OT Advice

In message <ClJAQSVh0X$ snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk>, Tim Lamb snipped-for-privacy@marfordfarm.demon.co.uk> writes

Yes - Namesco is distinctly impenetrable.

Like you I was a refugee from Demon, and took out a domain and email address from Namesco. This allows you to send and receive via webmail, but if you add it to an email client (such as Thunderbird), you can only receive.

As I have acquired several email addresses, I have never really needed my Namesco address - but as I have just had to pay my three-year subscription, I finally decided to take the plunge, pay for a year's sub for access to the Authenticated SMTP server, and have a go to see if I could the sending through Thunderbird to work.

As I think you realise, it essentially involves paying extra to get access to the SMTP server. After a bit of Googling (and a bit of trial and error) I seem to have got it to work. I have since realised that it is very similar to using my other email addresses - such as Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Plusnet etc (please don't ask why so many!).

As it was only yesterday evening that I got things working, I have not yet found out how many Namesco email addresses and mail boxes you get for your money.

.uk.com domains have always been a bit of a rip-off (£27/year instead of about £10 for "proper" .uk domains, e.g. you could get m#####d.uk and/or m#####d.co.uk for the lower price (nobody currently has them registered)

Ian Jackson snipped-for-privacy@g3ohx.co.uk> wrote in news:bVP71nBWxY$ snipped-for-privacy@brattleho.plus.com:

Namesco user here and that is not my expereince I can send/receive from a regular email client (although not tried Thunderbird).

This _may_ help:

Many mail providers charge "per mailbox" per month/year. You can usually think of that as somewhat akin to per email address, although you can often have other addresses (sometimes known as an "alias" or "forward") that will work like an email address, but deliver received mail into your mailbox.

So in many cases you can make do with one mailbox, even if you want several addresses that all ultimately come to you.

How much are they charging for their mail service and the SMTP access?

A domain does not have to be for business - it can be for personal use as well.

The advantage of having your own domain is that the domain name is "yours" and you can take it wherever you like... So if you have snipped-for-privacy@mydomain.com, then you can connect that back to your namesco mailbox, and send/receive email. If in the future you decided to use a different provider, then you can reconnect your domains email handling to the new one, and the world will be none the wiser.

(whereas if you use an email address with the ISPs name included in it, and decide to change broadband provider, you may not be able to carry on using that email address (or would need to pay a fee to use it))

SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the way much email is sent on the internet. Typically you would expect if you rent a mailbox from an ISP, that would come with included access to SMTP as well as IMAP and POP3. It sounds like they are billing extra for it.

(the authenticated bit just means that your mail software needs to pass a username and password to the mail server before it is allowed to send email. Older style SMTP installs may not have supported authentication which meant they usually restricted access to it to users connecting via the ISP network only)

As Zen are dropping their (inclusive in a broadband contract) email server services for new users and it's probably only a matter of time before they drop the service for existing customers. Currently existing customers can carry on using the email servers as before. I suspect that if you change contract you effectively become a new customer with respect to legacy email.

Zen have already dropped their "free" customer web space.

I too have a domain on Namesco and I'm thinking of subscribing to their email service and from what I read you should be able to use unlimited names before the @ in your domain name.

quote "You may add as many aliases as you like for a single mailbox, any emails sent to any of the aliases will be delivered to that mailbox."

The single mailbox being your domian mail box

They also seem to offer a free lite email service. I haven't seen how much memory is allocated to this free service so it may be restrictive if you have gone paperless and now receive finacial etc. reports or large detailed statements via email.

I possibly didn't understand fully what I read some time ago

I went with a hosting company (mythic-beasts.co.uk) and paid for a domain for my use (Plusnet provides the transfer of the bits). So there's an annual fee for "owning" a domain, and an annual fee for M-B to host it - but in that second annual fee, I can have as many domains hosted as I like. With the hosting come as many mail addresses as I feel like setting up with them, all included. With that you get SMTP, POP3 (and I suppose IMAP but I don't use that). Plus I could set up a web site for any domain I "own", too. Which I do for a couple of others.

Tell 'em to cancel it then.

Fine if you don't mind everyone of the list of aliases getting all the mail. These are not, IOW, separate email accounts. Just teh one with aliases.

Sounds to me like the ordinary SMTP that everyone else provides - except they make it sound special when it isn't.

In message snipped-for-privacy@mid.individual.net>, Tim Streater snipped-for-privacy@streater.me.uk> writes

I may do that! Namesco are not cheap.

domain cost £57.99, Authenticated SMTP £35.99 and two x 2GB mailboxes (GEN 2) at £65.89!

In the Demon days, it was useful to store data there and give others access. Apart from photos, I have no need for such storage now. I keep meaning to get fully to grips with John's d-i-y wiki but the moment never arrives:-)

I don't hugely benefit from the 2 GB of storage apart from holiday access as I save wanted mails on my desktop.

If I dump the domain bit, can I keep the e-mail service?

Lots! 12 months SMTP access £35.99. Mail £65.89 (2x 2GB Mailboxes (GEN

But.. If I am paying annually it doesn't seem that I own anything! £57.99!

In message <yigLN.2523190$ snipped-for-privacy@fx03.ams, fred snipped-for-privacy@for.mail writes

Try

You don't have to call them. Instead, you can pay for the access (around £40 for one year) via the webmail control panel.

The other set-up parameters are essentially similar to those of the other (around ten at the last count!) email accounts I have in Thunderbird.

Strewth!

I can do you 2 x 25GB mailboxes, SMTP, POP3, & IMAP, unlimited forwarders and aliases for £55 / year

(and half that if you only need one mailbox - since you can use aliases to create any number of other email addresses)

Well "own" as in you control the name and can keep it as long as you like (so long as you keep renting it). So you can swap about the services you use whenever you like since you don't have a part of your current providers identity included your email address.

BTW, most "normal" domains are typically only £10-£25 / year (although .uk.com is an "odd" domain in the sense that it is actually just a sub domain of uk.com, and the company that controls uk.com resells sub domains on it at quite a price premium).

Having said that you can move them to a handful of different registrars. Heart Internet want ~£40/year for them.

"We do not include the Authenticated SMTP service as standard, and this is reflected in the cost of our email packages"

Yes, we have reduced the functionality and charged you double.

"By not including it, we can offer a more cost effective email service for those who are happy to just use our free WebMail."

Where "more cost effective" means we charge as much for SMTP to go with your expensive tiny mailbox, than the cost that many will do you a larger mailbox including SMTP as standard!

Well a couple of decades ago it would have been "slightly" special. Authentication was a later extension to the SMTP protocol. So when provided by Demon in the early days you did not need to (and probably could not) authenticate to use it, but you did need to connect to it from their network.

If you can do forwarding (rather than aliases) you could point the address to a free mail service like gmail etc. So you can create multiple addresses that each have their own mailbox - just that the mailbox is with a third party.

Not really "my" wiki as such - I just give it hosting space :-)

These days it does not need much getting to grips with either - the article editor is much like a basic word processor these days - you no longer need to use wiki markup to play with articles.

And to upload a file just go to:

Storage for POP3 access is indeed not that important unless you also leave a copy of messages on the server. However if you want IMAP, then it matters far more.

(with IMAP you can easily share the mail between devices, and they all stay in sync. You also typically get webmail, so that you can access your email from anywhere)

Possibly, but you would lose your current email address (assuming it is on that domain).

Rip off. As has already been said, £10 to £15 or so per year is about right.

I then pay £30/year (inc VAT) for the hosting which includes 5GB disk for all purposes and 100Gbyes/month of traffic with unlimited email addresses for all my domains. And I can host one database (probably mySQL or similar, I've not looked into that). <div>-- First, find out who are the people you can not criticise. They are your oppressors. - George Orwell </div>