Who will forward my mail?

December 27, 2005 8:25 AM

I want to forward mail from "mydomain.com" to "mycurrentisp.com" forever. I'm currently using MailShell to do this but they seem to suffer performance problems. What's the best way to accomplish this?

I have my own domain name so thats no problem. I want to use a desktop client (Mac Mail, Thunderbird) and not have any relay trouble based on the SMTP server in question. If I move or change ISP's I don't want any trouble.

I suppose I would like web access to my mail. Mailshell actually works fairly nicely with disposable addresses, spam filtering etc. I'm due for a renewal in a bit and they are looking for $50/yr. Is there a better solution out there? I don't need webhosting but if the solution comes as part of a package that would be fine

posted by dhacker to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

I've used DynDNS's services for years and been very happy with them, both for quality of service and what they give back to the community for free. They have mail forwarding on a two-tier structure. Same price more or less as who you're using now for unlimited, only $30 a year for 5 addresses.
posted by phearlez at 8:38 AM on December 27, 2005

does the place you're hosting "mydomain.com" at not offer mail forwarding?
posted by slater at 8:47 AM on December 27, 2005

Sign up for a mail forwarding service and set your MX record to point to the mail forwarding server.
posted by delmoi at 8:56 AM on December 27, 2005

Response by poster: "mydomain.com" is hosted at MailShell. They are only doing email, no webhosting.
posted by dhacker at 9:08 AM on December 27, 2005

This all seems needlessly complicated to me. Why do you want to forward your email away from your domain? One of the many advantages of having your own domain is that you can check your email from anywhere, and you can change ISP's without changing your domain.

If the issue is that MailShell isn't accepting SMTP connections from your ISP, then you need a new mail provider. Ditto web access. Mail is a total commodity these days- is spam that much of a problem for you? I get over 200 spam messages a day, and the junk rules on my domain host (Dreamhost) and desktop client take care of it all.
posted by mkultra at 9:22 AM on December 27, 2005

Who did you register mydomain.com with? GoDaddy offers email hosting/forwarding for free, as do many other domain name providers. Joker is another that does, I believe.
posted by twiggy at 9:28 AM on December 27, 2005

Oh and I should add that since your concern is performance problems, those will become irrelevant when it's your domain name provider, because if they're hosed, so is your domain anyway even if your mail host is up.
posted by twiggy at 9:29 AM on December 27, 2005

Response by poster: A few years ago there were no GoDaddy's or Jokers around doing this so MailShell was a good option.

Today, the landscape has obviously changed. I see that GoDaddy offers a service that makes sense. Of course, like many ISP's, lots of folks don't like GoDaddy. Any other good services out there that will do this?

I already have another domain at DreamHost so perhaps some consolidation is in the works.
posted by dhacker at 9:41 AM on December 27, 2005

GoDaddy has gone down hill a bit lately. They started providing their own DNS hosting for free, but its FUBAR'd in that it doesn't support DNS wildcards, so you need to go in and manually add hosts. They also don't let you use any random name server like they used too, so you can't just type in any machine running bind as your name server and wait for it to work. They ALSO put up a goofy spam site on your domain until you change it. That's probably the most aggravating.
posted by delmoi at 10:23 AM on December 27, 2005

dhacker- If you've already got a Dreamhost account, there's no charge to add another fully-hosted domain onto it. As long as you stay within their storage/bandwidth/email-account constraints, you can pretty much expand all you want.
posted by mkultra at 12:07 PM on December 27, 2005

Yeah - what mkultra said. I had to read the question several times to make sure I understood -- in most situations, people forward their ISP mail to the mydomain.com address.
posted by davidmsc at 4:48 PM on December 27, 2005

Directnic is the domain registrar I use, and it allows all kinds of eclectic e-mail forwarding.
posted by megatherium at 5:19 PM on December 27, 2005

Anywhere you register your domain allows forwarding. They've done this for years. Don't believe people mentioning certain registrars means anything. They ALL do it.

That's all you asked for, and what you asked for is simple. Half of the responses here are making it much more complicated than it is.
posted by justgary at 10:12 PM on December 27, 2005

Does GoDaddy still offer free mail forwarding?
posted by dance at 7:57 PM on February 24, 2006