Emails

moonpenny

I am thinking of moving broadband from bt to plusnet and have a bt email account which i presume i will not be able to keep.

I am not familiar with email accounts outside of my broadband provider so can someone advise on this please.

I only know of gmail but don't use it, what others are there.
I might just set up the email with plusnet but if I want to move again it is a faff.

Neil_Jones

You may be able to keep it if you pay BT money, though whether this is worth it in the long term is up to you.

Other better known email providers are Outlook (previously called Hotmail), Gmail, Yahoo Mail and iCloud (if you have an Apple device). Then there's a list of others such as Hushmail, Protonmail and the temporary email providers.

The advantage of a Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account is its not tied to your provider so you can move providers and keep that email address, whereas one you set up with Plusnet will vanish when you move away from them. The only caveat with Outlook/Yahoo (and to a lesser extent Gmail) is that you have to sign in once every 270 days otherwise you'll lose the account.

chib

I'd recommend making the switch to a dedicated and free email provider like those mentioned, I've been using Gmail since the invite only days in 2005 and still enjoy it but have experienced and enjoy the Outlook interface also.

It may be a little bit of a nuisance to move, but you can then freely change ISP without this being a consideration.

moonpenny

Thanks for the advice. I will look into what's been advised.

mgfvvc

Neil_Jones wrote: »

The advantage of a Gmail/Outlook/Yahoo account is its not tied to your provider so you can move providers and keep that email address, whereas one you set up with Plusnet will vanish when you move away from them. The only caveat with Outlook/Yahoo (and to a lesser extent Gmail) is that you have to sign in once every 270 days otherwise you'll lose the account.

You are also totally at the mercy of the freemail providers. If they decide you've done something wrong they can shut down your account at a moments notice with no appeal. That would be very rare, but has happened to people.

They can also shut down services and force you to move your email address to another of their domains. That's more of a risk with smaller/declining providers.

Getting any sort of customer service on a service you don't pay for can be challenging.

You have a bit more control if you buy your own domain. It doesn't cost a lot (I pay about £15 per year) and the main risk is if you forget to renew.

http://www.virtualnames.co.uk/email_services.php

Neil_Jones

Be that as it may, you get what you pay for. I would probably expect better customer service from the ISP (some of whom use repackaged platforms that are the same as what I've already mentioned - Sky use or used to use Yahoo Mail as its base program for email and BT were using Hotmail-style interfaces and/or Yahoo Mail when they decided to migrate users).

Of course Outlook is powered by Microsoft and its fairly reliable. Yahoo, when they aren't rebuilding their reputation, tends to be hit and miss some days. Google and Gmail is supposedly solid but of course the same account can be used for all Google's services, not just the mail. Microsoft do similar where your Hotmail/Outlook address can be used for hundreds of other things.