Comment by ryandrake a day ago
This solves the "dependence on Gmail" problem (which is definitely a worthy problem to solve) but not the general "dependence on a particular mail provider" problem. The next step in this walk-down-the-risk-chain is self-hosting on a VPS, where you're now just dependent on your VPS provider, and the next step could be self-hosting on your own metal, where you're now just dependent on your ISP. Happy trails!
I'm on fastmail with an xyz.dev domain and keep a gmail for legacy purposes. Unfortunately some email validators will reject my short FM address.
Right. Everyone has to keep a Gmail address as backup because of all these edge cases. For one, some domains (like yours) are just rejected. I tried to register an account with a huge corporate SMTP provider recently but they've not updated their allowed gTLD in 10 years and their devs fought me for weeks telling me it was my domain that was wrong, not their system until they finally gave in.
And secondly, many sites, like Reddit, use a Gmail address as some sort of signal of quality. You can avoid a lot of new account bans on Reddit simply by registering with a Gmail instead of your own domain.
Backup your data. Email is data. It is easy enough to do and frees you from many problems. You restore from backup and go on with life.
> self-hosting on your own metal, where you're now just dependent on your ISP
Your ISP, the hardware not failing, needing to do routine maintenance and (expensive!) upgrades, having room in your house, having consistent power to your servers, possible theft, natural disasters causing you to lose your home, etc.
There's a reason I use a VPS for hosting a lot of things haha. Mostly because I live in a small apartment and don't have room for a server rack.
Which is why you should buy your own domain so you can easily move to another provider.
And backup your emails of course.
I wonder how many more people have lost access to their DNS than to their email account. When you lease a domain (you can't buy domains), you have to periodically renew your lease - this is much more likely to be a problem than typical mail accounts. And if you lose your domain, and someone buys it, they now get all of your email - a much worse situation than Google locking out of your account. And there is no chance to appeal - again much worse than even Google's terrible user help.
It’s not been a problem for me. The registrars I use are pretty vocal about expiring payment credentials, and if I were really worried they allow stacking multiple methods to fall back on, some of which have their own fallbacks (like PayPal). In theory paying for longer periods in one go could help, but ironically that might make it worse since you’re more likely to forget about a renewal happening 5 or 10 years from now than you are one that recurs every year.
I have zero data to justify my assumption...but i assume less people lose their domain vs folks who lose access to their email. That being said, fully agreed that managing one's domain name - especially the one tied to your mail email address - is so critically important to protect. Big brand domain name leasers, er, um, i mean registrars (BTW, agreed with you on only being able to *lease* domains) tend to offer extra account protection like multi-factor authentication, which should be the bare minimum that is used. At some point, if someone is managing LOTS of domain names, i get that it can be a burden...but for low number of domains (or even just 1 or 2 domains for a family), i think focusing on good security and keeping on payment aspects is not so tough...and helps immensely from getting negatively impacted.
I own a domain that I use as my primary email address, but it's a "premium" domain that costs quite a bit to lease every year. To me the main concern here is that my payment fails, I don't notice, the domain goes up for sale and somebody grabs it. Then they have access to everything.
So, I use my personal domain for all mail except anything that's "vital" like government websites, banking, paying rent, etc. for which I use my email provider's domain. And of course I'm registered with my domain registrar with a different email domain.
If you can afford it, renew the domain for 10 years into the future (which means having it paid for till 2035, for example). Every year, renew the domain for one more year so that it’s always paid for 10 years into the future. If payment fails or you’re busy with something else, you’d still have several years of no worrying (some caveats and risks may still apply depending on the TLD and registrar).
That's a good idea, I might see if I can do it. It was registered with Google Domains but got transferred over to Squarespace, idk if they offer long-term renewals.
Hi @TranquilMarmot, first off, i think the recommendation from @AnonC on their long term approach to registering a domain name is absolutely brilliant! Do that!
Another recommendation you should consider is to find a domain that ends in one of the common top-level domains - like .COM, .NET, or .ORG - because for using with *vital government services* you would not believe how many good natured civil servants (or for that manner even customer service folks in private/commercial companies too!) have no idea that email addresses can end in something other than .com, .net, or .org...and if you try to give them an address that, say, ends in like .FR, or .CC, or .ME, etc...They will try to place a ".com" at the end of it! My experience shows that folks in the U.S. know far less about other TLDs...and are more likely to commit this error, but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS. I have had a somesurname.CC domain name as the mailbox for all my family members for more than a decade...and they are all trained to be LOUD and explicit when they communicate to government workers and customer service folks. So, i should have just gotten an easier TLD, but ah well. Live and learn! :-)
EDIT: Forgot to add that choossing the more common .COM, .NET, or .ORG TLDs for a domain name *tends* to be cheaper than many premium domains names. Each registrar wil of course vary, but mostly these tend to be reasonably priced.
> but folks outside of U.S. are perfectly cool with all manner of different TLS.
Users in other countries are very likely to be more familiar with both their own local domain, and have probably also experienced websites from neighbouring countries, while your average American has never even seen a website with a .us domain (never even seen it used myself), and are a lot less likely to have needed to go to a .ca or .mx website.
That said, I'd expect to get a similar reaction from people in other countries if you said your email was firstname.lastname@mydomain.christmas, or whatever other funny top level domain.
> Users in other countries are very likely to be more familiar with both their own local domain, and have probably also experienced websites from neighbouring countries, while your average American has never even seen a website with a .us domain (never even seen it used myself), and are a lot less likely to have needed to go to a .ca or .mx website...
Yeah, agreed; that has been my experience as well. And in fact, i think that because folks outside U.S. are at least familiar with the TLDs of their neighboring countries, that fact at least helps them understand that there are more TLDs out there than simply their country's or only .com/.net/.org...its an awareness that they at least learn about...whereas folks in the U.s. might be - i don't know - maybe sheltered more in these things.
> ...That said, I'd expect to get a similar reaction from people in other countries if you said your email was firstname.lastname@mydomain.christmas, or whatever other funny top level domain...
True, there are just so many TLDs - well, outside the country code TLDs - now that it is hard to know what is real/valid or not. :-)
To clarify my point, i mean that over the years, as i have engaged with *human beings* in situations that involve in real life/physical interaction (like standing in line at motrovehilces, getting passport photos at county clerk office, etc., it had been an interesting thing having to briefly explain to folks that .com, .net, and .org are not the only valid TLDs for email addresses....and where i most encountered that is gov. services as well as customer service reps.
To your point, agreed that *logins* for web site/apps and mobile apps are usually not an issue for my non- .com/.net/.org email addresses. In fact, for logins, gov services tend to be quite accomoddating and i don't ever think i had any issues there, and usually not a problem...But, years ago i *DID* encounter a couple of commercial/business/non-gov websites where they only expected .com/.net/.org email address...so it was a problem there on the non-gov website side of things...but even then, it thankfully was not very often, and nowadays its nearly a non-issue.
Again, my recommendation was just saying that for real, human interactions, if its possible, pick a common enough TLD to make life easier. ;-)
There's no reason to self-host your e-mail server. As long as you own your domain, you can simply point the DNS to a different provider when you want to switch.
What bothered me about Gmail was that it was central to my life and if something were to happen and they locked my account they have zero support.
With that out of the way I feel perfectly happy with FM — no need to go further down the paranoia hole.