Switching ISP - what happens to email addresses?

br1anstorm

I have browsed the forums but have not found a full answer to this key question:

What happens to your ISP-provided email addresses when you switch provider?

Most people - like me - probably use the email address(es) provided when you sign up with an ISP. In my case, I have several webmail accounts (Gmail, GMX and others) which I use for certain things like online shopping. But I have been with Plusnet for many years and have used my Plusnet address as the main contact email for most purposes.

I am now considering switching ISP. Will I lose the associated email addresses? If so, I am not sure that the financial gain is worth the pain. It's not so much the aggro and uncertainty of the changeover, though that is a worry. It is the massively daunting task of having to notify all my contacts if I have to change the email address they use to reach me.

There is an additional wrinkle. I am looking at switching from Plusnet to John Lewis Broadband - which is provided by Plusnet. So it's like an "in-house" transfer. In that situation, is it possible, or easier, to retain the Plusnet addresses? Or do they have to be converted/replaced by @johnlewis ones?

It appears that some ISPs - like BT - allow leavers to keep their BT email addresses on payment of a fee (amount not clear, nor whether this is a recurrent annual charge or a one-off). TalkTalk keeps email accounts going for a year before closing them. I have seen a forum post which says that Plusnet shuts down email accounts as soon as a customer leaves.

Is there a reliable authoritative list of what the various ISPs do with email accounts when people leave on switching? What options are available for keeping existing email addresses?

Neil_Jones

Nine times out of ten it will go. This is why its generally recommended to use another provider that isn't ISP dependent (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail etc) because you can shift providers until the cows come home and it won't affect that address.

BT is generally the exception to the rule, sometimes Sky if you keep another element of their services but the majority of the others will wipe your address when you leave them.

[Deleted User]

Plusnet will let you keep your existing email address for a small monthly fee (£1.06 per month according to this thread https://community.plus.net/t5/Email/If-I-switch-ISP-can-I-keep-my-Plusnet-email-address/td-p/1540114 )
Otherwise it is all deleted when you stop paying for your broadband. Nothing is transferred to John Lewis or anyone else.

br1anstorm

Thanks, gsmlnx, the info in that link is really useful in my specific circumstances.

£1.06 per month to keep the Plusnet email account active if I leave. That's £12.72 a year. And presumably some risk of gradual increases over time.

Makes the arithmetic of switching look slightly less appealing if part of the saving gained from going to a new ISP is then spent on keeping your old email account alive!

One obvious way forward, as many have commented in other threads, is to abandon the ISP-linked email account(s) entirely and rely entirely on webmail - Gmail, Yahoo, GMX or whoever. That just puts you at the mercy of the webmail provider (and how many of them have ceased in past years?); and I also find the intrusiveness of Google and the ad-festooned screens of such as Yahoo really irritating.

Ah well, there's clearly no ideal solution. I'll take a close look at my contacts list/address book to gauge how much of a headache it would be to change my main email contact address. I might also look at what's involved in getting a dedicated domain address. But that, as they say, is another story!

iniltous

br1anstorm wrote: »

Thanks, gsmlnx, the info in that link is really useful in my specific circumstances.

£1.06 per month to keep the Plusnet email account active if I leave. That's £12.72 a year. And presumably some risk of gradual increases over time.

Makes the arithmetic of switching look slightly less appealing if part of the saving gained from going to a new ISP is then spent on keeping your old email account alive!

One obvious way forward, as many have commented in other threads, is to abandon the ISP-linked email account(s) entirely and rely entirely on webmail - Gmail, Yahoo, GMX or whoever. That just puts you at the mercy of the webmail provider (and how many of them have ceased in past years?); and I also find the intrusiveness of Google and the ad-festooned screens of such as Yahoo really irritating.

Ah well, there's clearly no ideal solution. I'll take a close look at my contacts list/address book to gauge how much of a headache it would be to change my main email contact address. I might also look at what's involved in getting a dedicated domain address. But that, as they say, is another story!

It's a truism in general, but , IMHO, more so when it comes to anything in this information technology area, and that is there is no such thing as a free lunch, if a company is giving you a 'free' email service, it presumably is on the understanding that any sellable/usable data they can gleen from your account is available to them as 'payment' for this free service ( why else would they supply something that obviously costs them money for them to then supply it to you for 'free')
Granted that some will argue that it's the same with an ISP provided email , and that they get 'paid' twice, from your subscription and from your 'data', but which business model is more dependent on that element, so which is more likely to proactively 'mine' this data ?

Inner_Zone

I have been using Yahoo and Hotmail for over twenty five years, don't think either is going anywhere soon.


If you don't like adverts use a e-mail client like Thunderbird.


Yahoo also offer a ad free web based service for $20 (approx £16) per year if you want web based.


Alternatively you could set up your own domain and e-mail for probably less.

[Deleted User]

I have used my own domain name since 2003 and just point it to an email host provider. If they go out of business, I'll just point it to another provider.
Also have throw away accounts at gmail, hotmail, yahoo for the sites where you must provide an email address but don't trust them not to share the address.
Figured out on that ISP email accounts were a bad idea, well it took 4 ISP changes to learn the lesson as I used to change ISPs too regularly in the last century and early this one.

br1anstorm

Some food for thought in those further replies. Thanks to all....

On email, webmail and ads, Inner Zone, at the moment I route my Plusnet account emails via Thunderbird, but access my Gmail, Yahoo, etc messages via their websites and my browser. I suppose I could route them all through Thunderbird....

This discussion has led me to think a bit more about having my own domain name, in the same way and for the same reasons as gsmlx. Until now I had thought that this was only worth doing if you were running a business, not simply for personal/home use. Setting up a domain raises all sorts of other questions - like which domain provider/registrar to use and what the costs are. But maybe that deserves a separate, new thread?

[Deleted User]

Never use ISP provided emails.

You’ll lose them when you change provider or you have to pay to keep the email address after.

And considering they are hosted on a gmail or yahoo mail platform you might as well sign up with them directly.

Or pay for your own domain name to host your emails.

esuhl

br1anstorm wrote: »

This discussion has led me to think a bit more about having my own domain name, in the same way and for the same reasons as gsmlx. Until now I had thought that this was only worth doing if you were running a business, not simply for personal/home use. Setting up a domain raises all sorts of other questions - like which domain provider/registrar to use and what the costs are. But maybe that deserves a separate, new thread?

I've used 123-reg and 1&1. Currently it's around £12 a year for a .co.uk domain name (much more expensive than it used to be ), but new customers often get a year free or some other discount.

https://www.123-reg.co.uk/domain-names/register-co-uk-domains/

https://www.ionos.co.uk/domains/domain-names

Getting a domain name is a good way of ensuring that you'll never need to change your email address again!

J_B

We used Onetel.com as our ISP in the mid 2000's and had 3 email addresses with them.
Although we left them in 2006 (?) all the email addresses still work!!!