Changing ISP's and My Email Address

Dime_Bar

I left AOL a couple of years ago and my email was closed pretty sharpish. I have my own domainf so was not a problem for me. Worth giving them a call.

BritBrat

loveandlight wrote: »

With an attitude like that, I couldn't care less what you think.

superscaper has a good point although he knows I don't follow it myself but have been thinking of changing it.

I do have a Email that is not connected to an ISP, I bought it for my daughter as it's her name.

I also have a domain in my name but no email.

superscaper

BritBrat wrote: »

I also have a domain in my name but no email.

Although even this is a step in the right direction. Most registrars should at least offer free forwarding so you can set it to forward to your present ISP email address. You give out your personal domain email address to everyone and when you change ISPs you just have to change the forwarding address to the new ISP email address. All your mates etc don't see anything different as they're still sending to the personal domain address. Alternatively you could set it to forward to a free address such as hotmail or googlemail/gmail. There's a few things you can do even now without spending money on getting the domain properly email hosted that'd still save lots of hassle with ISP changes.

loveandlight

Posted by superscaper
I meant it in the light hearted way, such as shooting yourself in the foot or cutting your nose to spite your face I wouldn't mean someone actually performs acts of physical violence on themselves, it's just an expression. It was simply a turn of phrase, an idiom. Same thing I'd say if you didn't back up or didn't update the security. I wasn't intentionally calling anyone a fool, just using a colloquial expression I use all the time. Wasn't meant to be offensive so I'm sorry you took it that way. I was just meaning that you're unnecessarily causing yourself grief by doing so. Probably a regional thing, I don't know.

Apologies accepted so I think that means we are friends again now. I never knew that it was possible to have an email account separate from your ISP until now. Thanks for your input.

robt_2

loveandlight wrote: »

Apologies accepted so I think that means we are friends again now. I never knew that it was possible to have an email account separate from your ISP until now. Thanks for your input.

Just another thought for you, if you set one up now, you can start telling your friends, so they all know your new address by the time you move away from AOL

superscaper

loveandlight wrote: »

Apologies accepted so I think that means we are friends again now. I never knew that it was possible to have an email account separate from your ISP until now. Thanks for your input.

No worries, mostly my fault for typing the way I talk without thinking.

There's two main choices really (or both):

Choose a free address such as googlemail e.g. [EMAIL="loveandlight@googlemail.com"]loveandlight@googlemail.com[/EMAIL]

Buy your own domain name. e.g. [EMAIL="anything@loveandlight.co.uk"]anything@loveandlight.co.uk[/EMAIL]

When you buy a domain there should be free forwarding so you can invent any email address you want with @loveandlight.co.uk following it and set it to forward to whatever current ISP or free address you have. Or you can have it "hosted", this usually means website space as well but it can be purely email features so it's a full email account in its own right without forwarding anywhere. I.e. you can set your email client to log in to your loveandlight.co.uk pop3 account or you can login with your browser to webmail.loveandlight.co.uk.

Everyone has their own preferences in strategy and companies. Personally my main address is my own domain bought from ukreg.com and email hosting with fasthosts.co.uk (they're sister companies so everything is in one convenient control account). I switched off the catchall which means not everything to mydomain gets through, only specifically set email addresses because I give all companies a unique address, e.g. [EMAIL="amazon@mydomain.co.uk"]amazon@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL] to amazon etc. It's cut down my spam to zero and any that have appeared in the past tells me which company gave my address out and I can simply delete that address.

I also in addition have gmail/googlemail addresses as well etc for when I need an address to register or something but it's not important to me that they have the address or it's a high spam risk.

superscaper

robt wrote: »

Just another thought for you, if you set one up now, you can start telling your friends, so they all know your new address by the time you move away from AOL

It's what I did years ago. I'd already bought my domain and started giving out that address and changing the registered address with different companies as I went through them, remembered them and came across them. I got my mum to do the same thing recently. Then by the time the ISP email address naturally expires etc it is used so little that you'll hardly notice you don't have it any more anyway.

BexTech

loveandlight wrote: »

With an attitude like that, I couldn't care less what you think.

Except they have a valid point.

I have my own domain, have done for over 11 years, I also have POP/SMTP access to my email, so don't need to forward to an ISP email, I can send through my domain email using their SMTP server.

Anne_Marie_2

loveandlight wrote: »

I am seriously considering changing my internet service provider (I'm currently with AOL) to a much cheaper one. However, I am worried about what will happen to my email address as so many people have it and it would be a massive task to go around telling everyone about the change. Is there an easy way around this or am I stuck with AOL forever? (I've never had any probs with them though, just looking to save some money). Thx for any replies.

First of all, whatever you do, please do not cancel your AOL account without getting your MAC. I had 7 weeks of hell due to this. Do not believe them when they tell you you don't need it when closing account. Get that first, then close account with them.

Secondly. You can still keep your old AOL email address. After you have left them, simply go into AOL website and put in your username and password. It will come up with something about you having left, but do you still want to use etc....follow through instructions and you are up and running as normal.

Would suggest that you use Thunderbird and access AOL and any other email accounts from there. Makes life a lot simpler and saves you having to access mail through AOL all the time.

Definitely agree with others that you should get another email account such as googlemail or hotmail......and then you can finally ditch AOL if you so desire.

BexTech

Yes, without a MAC what you have is cease and re-provide, this can take weeks, even months.