My ISP, “The Loop” is selling out to Earthlink!
Up to now, I’ve been protective of my eMail address: richardb@loop.com (short, sweet, and easily understandable when told to anyone).
I have a DSL account in the office with a different service provider, but do not use them for my eMail. I was considering getting a cable modem at home (with my cable company) and was still going to keep my original eMail address.
I now do not have that option; I am going to be changed to an “@Earthlink.net” account, unless I decide not to use them at all. Either way, my current eMail address is about to be history.
So I’m looking for an alternative; instead of going with the DSL company or the cable company for my eMail, as long as I’m changing I want to make sure I change once and only once!
A friend once told me about a company called iName (which is now apparently part of mail.com) that he uses as free forwarding service to whatever ISP eMail he has, thus giving him the one eMail address forever thing.
I guess that would work, but as long as there are “free” eMail services out there, I was thinking that I could use one of them as a permanent solution to start with.
My second bone of contention, is that I do NOT want a service like Hotmail or Yahoo Mail, because I do not want “web access” to be the way I get my eMail. I use Eudora Pro, and download (and save in a plethora of mailbox folders) all my eMail. I want to continue to be able to access my eMail this way.
I have found a service that looks perfect: it is Fastmail.fm (apparently out of Australia). They allow for both web access of your eMail OR access through POP (or IMAP), which seems exactly what I want (plus offers the advantage of being able to also check my eMail on the web if I’m away from home). They have a free service, but more features (and bandwidth, etc.) through three levels of paid service, the most expensive of which is something like $60 a YEAR (yeah, I can handle that!) I can also forward (or automatically redirect) any eMail to other accounts if I want, but my intent is just to access all my eMail through them. I believe I can also use them somehow to have eMail from other accounts autmotically go to my Fastmail account, but I don’t really understand how that works yet.
I’ve signed up for the free service just to check it out, but have not “used” or told anyone of that eMail address yet. So now I have some decisions to make, which leads me to my questions (finally! :))
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Have any Dopers used this service/company? Will I get what need from them? Any positive or negative experiences with them?
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I want to have another memorable, easy to remember eMail address. This part is not so easy. Of the many choices they had, I chose an “@xsmail.com” address, but even though this is nice and short and sweet, it is still not entirely perfect because anytime I verbally tell anyone this address, I will have to add in that it is “the letter X, the letter S…” They say we can get our own domain name and use that. OK; through GoDaddy and some others I find I can get a domain name for $8.88 a year. I can do that… but what domain name? I checked out mylastname.com, but even though it is a pretty unusual, albeit short, name, someone in Germany has registered it, and someone else there has registered the .org version. I could get mylastname .info or .biz or .usa, but I want to stick with a .com.
Are there any real disadvantages to using my full name in my eMail address?
I could go with richardb@rlastname.com (a little symmetry might be good, my first name and last name initial followed by my first name initial with my last name) or richard@firstnamelastname.com or some such thing.
Can anyone tell me if there are any pitfalls, or negatives that I am overlooking by doing this? If Fastmail says that I can use my own domain name with their service, can I trust these companies offering $8.88 a year domain names that they will be there for the long term?
I want the choices I make now to be a permanent solution, so I am asking for any input on issues I may not have considered or problems with my plan, etc. Thanks for any insight any of you can offer.