Moving home and service provider and looking for reassurance

[#1]

After more than 15 years with Plusnet, a move to a new build property with FTTP is forcing me to change providers as Plusnet don't currently offer any FTTP products. I understand that if I move to BT (or EE) via Plusnet, I won't be charged early termination fees, but I will lose the discount I've negotiated and be tied into a 24 month contract at full price with a new provider.

My biggest issue however, is that my main reason for staying with Plusnet so long was that they host my domain name (which I use for email only) for free as long as I remain a customer. The service rep I spoke with also said that they can move me to a free email only account so my email service should continue uninterrupted and he was fairly sure that my domain name should keep working for email too, as long as Plusnet continue free email only accounts. The reassurance I'm looking for is -

1.Is this correct - I don't need to do anything with my domain name immediately for email addressed to my domain to continue to be delivered?

2. As I'm no longer a Plusnet customer (I would be if I could choose to be), I presume they will no longer renew my domain for free and I'll have to pay. How does that work?

3. Longer term, what are my options as I understand that BT don't host domains for residential customers?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts, suggestions and ideas.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi there, I'm sorry to see that you're moving on but I completely understand your reasoning!

Yes, to reassure you we do offer the option to retain an email only account and you can keep your domain hosted with us and we'll renew it for free for you too.

In the longer term you might want to look at moving the domain over to a dedicated hosting company that can either provide you with an email service or allow you to point the domain to an external email account. 

[#3]

Email only accounts

When your account is cancelled, any additional services you have such as email, web-space, cgi-service, etc. will stop working. If you want to retain your email service after your account is closed, you must advise Plusnet before the account is closed. There used to be a charge for email only accounts, but they are now free of charge.

Resurrecting an account as email only requires manual intervention from both yourself and Plusnet. The initial stage in account resurrection gets the default email address restored. You then need to setup any secondary Plusnet email address(es) yourself, at which point you'll be able to once again send and receive emails from those addresses.

If you have secondary email address(es), after you have recreated those email addresses, you will need to ask that their contents are restored by updating the existing thread or try posting on the generic email restore topic. Please note that these backups are kept for 30 days only.

The process should go something like this...

1. Prior to your account being closed, you must tell Plusnet that after your account is closed you wish to retain the account as email only - contact the Customer Options Team - agents receive few requests for this, so if there are any doubts refer the agent to KBMS article #3349 or ask "Albert"
2. You need to make a note of all of your Plusnet email address(es) by going to manage my mail at https://plus.net/email
3. Your account is terminated
4. Plusnet resurrect the account as email only
5. Plusnet will restore the default mailbox - you might need to change the name before the @ symbol to what you had before
6. You recreate any secondary email address(es) and then request that their contents are restored
7. Plusnet restore the secondary mailbox(es) content

The process could take up to one week, after which everything should then work as it did previously, however please note that emails sent to the email address(es) between the account being closed and the email addresses being recreated might...

1. Be returned to the sender as un-routable (no such domain)
2. Be returned to the sender as undelivered (no such addressee)
3. All be delivered to the default mailbox if catch-all is enabled