BT email - am I stuck with it?

a_fierce_bad_rabbit

Had to leave Virginmedia last year due to moving house, only BT in the area so had to change over to them.
I am happy with the broadband, much cheaper and faster than I experienced with Virgin.

However, I am having endless issues with the email.
I opened 4 accounts (one for my self employment/business, one for friends and family, one for online purchasing, etc).
Each and every one of them, even prior to me using them, began to receive a tsunami of spam from day one. Ads for Russian vodka, bogus Amazon purchases and even fake BT emails.
I never had any issues like this in 10 years of using Virgin email.

When I connect my account to my MacBook email software it repeatedly fails (won't accept my email passwords, etc), to the point where I am tired of having to get on the phone to them.

What I want to know is, can I locate another email company to pay for a service similar to the one I had with virgin? I can't currently get rid of my BT broadband but desperately need a decent email company. I would love to be able to use the Virgin one but as far as I know you can't unless you have a broadband set up with them.
I obviously don't want gmail or yahoo, etc, so what are my options?

And advice appreciated. Thanks.

Neil49

Is there any particular reason why you don't want gmail etc? 

Here's a link to various other providers.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-email-provider

Swoosh84

Curious as to why you are wanting to avoid the likes of Gmail and Yahoo? They offer far more features with BT plus they are yours to keep. You will lose your BT email address when you leave unless you pay extra for their additional service.

a_fierce_bad_rabbit

Neil49 said:

Is there any particular reason why you don't want gmail etc? 

Here's a link to various other providers.

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/best-email-provider

Thanks! I noticed this site earlier when doing a bit of googling.
I don't have much experience with gmail, but hear it doesn't get taken seriously/trusted with business related or PayPal stuff?

I have a long standing loathing of anything yahoo related so really wouldn't touch that.

I just want something that will work as well as my virgin mail and that would sync perfectly with my apple software.

I called BT today and told them I cannot access any of my BT emails on any of my devices unless I go through a web browser and log in to BT's clunky, crappy website.
Their reply was 'Bt emails often don't get along with Macs'.

This is pathetic, considering ive been doing that all year and it only became non-functional this week.

[Deleted User]

It is generally best avoiding using ISP provided email accounts anyway as some don't allow continued usage when you change ISP so it does limit options and becomes a pain when you do change supplier. 

I suppose you don't want the likes of Gmail / Yahoo for privacy reasons, they will use your email content for advertising purposes so the likes of Proton Mail is a great alternative for privacy, reasonably priced and is a long time player in the market. You can even have a customised domain which could be good for your business account.

You may also want to try to understand why your accounts got spammed so quickly, I have some old Btinernet.com accounts from when I was a customer over 10 years ago and receive very little spam on them and what I do is all moved to a spam folder by BT.

You may find exactly the same problem when you set up the new email accounts if you haven't found how your email address is leaking to spammers.

Having said that, my main email accounts are Gmail and I have no issue with unwanted spam on all except for 1 account that was leaked in a 3rd party data breach and has now turned up on spammers lists - again these are all neatly moved to a spam folder by Google so don't cause me an issue.

flashg67

Personally I wouldn't look on a virgin or BT email from a business any less favourably than a gmail one - I associate them all with a small business/sole trader - not necessarily a bad thing. 

Swoosh84

If Gmail/Yahoo are out, then Outlook would be your best best. As others have said, avoid ISP emails.

a_fierce_bad_rabbit

Thanks so much for this information, it is something that I know very little about and have learned a few things here!

I had only considered gmail as the kind of account people use for throwaway emails. If there is a benefit to using them I would definitely check it out, but have heard others say they don't trust people with a gmail account. 

Interesting to hear ISP email is not particularly ideal. I would love to keep a permanent account and for it to be safe to handle finances and be trusted by others.

Carrot007

a_fierce_bad_rabbit said:

I had only considered gmail as the kind of account people use for throwaway emails. If there is a benefit to using them I would definitely check it out, but have heard others say they don't trust people with a gmail account.

I consider email throw away these days. Has not been pointful for much communication for 10 years.

It's not secure. It's easily spoofable (yes harder these days since you generally need authentication to send but still easy).

I moved away from eon (next) as they thought sending a pdf bill via emai lwas reasonable. Sorry email = notification only with no links.

I only use gmail, I also use it to colelct mail from a copuiple of old account I have no reason why are still active! (they really should not be! I cannot change the password on one and cannot access it any other way (as I do not know the password).

Gmail is also great at filtering spam. Although does get some wrong becuase some people flag newsletters they signed up to as spam (which could be easily unsubscribed from , but hey some people are too paranoid and apparently have no memory (ort are just trigger happy on the spam button ,who knows))).

Will google advertise at you. Yes, even using things in your emails unless you opt out. It's only simple matching though and probably means more interesting ads that get blocked!

Only other system I would consider is something like gmail but hosted myself (there are options). However since I do not consider email an important form of communication anymore, why bother!

Yes I have an email address provided by my ISP. No I have not logged onto it ever (6 years in July!). The emails are not even collected by gmail. It will all be spam of copies of things that are also sent to my gmail account.

Hopefully it will die soon and be replaced by something built with security in mind as email can be secure if you want it but without it being the default option no one (much) uses it that way.

Alter_ego

Try mail.com    Not the premium though

Swoosh84

Gmail are the most popular provider out there, my main email is with Gmail and have never had any issues. Also have a secondary email with them which I use for forms such as this one. But I see your point regarding having and @gmail address for business purposes as it does not look that professional, but I would also consider BT to be the same as its just a free basic account.

If you are looking for something a bit more, 123-reg.co.uk have packages for 99p per month which will offer you an email of your choosing. so you can pick something like a_fierce@bad_rabbit_ltd.co.uk. 

J