Use emails with a personal domain

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Today we are finally dealing with a very important topic, even if it is a bit technical. Today's article may in fact not be suitable for everyone but don't lose heart right away: as always we will try to make it as simple as possible and therefore use email with personal domain It's an article that we think can help everyone!

Let's start by explaining what we are talking about. The domain of your email address is the one found after the at sign. So if you have an email address on Gmail it will be @gmail.com, if you have a domain on Proton Mail it will be @protonmail.com or @proton.me and so on.

This thing, as you can perhaps already imagine and as anyone who has changed their email address already knows, brings with it some problems. Most important of all is being tied to one provider. If anywhere you register with your account @gmail.com or with your new account @proton.me the day you get tired and want to change provider again you will still have to change all the sites you are registered on and notify all the people who have you in their contacts.

This is regardless of whether you are on GMail, on Proton Mail, on Free, Fastweb or any other provider. If you are using their domain you are tied to them and moving will always be a (more or less small) complication.

Use emails with a personal domain

One of the solutions to this problem is the use of aliases, like AnonAddy, SimpleLogin or others we talked about here. However, this solution is not liked by everyone and may not be the definitive answer to the problem.

The other solution, the one we will tell you about today, is to register your own personal domain and use it with any provider you want.

What does it mean, in short?

That you buy the domain xxyyxx.it and this will remain forever your. The connected to a provider and the day you get tired of that provider you simply change it. Of course, you will still have to carry the old emails with you (if you haven't already downloaded them via IMAP) but no one will notice that you have changed provider because your email address will always remain name@xxyyxx.it.

If you want an example, it's a bit like when you change telephone operator: nobody knows and nobody cares whether you are with Vodafone or TIM. When you change your contract your telephone number will remain the same. The same happens with email on a personal domain. The day you pass the xxyyxx.it domain from Proton Mail to Infomaniak you won't have to say anything to anyone.

This thing, as you will have understood, is very important but it is also decidedly unfashionable. One of the reasons why few people do it is that it is not always an easy practice and it is certainly easier to register with any provider and that's it. Another reason is that we often don't think about it to the future and it is taken for granted that “this new provider is just the thing for me”.

Experience, however, leads us to know that the perfect provider does not exist, that things change, people change and providers can change too. Things can happen to you or to the service you choose that make you change your mind and cause you to have different needs.

For a whole series of reasons it would therefore be important to make the effort to understand what we are talking about and to try to manage a domain independently.

Let's see the steps we consider appropriate to make this choice.

1. Choice of domain

The first thing to do, even if it seems trivial, is to choose the domain to use. It may seem silly, but it's not at all! It is the dominion that you will have to give to people, perhaps even verbally. So if you choose a domain that is too strange or too difficult to pronounce or write it can become a problem.

Some ideas could be to use names of minerals, stones or chemical elements. Don't be immediately discouraged by the fact that many domains are already occupied: you must consider that in addition to the domain name there is also the extension (.it, .com. .xyz)! Said more simply: if ametista.it is busy, ametista.io or ametista.eu may be free.

Another tip: if your idea is to create an email anyway serious with name.surname@xxyyxx.it you can try to see if the domain with your surname is free to be able to do, if necessary, name@surname.it (or any other extension). For everything else (i.e. for all those who don't need to know your surname) I'm always here AnonAddy or SimpleLogin which, among other things, also work with any other personal domain!

2. Choice of registrar

Once you have chosen the domain you have to choose who to buy it from!

Now begins the part that is a little more complex, but not too much, let's look at it together. You essentially have two options:

1. purchase a domain and also email accounts from the same registrar. This is the easiest operation of all because, normally, the registrar will take care of everything and they will be full of guides and tools to guide you. Indeed, more often than not it will all be automatic. This is the suggested option for newbies who don't want to undertake more complex adventures. In this case, however, you will have to exclude some email providers that do not sell the domain such as Proton;
2. buy the domain from any registrar and then do it bet on another provider. Explained with an example: you buy the domain on ovh.it but you want to use the Proton Mail email inbox. In this case any registrar is fine as long as it allows you to modify the DNS. Don't be afraid of this acronym, normally when buying a domain there is always this possibility.

2.1 Yes but how much does it all cost?

The amount to be spent is difficult to quantify because it depends on many factors: first and foremost some extensions ¹ and some domains cost more than others. Then it depends on what you need, how many email accounts and how many GB you need, for example. Let's say average for a domain normal and 5 email accounts with 5-10GB can cost you around €15/20 a year.

If you then choose providers a Zero-knowledge encryption as Proton Mail then the price definitely it will rise a bit'.

2.1 Some possible registrars

As mentioned in the previous point, one of the most practical and painless solutions is to choose a registrar that offers email services and which also allows you to register the domain. In this case your work is really minimal because all you have to do is choose the domain and purchase the email package you are interested in which normally also includes a certain number of email accounts and certain GB that you can use.

There are several registrars that allow you to do this, we suggest a few: all European or Swiss.

The same registrars that we indicate here can be used for buy only the domain and leverage emails on another provider.

• Gandhi, an excellent French registrar that allows you to register domains and create email addresses. Email accounts are paid and no longer free like they used to be. They use Roundcube and Sogo ² as a webmail client but you can use IMAP and read it on any mail client;

• Infomaniak, an old acquaintance of ours. Swiss company and server, offer a single email address for free along with the domain with limited services. They then sell in packages starting from €1.5 per month for 5 email addresses. As webmail clients they use a system created by them which aesthetically resembles GMail a lot. It has some bugs and is not perfect especially because it is very young. Even in this case, however, you can use IMAP on any email client;

• OVH, another serious and reliable French registrar. They don't offer free emails with the domain but they do offer packages starting from €0.99 per month for 10GB of space. They also use Roundube for webmail ³ but you can take advantage of IMAP;

• Aruba, is an Italian company with owned (green) servers in Italy. You can purchase 5 1GB email accounts starting from €0.99 per year (which then becomes €15.49 from the second year). It's not clear to us which webmail they use and the new version looks much more like an email inbox modern compared to the classic one. You can use IMAP;

• Hetzner, they also offer together with the purchased domain Hosting (to therefore create a site) and also email boxes. In the basic version at €2.09 per month you will have up to 100 email accounts for your domain. Ability to use IMAP while webmail should use the client Horde;

There are certainly many others but these are in our opinion the most reliable and well-known.

2.2 Domain on one side, email on another

As already explained, the second option is a little more complex. It will allow you to register the domain on any of the above-mentioned registrars but you will then have to independently configure your email inbox.

And here comes the difficult part for us too. Because obviously each provider has its own options and has its own control panel and it is literally impossible to create a one-size-fits-all guide. So let's try to give you a general guideline that should apply, more or less, to everyone:

• after purchasing the domain, choose your preferred email provider. As mentioned, many of those that we have always offered allow you to associate a personal domain. One of all that allows this is, for example, Proton Mail;

• go to your email profile and look somewhere for the possibility of adding a personal domain (or look in your provider's FAQ how to do it). With regard to Proton Mail, for example, just go to the Settings and click on Domain name. Here all you have to do is click on Add domain and follow the instructions.

2.2.1 Changing DNS

Now comes the slightly more difficult part: let's talk about DNS. DNS, as we have explained in the past, I'm sort of telephone directory that helps your computer find the address of the site you want to visit. What you need to do, therefore, is explain to yours Register that your email is on Proton Mail (in this case).

• DNS management really changes a lot from provider to provider. Generally, however, you have to look in the settings and look somewhere for “edit DNS” or “edit DNS zone”.

• follow the instructions that appear. Generally you will only have to associate certain values with DNS. Those that are normally needed are the TXT type DNS (to recognize the domain), then the MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC types.

It is not necessary for you to know exactly what all these acronyms mean (obviously if you are interested, find out more independently!). The important thing is that you slavishly respect what you are told: if Proton Mail tells you to add the value XXXXX to the DNS of type TXT you carry out this operation on the DNS panel of your registrar.

Using emails with a personal domain: the conclusions

We know well that this last part may seem difficult and complex to understand. This is why we say that if you think you can't do it and don't even want to try, you can opt for the first option, that of the registrar that does everything automatically.

If we talk about it, however, it is because we believe that in reality it is an operation within everyone's reach, especially if one overcomes the initial fear of not doing it.

The article ends here, there doesn't seem to be much more to say. Once you have done the last DNS operation everything should work and you should be good to go! For any help you can come and visit us on Matrix, on Feddit or up Telegram.

One last thing before concluding: some providers, such as Proton, they also allow the catch-all. Essentially they allow you to receive any email addressed to your domain, without any limits. It means that if you purchase the domain @xxyyzz.it anyone will send an email to any address@xxyyzz.it and you will receive it if you activate this option.

This thing has negative sides and positive sides. The downsides are that this could lead to more spam as trawling is sometimes done ⁴. However, if you are not afraid of spam, the positive sides are that you can have any alias for free and simply. All you need to do is give out the address anyaddress@xxyyzz.it when you register somewhere and make services like AnonAddy And similar.

If you already use a personal domain for your email or if you have decided to do so after reading this article, let us know!

1. Domain name prices[↩]
2. Access your GandiMail emails via webmail[↩]
3. Webmail: guide to using RoundCube[↩]
4. Catch-All Email – Spam with a sprinkle of ham[↩]

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