More email woes

Takedap

I've started a couple of other threads regarding my email needs & can't come up with a proper solution so it looks like I'm going to have to go down a different route.

In summary, I'm about to drop BT as my ISP. I'm moving to a local wireless provider who can give decent speeds but doesn't supply an email account.

The current BT account gives me several addresses which I can use for different family members & different sorts of stuff, ie I can have accounts that I don't mind getting full of spam coz I can just delete them & start again.

I was told if I bought a domain name, I could use this & set up multiple addresses to use. Unfortunately it looks like I can only use these addresses to have mail forwarded to me & not to be able to send. (People can send to the addresses but I can't reply from them)

I've found that I can use the domain name to receive @domainname addressed email (forwarded from Easily) but there is no way of sending using those addresses.

I've asked the domain name supplier (Easily) if I took out one of their mail accounts, could I use the multiple addresses for sending as well as receiving. The answer seems to be that I would only be able to send from the primary address associated with the mail account.

If I wanted to send from more that one address, I would need more than one account.

Is this correct? If so, are there any other providers who can help me?

I know I could use Gmail or GMX but I want to use personal sounding addresses, not name638@gmail or some such.

At the moment, it seems that the only option might be to keep the BT emails open but they are charging £1.60 a month to do that. OK, not a fortune but I'd rather dump BT altogether if I can.

Cycrow

Most email servers let you send out mail from any address you specify.

so you can forward mail from your own domain to another server, then use that server to send out mail, setting your reply address to your own domain.

some servers dont allow this, but most do.

you can also add a custom domain to gmail and use it that way.

psychic_teabag

Having a domain name doesn't necessarily give you access to server computers to actually route mail. Google etc do provide smtp servers that can route outgoing mail, but because they have to be very careful about not being a source of spam, they generally only allow the outgoing mail to be from a registered account.

In fact, mail headers allow separate From: and Sender: headers, so that they can record which registered account actually sent the mail, but the From: string could be anything. The important thing is that there is some accountability / traceability back to the responsible sender. I reported in another thread (perhaps one of yours) about experiments with google server, and when it rewrote the sender address.

For outgoing email, you don't *have* to use an ISP's email router : you could just run the smtp protocol and connect directly to the destination machine, either directly on your pc, or on a dedicated mail server of your own (eg an always-on raspberry pi). The internet is supposed to be a level playing field. Search for "direct send". Note, however, that that mail might be rejected if coming from a machine with no dns entry (to avoid spam). Since you have your own domain name, you may be able to get this working with a static IP address.

Takedap

Thanks for taking the time to reply. However, you've gone a long way above any level of "expertise" that I may have. Would it be OK to send a PM as I have a suggestion which may avoid a lot of "to-ing & fro-ing" between us?

psychic_teabag wrote: »

Having a domain name doesn't necessarily give you access to server computers to actually route mail. Google etc do provide smtp servers that can route outgoing mail, but because they have to be very careful about not being a source of spam, they generally only allow the outgoing mail to be from a registered account.

In fact, mail headers allow separate From: and Sender: headers, so that they can record which registered account actually sent the mail, but the From: string could be anything. The important thing is that there is some accountability / traceability back to the responsible sender. I reported in another thread (perhaps one of yours) about experiments with google server, and when it rewrote the sender address.

For outgoing email, you don't *have* to use an ISP's email router : you could just run the smtp protocol and connect directly to the destination machine, either directly on your pc, or on a dedicated mail server of your own (eg an always-on raspberry pi). The internet is supposed to be a level playing field. Search for "direct send". Note, however, that that mail might be rejected if coming from a machine with no dns entry (to avoid spam). Since you have your own domain name, you may be able to get this working with a static IP address.

psychic_teabag

Takedap wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to reply. However, you've gone a long way above any level of "expertise" that I may have. Would it be OK to send a PM as I have a suggestion which may avoid a lot of "to-ing & fro-ing" between us?

yeah, PM is fine.

psychic_teabag

Takedap wrote: »

I've asked the domain name supplier (Easily) if I took out one of their mail accounts, could I use the multiple addresses for sending as well as receiving. The answer seems to be that I would only be able to send from the primary address associated with the mail account.

If I wanted to send from more that one address, I would need more than one account.

You could ask Easily if it's sufficient to have a Sender: field with the single authorized account, and then have a From: field with different accounts within the same domain.

That seems to be how gmail implements the rules : if you authenticate with the smtp server using one gmail account, but have a From field with a different gmail account, it adds a Sender: field storing the authenticating account. But if you use a completely different From: field, it will rename it to something like X-original-from: and then set the From: field to be the authenticating account.

esuhl

The only difficulty with sending mail from your domain name address is in finding an SMTP server that will allow you to authenticate when you use your domain name in the "from" field of the email.

I simply asked my previous ISP to allow me to send from my domain, and they added my new email addresses to the list of "valid" senders. With my current ISP, I had to log on to their webmail (which I never otherwise use) and add my new email address.

The outcome is that people send me emails to me@mydomain.co.uk. They get forwarded to a free GMX account (user123@gmx.co.uk). When I reply to the emails, the "from" field is automatically set to me@mydomain.co.uk.

So, my correspondents only know about my domain address. They send messages to it, and receive replies from it. My GMX address doesn't appear anywhere, as far as they see it.