Several years ago I signed up for firstnamelastname.com domain on 1&1.com. I rarely use the actual website I made for it, but I just the e-mail address a lot. I don’t even visit their e-mail hosting, I just import through gmail.
1&1 is jacking up their rates so I want to move to somewhere cheaper. What’s the easiest way to move my domain over to someone else without disrupting my e-mail, and who has the cheapest hosting? I really just need the e-mail, I don’t care about the website.
First you need to de-couple your domain name from any host you use, now or in the future, by setting up an account with a domain registrar and transferring your domain name to that registrar.
Some registrars are: Network Solutions, Namecheap, GoDaddy.
Personally, I use NameCheap and have over 100 domains. You can shop around for the best prices for your domain registration.
You can use 1&1’s guide for transferring. Also check out the transfer-to-us guide you will find on whatever registrar service you use.
When you do the transfer, you want to make sure you are importing the DNS settings, so that everything still points to 1&1, for the moment.
Once you’ve got your domain name on your new registrar account, you can then shop around for what email provider you want to use. Once you find one, you can follow their directions for editing the DNS settings on your domain name to work with their email host.
In the future you can use any email host and any web host you want, and just change the DNS settings via your registrar account.
It’s wise to keep your domain name separate from your website and email hosts. Or at least have it registered at a place that lets you control the DNS.
Fasthosts do catch-all forwarding, which I use to forward email from my domains to my Gmail account.
Follow ZipperJJ’s steps first. After that, IMO the best email provider is google themselves - don’t get a forwarding account, use the email with your domain name in it in gmail using Google apps for business/G Suite -$5/user/month - where a “user” is a mailbox - you can set up hundreds of addresses that all feed to that same 30gb max mailbox. Compare Flexible Pricing Plan Options | Google Workspace