So, my current setup for email is that I own my own domain name, let me pretend it is "plb.uk".This is hosted at Names.co.uk.
At NamesCo, I have email-forwarding set up: it currently sends my "@plb.uk" email on to my PlusNet email... let's pretend that is "paul@plb.plus.com".
Thus I can send email to "anyone@plb.uk" and it all comes to my "paul@plb.plus.com" account. Of course, I also neeed to SEND emails from my own domain (rather than my plusnet email address): my email software is set up such that, whilst I send the email via the PlusNet servers, I can have the "from" address set to be my "@plb.uk" address, and Plusnet are ok with that.
(in reality, I have several plusnet emails setup, as well as multiple email addressses on my domain, the latter forwarding to the former)
There are several issues related to using a PlusNet email account, the biggie being that, if I leave PlusNet, then I'm gonna lose the email. (Other issues can include a distinct lack of storage space, and a fairly low "attachment size allowed".) Historically, fixing this would have been fairly simple: I would have just set up email at the new ISP, and forwarded my "anyone@plb.uk" email to there..... Except that many ISPs don't do email any more.
So, I looked around: yes, I know I can always use Microsoft, Gmail, Yahoo etc.... but I'll be honest, I'll sell my kids before I use them for any serious emails! Looking around, I found GMX, they are a german outfit, their setup is based in Germany (who have fairly tight privacy laws), but there are many other free providers out there you could use.
And that would be fine, if I was happy to just use "plb@gmx.co.uk", but I don't, I want to be able to use my OWN domain name. So where is the problem? Well, whilst GMX will happily accept the incoming forwarded email, it will NOT (and I understand why) let you send emails "from:" anywhere other than your "plb@gmx.co.uk" email address! This isn't just GMX, you find this for many similar email providers. Yes, you can probably PAY for the privilege, and usually quite highly.
So what IS the solution. Thge answer is to split the task into two: use GMX for your incoming emails and online storage of those emails, but use ANOTHER provider to SEND your emails: people like MailJet, and SMTP2GO. These people are set up for businesses to send large numbers of emails to lots of customers, but they have FREE accounts that we can use!Mailjet give me 200 free outgoing emails per day, 7 meg/file, 10 meg/message. That's enough for me.
However, because you can easily MIS-use their services to send junkmail etc, there are a few hoops you have to jump through to use them... put simply, they have to be able to trust you, or specifically, need you to prove that you actually OWN that "plb.uk" domain name. They may need you to add details to your DNS (I can do that, over at NamesCo!). They will make you log in when sending your emails with stupidly long (32 character!), hexadecimal account names and passwords. But once you get your head around that, it is RELATIVELY easy to set up your email software on your PC or phone...
1) create your GMX account, you will need to go to the "settings" page, and emable POP3/IMAP (otherwise you can only use their webmail - not bad, but limited to sending emails from your "gmx.com" address.) This is where you'll forward your emails to, from Namesco
2) Create your MailJet account, set up your DNS as required (lots of words to read!)
3) Set up your email-forwarding to send your emails to your GMX email account
4) On your email program, your POP (or IMAP) setup, which covers your INcoming emails, will point to your GMX account, whilst your SMTP setup, which covers sending OUTgoing emails, will point to your MailJet account. To be honest, many email programs try to be "too helpful", hiding the details away from you. Things like K9mail (android) and Thunderbird (Windows etc) are much easier to configure!
If you use Outlook on Windows, then having used Outlook itself to (incorrectly!) set up the email account, then go to Control Panel / Mail (Microsoft Outlook) / email accounts then double-click the relevant email account. You can also create the new account in here too! This lets you set up the details for the POP3/IMAP and SMTP servers separately, as you need to!
5) Send yourself an email to your GMX email account (plb@gmx.co.uk), using the GMX web mail client to read it. That one is easy. Next try sending an email your your OWN email address (anyone@plb.uk) and check that it gets forwarded ok.
6) Using your email program, do a "send and receive emails": those emails should now appear in your email program! Looking good.
7) Try sending an email from your email program: it will be sent via Mailjet, and should be received quite quickly. Send one to yourself too, that's a great "round trip test".
If you are happy to just walk away from a plusnet email, and replace it with a GMX one, then you can ignore all of the above: all you need to do is set up a new GMX account, and use it, just like you can with Google, Yahoo etc. This is for those of us who have our OWN domain names, and want to use a different email service, rather than PluNet.
Ok, many things simplified, but thought it might help to document the steps needed. If you'd like more detail, then let's chat about it!
Paul
