Want to Control Your Email?
| 3 minutes
Are you tired of gmail, yahoo, msn, or god forbid, hotmail?
Here’s what it takes to get off of them and be free forever.
Get your own domain
If you don’t want to do through the hassle of getting your own domain, at least cutover to a better email provider
I use http://iwantmyname.com because they have a simple interface. Once you “buy” a domain, it will auto-renew the next year. https://www.networksolutions.com is another domain provider that I have used in the past but their marketing drove me crazy.
Host your mail
Pick your mail service provider. I have used https://www.fastmail.com for over 15 years. They’re out of Australia and have been excellent. https://proton.me/mail is another that I’ve heard good things about but never used. Fastmail is $60/yr per account. Here’s my referral https://ref.fm/u1594423 so you get 10% off the first year.
If you’ve bought your own domain, follow the mail service providers instructions to point your mail dns records to your email service e.g. fastmail. iwantmyname has directions for several: https://iwantmyname.com/services/email-hosting
Configure your clients. IMAPS is the standard for mail now. The mail stays on the server unless you intentionally download to a specific host, which I don’t do. Your mail view will always be the same no matter what device you use i.e. your laptop, your desktop, or your new iPhone.:)
Now the hard part
Cutting over to a new email address
I use a password app to keep track of all my accounts. https://strongboxsafe.com is based on the open source project https://keepass.info. If you still need a windows box, there are apps for that as well. The key is they all work with the same encrypted password file. You keep the file wherever you like and you’re not dependent on a 3rd party service like 1password that will eventually get hacked or bought out.
I simply start with one account, update the email address, update the password, and all ancillary notes. Then proceed to the next. I do about 10 a day and then watch the process. I have 272 entries in my password database. I don’t even try to remember my passwords anymore. They all look like an incantation of this: 98ordz?hh?_E#jpk (generated by the app or choose your own)
As part of this migration, I add 2fa to every account that will use it.
Lot’s of places use their own 2fa software and I use those when necessary.
Cool tricks with your own domain:
I have multiple email addresses (aliases) that point to my account:
me@example.com (friends and family)
buy@example.com (whenever I buy anything)
work@example.com (work related)
ebay@example.com (spam or I don’t like you)
everybody@example.com GROUP email address that goes to everyone at example.com
school@example.com GROUP email address for anything related to school.
fun@anotherdomain.com (my latest trivial address I use for unimportant things. I have multiple domains point to the same fastmail service, very cool)
It’s very powerful. I use the built-in filtering to move mail to folders based on inbound address, subject, etc.
The bottom line is my inbox has 2 or 3 emails in it. The rest goes to an unimportant destination that I check as time permits.
If I get clobbered with junk to a specific address, I kill it.
Spam filtering is really good too.
And finally pull the plug on your old email
Email is so important to all of us. Tame the beast, be happy.
The world has sold its soul for “free” email that is far from free.