Email address on my own domain - good idea or not?

January 26, 2017 7:25 AM

I've had a Yahoo email address for umpteen years and am thinking of changing given how down-the-tubes Yahoo is going. I do have a Gmail address, but the Yahoo is monoblanco@ whereas the Gmail is a hard-to-remember monoblanco304567@ because some other monoblanco got there first. I also own the domain monoblanco.com so I could be [e-mail]. That'd be neat! But what about spam filters and is Gmail so much superior that I should just suck it up and accept that I can't be plain-vanilla monoblanco any more?
posted by mono blanco to Computers & Internet (24 answers total)

Best answer: Best of both worlds: just have the self-hosted email address forward to Gmail. You can also reply from it within Gmail. Forwarding is usually a pretty easily-findable option in your hosting control panel.
posted by supercres at 7:31 AM on January 26, 2017 [6 favorites]

I have Google administer (not sure that is the correct term) my domain for email. Works exactly as gmail does. In fact, my login page is a gmail login. I get all the spam filters and features of gmail as well as most other google products.

As for whether GMail is superior, superior to what? I have used GMail and Google for my Domain since 2005. I like it. It works well. However, I am sure there are other email providers out there that can do the same. Also, on my phone, I use the gmail app to view, send email from an outlook email addy.
posted by AugustWest at 7:32 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: (You could also be [e-mail]...shorter and easier to remember...mine is "[e-mail]"...one of the perks of being the boss...)
posted by sexyrobot at 7:35 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Seconding that you should use both your Gmail and your domain mail. Yes, Gmail is superior to Yahoo Mail, but it is not perfect. I would not use forwarding from your hosted mail, though. Gmail has options to link the two accounts and pull all the messages into your Inbox. You can also make your domain mail your Reply From address. Gmail can import all of your existing Yahoo Mail (inbox only) and also get any new messages for 30 days, too.
posted by soelo at 7:41 AM on January 26, 2017

I use Gmail with a personal domain. I had signed up for Google Apps for your Domain back when it was free. If I had to pay for it now, I'd probably go with Fastmail.fm. In any case, knowing that I have one email address for the rest of my life without being married to a provider I will inevitably despise is nice.

One downside with having a personal domain that I never would have anticipated is it confuses the hell out of people when you are giving them an email address. People are very accustomed to personal email addresses being @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc, so when I spell out my email address, they invariably try to tack on a @gmail.com and there's a whole back and forth. Something to keep in mind.
posted by AaRdVarK at 7:50 AM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: You can have the email for monoblanco.com hosted by Google if you pay a small subscription and get yourself a business account. That way [e-mail] is a GMail account. It gives you all the benefits of spam filtering and a reliable mail server. That's what I did with my personal domain, anyway. It's what many businesses do. I think it was just a matter of setting up the Google account and then setting the MX records at the domain registrar.
posted by pipeski at 7:50 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

> Best of both worlds: just have the self-hosted email address forward to Gmail. You can also reply from it within Gmail.

Yeah, they stopped you modifying the From: line a while back. Sucks. Existing redirects still work, but for new ones it's whole-domain-or-nothing.
posted by Leon at 7:54 AM on January 26, 2017

I have a gmail I give to businesses, a work email for colleagues, and a separate personal domain email I give to friends. Works great, and I don't have to worry about spam filtering it.
posted by yeolcoatl at 7:56 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Not tried this: How to Get Free Google G Suite Email Account (Google Apps) for Single User

I've got a couple of domains grandfathered in the old Google apps for your domain program, which now has been replaced by the $5/mo paid service. Works exactly like a Gmail account, just has a different name. However, the paid accounts also get real support and significantly more drive storage, enough to be a real back-up solution if your needs aren't huge, docs and photos say. When compared to something like crashplan, $60/yr doesn't sound so bad, plus you get free email. I have/am considering upgrading.
posted by bonehead at 7:57 AM on January 26, 2017

I used to use Google for Domains for my personal email, but I migrated a couple years ago to FastMail, about whom I cannot say enough nice things. They're VERY reasonably priced, and the support is great.

Given what we know now about public email servers, I wouldn't (and don't) suggest folks keep their mail at Gmail.
posted by uberchet at 8:09 AM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

bonehead's link at the bottom notes that that method no longer works, alas.

If you really like Gmail and aren't just tolerating it, I'd just shell out for the paid service. I'm looking at alternatives now because I don't love using Google for everything. But there's a lot of services at that relatively low price point.

Zoho was, last I looked, still free, but I didn't care for their webmail.
posted by Sequence at 8:22 AM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is it just for spam filtering that everyone is suggesting using Gmail or FastMail rather than setting up email via the domain host and configuring the email client of their choice? I am not seeing the benefit otherwise. I have several personal domain addresses that I use daily through Mail.App or an Outlook client and really have no complaints. What goodness am I missing?
posted by bluejayway at 8:31 AM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Not having to pay for a domain host, for one. I don't pay anything but the domain registration for the the domains we have under the Gafyd program mentioned above.

Plus you get the Google interface, which a lot of folks are used to/like.
posted by bonehead at 8:33 AM on January 26, 2017

Is it just for spam filtering that everyone is suggesting using Gmail or FastMail rather than setting up email via the domain host and configuring the email client of their choice?

My domain provider doesn't offer a free email service, it's $5 a month. FastMail is cheaper ($40 a year) and their support team is wonderful.
posted by ndfine at 8:34 AM on January 26, 2017

I have several personal domain addresses that I use daily through Mail.App or an Outlook client and really have no complaints. What goodness am I missing?

Mobile and keeping things appropriately synced between all locations is my reason for not doing this.
posted by Sequence at 8:59 AM on January 26, 2017

I also use Gmail with personal domain emails. An added plus is that I configure Gmail to add labels to emails sent to my various personal domain emails which helps me sort them.
posted by biscotti at 9:10 AM on January 26, 2017

Best answer: I would caution you that mail delivery has changed since the last time you may have been looking at email addresses. I have a personal domain with all of two people using it, so obviously there is no spam originating from that domain. However, when I send mail, it goes through servers that are shared with literally millions of other domains. Some of those domains send spam, and so there is a tendency for crappier email providers (think Comcast) to block indiscriminately, so I can't send an email to people with comcast.net addresses. See my previous question on the subject. So you will probably lose some of the reliability you currently get by having an email from a big provider that ISPs can't afford to blacklist. A longstanding spam-free domain can't get email delivered, but [e-mail] can. This kind of situation is dangerous to the whole concept of an Internet, but it's also very hard to fix. So if you need reliable delivery, you're looking at keeping your existing address or going to a pay service.
posted by wnissen at 9:59 AM on January 26, 2017

I've been using [e-mail], run through gmail, for quite a while now. I'm grandfathered in but would gladly pay the $5/mo that google asks for it.
One nice thing that you can do is set up catchalls and aliases, all of which count as just one $5/mo 'account'.
A catchall will make it so [e-mail] ends up in your inbox—incredibly useful for creating 'multiple' accounts for anti-spam, multiple free trials, or just telling someone to email you at [e-mail], which always gets a good reaction.
Aliases let you send as a different address, which is sometimes useful for shared inboxes and such.
So yeah, I recommend running monoblanco.com mail through GMail (via 'G Suite'). It's worth it.
(Setup is also super easy if you have a decent registrar—just setting up some TXT and MX records in your DNS settings).
posted by daniel striped tiger at 11:36 AM on January 26, 2017

You can forward all mail to Gmail and set up alias' in Gmail so that the return address is [e-mail]. I've been doing this for years, although I just recently switched back to my domain host and Webmail / Thunderbird because Google doesn't need to see every email I send or receive.
posted by COD at 2:21 PM on January 26, 2017

I'm grandfathered into Google For Work (GSuite now) with a cap of 5 users for free. So far only 3 people use the domain, but it was quite simple to setup and if you registered your own domain setting the MX records is fairly easy.
posted by wcfields at 2:42 PM on January 26, 2017

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Pobox (who were recently acquired by FastMail), a specialist email forwarding service, which is probably the simplest and most liberating option. For more information on how to set it up, including how to send as your custom email address in Gmail, Eric Mill's tutorial is easy to follow.
posted by nagemi at 3:59 PM on January 26, 2017 [2 favorites]

Came in also to say park the domain with a Google business account. One of the best features is the one daniel_striped_tiger mentioned above: you can set all email to the domain to forward to your primary account ([e-mail]). This enables you to create throw-away email addresses on the fly and they'll just show up in your inbox. For example, instead of giving Zappos your email address, you can just give them something like [e-mail]. Useful if you are worried about keeping your email address from proliferating. Also, the email addresses you are giving out won't be your actual login ID, which adds some measure of security in the event of a database breach.
posted by kovacs at 7:38 PM on January 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

Have been on G Suite for my (small) firm and its domain for a year. Only complaint is that there's no sync of Outlook categories for calendars or contacts and several other convenient Outlook contact fields.
posted by MattD at 5:31 AM on January 27, 2017

If Google's surveillance bothers you, you might also check out FastMail, which can receive and send email from a given domain you own. Good spam filtering, too.
posted by mark7570 at 11:53 AM on January 28, 2017 [1 favorite]