Your email address is too important to leave in the hands of a third-party provider. This isn’t to say that using a third-party provider to run your email is a bad idea. You should own the domain, though.
True, but an added complication is that you have to be really, really careful about your domain. You have to trust your registrar, set up 2FA, and make sure it never expires, etc. So in the end, owning your domain isn't foolproof either, it's also another point of failure (similar to Google deleting your account, although one you may have more control over).
For what it's worth, I use Fastmail + a custom domain and couldn't be happier. But I'd hardly recommend it to everyone for personal email.
For making sure it never expires, I recommend (1) initially buy it for multiple years, (2) every year on your birthday (or on Christmas, or on some other date that is significant to you) add another year, and (3) put a recurring entry on your calendar a week or two after the date from #2 to check to make sure you remembered #2.
I'd recommend for #2 picking a date that you do other annual preventative stuff on, such as changing your smoke detector batteries. That way you build an association in your mind between that other stuff and extending the domain, making it further unlikely that you will forget.
Generally, you can start out with 10 years. Some registrars offer even more, but the underlying registries generally only support 10 years. The registrars that offer more do so by doing 10 years with the underlying registry and then automatically extending that every year transparently to you. If they go out of business more than 10 years before the end of the term they purported to sell you, those remaining years will go poof.
Also have on your calendar reminder for #3 a reminder to check to make sure your contact information still works, particularly email. If you own domain X and use it for email, you probably don't want to use an @X email address as your contact address for the registrar you registered X from. If something goes wrong with your account or domain at the registry and they try to contact you, you don't want their email to you to get eaten by whatever problem they are trying to contact you about.
Owning a domain with a registrar like Hover (or if only for email, through your mail provider) is really not that complicated or difficult. You get an email once a year that it will be renewed, they charge your card, and it’s done.
And 2FA? Yeah, if you’re not already doing that for PayPal, Venmo, eBay, and others, you’re not gonna add it for your domain. If you are already doing that, it’s no extra burden.
Perhaps it’s time for the development of a standard where your email address isn’t tied to a domain; instead, email is addressed to an identity and the underlying plumbing automatically handles routing and delivery. Very similar to how your mobile phone number is portable between providers.
We can’t expect everyone to own a domain to control their messaging sovereignty.
Yes. I also made the choice to pay for my email hosting from a reliable provider, it's cheap (1.5$ month) and I'm considered as a customer, I can have a support with real humans.
Yes, but if one goes out of business you can buy your domain from someone else! Or even transfer it, if you are warned a nonzero amount of time in advance.
Being able to keep your address across service providers being the important part here, that way your online life doesn't get in a huge jumble when your provider goes away.
Running your own mail server, having problems due to shared IP is only one of the problems. Some more:
Spam filtering for one. Uptime and updating without downtime. You would absolutely need redundancy (complexity of the solution required starts building up quickly). Keeping tabs on mail server security and the vulnerabilities discovered in your particular software stack. A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you. If your mail server crashes due to unknown reason at 4 am, do you really want it to be your problem to fix? And it will of course happen when it least fits your schedule for the day. On most days I could live with my website being offline for a few hours because I've screwed up, but with E-Mail?
The solution?
The more you think it through, own the domain, yes, but use a mature and reliable (and paid for) provider you trust to do the hosting for you. For someone technical enough to securely own a domain and not let it expire that seems like the best solution really, unless maybe you own your own hosting service? :P (but then, technically, I guess it's not your own private mail server either)
guitarbill|4 years ago
For what it's worth, I use Fastmail + a custom domain and couldn't be happier. But I'd hardly recommend it to everyone for personal email.
tzs|4 years ago
I'd recommend for #2 picking a date that you do other annual preventative stuff on, such as changing your smoke detector batteries. That way you build an association in your mind between that other stuff and extending the domain, making it further unlikely that you will forget.
Generally, you can start out with 10 years. Some registrars offer even more, but the underlying registries generally only support 10 years. The registrars that offer more do so by doing 10 years with the underlying registry and then automatically extending that every year transparently to you. If they go out of business more than 10 years before the end of the term they purported to sell you, those remaining years will go poof.
Also have on your calendar reminder for #3 a reminder to check to make sure your contact information still works, particularly email. If you own domain X and use it for email, you probably don't want to use an @X email address as your contact address for the registrar you registered X from. If something goes wrong with your account or domain at the registry and they try to contact you, you don't want their email to you to get eaten by whatever problem they are trying to contact you about.
djrogers|4 years ago
And 2FA? Yeah, if you’re not already doing that for PayPal, Venmo, eBay, and others, you’re not gonna add it for your domain. If you are already doing that, it’s no extra burden.
throwawaysea|4 years ago
toomuchtodo|4 years ago
We can’t expect everyone to own a domain to control their messaging sovereignty.
umanwizard|4 years ago
thombles|4 years ago
https://zotlabs.org/page/hubzilla/hubzilla-project https://zotlabs.org/help/en/developer/zot_protocol#What_is_Z...
flurdy|4 years ago
hyakosm|4 years ago
adenner|4 years ago
Aardwolf|4 years ago
kroltan|4 years ago
Being able to keep your address across service providers being the important part here, that way your online life doesn't get in a huge jumble when your provider goes away.
AdmiralAsshat|4 years ago
What's the solution?
Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL|4 years ago
Spam filtering for one. Uptime and updating without downtime. You would absolutely need redundancy (complexity of the solution required starts building up quickly). Keeping tabs on mail server security and the vulnerabilities discovered in your particular software stack. A 15 second down time means an important mail might not reach you. If your mail server crashes due to unknown reason at 4 am, do you really want it to be your problem to fix? And it will of course happen when it least fits your schedule for the day. On most days I could live with my website being offline for a few hours because I've screwed up, but with E-Mail?
The solution?
The more you think it through, own the domain, yes, but use a mature and reliable (and paid for) provider you trust to do the hosting for you. For someone technical enough to securely own a domain and not let it expire that seems like the best solution really, unless maybe you own your own hosting service? :P (but then, technically, I guess it's not your own private mail server either)
pan69|4 years ago