendy for what it is.

I have GoDaddy handling my domain registration, one of which is the domain of that lifetime email address described above. The only thing GoDaddy provides for me is registration and a place for me to tell DNS server what my IP address is for each domain (I have 4). I handle hosting on my own. GoDaddy has been fine, though their interface is crap and hawkish douchebag founder Bob Parsons worse.

I'm generally happy with everything, save Bob Parson's politics, but have this nagging suspicion I could be getting all these two services in one place, and cheaper.

Is there a better way to do this? Cheaper than what I have now is better, but consolidated, and not-GoDaddy, is really the goal.
posted by mcstayinskool to Technology (9 answers total)
 
Did you look at Gandi?
posted by devnull at 7:42 AM on July 21, 2011


Oops better link.
posted by devnull at 7:45 AM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: Thanks /dev/null, that appears to be very close, but afaict it means your email is managed by gandi, rather than an email forwarding service like pobox.com. That may not be a dealbreaker though, thanks for the pointer.
posted by mcstayinskool at 8:16 AM on July 21, 2011


Best answer: Gandi can do mail forwarding for your own domains.

I would personally use Gandi for the domain and DNS, and something else for the rest. Maybe Google Apps for e-mail. Then you could have your Google Apps account fetch all your other e-mail accounts too. Good luck!
posted by devnull at 8:58 AM on July 21, 2011


I wouldn't combine them but is there a reason you're not just using Google Apps + whatever non-Godaddy place you prefer for domain + DNS?
posted by turkeyphant at 12:51 PM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: I'm already in the process of moving to Gandi, thanks for the advice devnull.

I want the personalized email address that goes along with the domain, but want it to exist as an email forwarding service, particularly (right now) so I can push it on to a gmail address.

It's a little anal-retentive, but the goal is to have a lifetime email address that exists at an abstraction layer above, thus has no true reliance on an email service. Even gmail is not forever. I'm still slightly cloudy reading the Gandi doc linked above, but it certainly appears this should work fine. If not, at least I ditched GoDaddy for DNS :)
posted by mcstayinskool at 2:23 PM on July 21, 2011


I have my domains at namecheap.com and forward email to gmail just fine. I'm not sure what you'd need pobox for. However, I'm not really doing any hosting, just email forwarding. I do have some DNS entries there for my home network but that's about it.
posted by chairface at 4:48 PM on July 21, 2011


Response by poster: Follow-up: I'm now successfully managing my domain through Gandi, and I've setup my DNS there to push all email to gmail servers. This is different than mail forwarding, where email would be managed by one party and forwarded to another party. Good instructions for managing your domain's email can be found here
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:28 AM on August 22, 2011


Response by poster: managing your domain's email _with gmail_, that is
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:28 AM on August 22, 2011


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