If you’re an e-mail user, you probably don’t want to end up like Katherine Brand, a worker for the US government who spent years developing a client base for her artwork in Washington, DC only to lose some business because of an e-mail address shuffle.
”I used e-mail through a small local provider for years,” Brand said. ”Last year, they went out of business. I switched to another provider, and they also went out of business. I had to tell my clients about new e-mail addresses three times, and I lost some of them along the way.”
The story kept getting worse for Brand. After being frustrated by small-time internet service providers that gave her e-mail addresses, she opened a free e-mail account with Microsoft’s HotMail (www.hotmail.com). Soon, though, she found she had so much spam in her inbox that the free e-mail address was all but worthless.
The problem is clear: like many people today, Brand needed an e-mail address that doesn’t change. The fact is, our e-mail addresses, especially if we’re in any type of business, have become essential to maintaining important lines of communication. Changing them is not desirable.
”Of course people don’t like having to update your e-mail address,” says Dennis O’Keefe, a network administrator in Maryland.
”Common e-mail clients like Outlook also don’t make the task of updating people’s addresses very easy. Usually, it’s a manual job.”
The solution is to find a stable e-mail address. There are a couple of reasonable approaches that you can take in accomplishing the goal.
By far the most reliable type of e-mail address you can have is one that you provide yourself. Go to a low-cost domain registrar like www.godaddy.com, and register a domain in your own name, such as www.yourlastname.com, replacing ”yourlastname” with your real last name. Registering such a domain can cost as little as eight dollars per year, and ten-year packages are available.
Then, get a simple domain hosting plan, which always includes e-mail packages. Hosting will cost you as little as six dollars per month, and depending upon the host that you choose, you can have multiple e-mail addresses set up. Your e-mail address can be anything that ends in the domain you registered, such as [email protected].
The beauty of this system is that your e-mail address is not tied to the company hosting your domain. You can move that domain to any hosting company, and so long as you hold the domain name, the e-mail address is yours.
You’ll be able to use any typical e-mail program, such as Eudora or Outlook, to send and retrieve your e-mail. Your hosting company will give you the necessary information on setting up your e-mail program, including SMTP and POP settings.
Some companies, such as OZML.com, advertise their ability to provide you with a permanent e-mail address, no matter which internet service provider you use. Most of the services, however, either force you to use their domain at the end of your address — [email protected], for example — or hand hold you through the registration of your own domain and e-mail address.
Many people who go the route of setting up their own domain also enjoy the added benefit of having an e-mail address that makes sense. Getting your own dotcom address allows you not only to set up a web site, should you choose to do so, but allows you to create e-mail addresses with your own last name — or your own business name — after the ”@” symbol.
Another way to get a relatively secure e-mail address is to sign up for internet access with a well-established company, one that you know will not be going out of business anytime soon. Of course, doing this will not allow you to have your own customised e-mail address — you’ll still be saddled with a nonpersonal ending — but at least you will have the peace of mind of knowing that your e-mail address will be available long enough not to annoy your friends and clients.
Whatever approach you choose, be sure not to give out your permanent e-mail address liberally. The number one way that spammers can get hold of your e-mail address is when you provide it indiscriminately online. – Sapa-DPA