OT: Internet Hosting recommendations.

I have the same problem with my BT mail. But everything else is OK. The actual broadband way more reliable than the several ISPs I've had previously. Which makes me cautious about moving.

I don't much use my BT mail address having already got my own pop box at

Funny you should say that. So, how reliable has the 123-reg email been for you? I mean would you notice if it was down for say 15 minutes on any day?

Like you I typically use the SMTP server of my ISP but I think you can also use others servers for outgoing mail.

Cheers, T i m

Who are they using at present? I notice 123 was belly up this morning.

You might find the thread in demon.service about hosting choices of interest. TsoHosts seems to have some recommendations there.

Voodofone have been annoying loyal Demon customers for a couple of years now and most original Demonites have left but for the moment retain their subdomains but with other hosting and other email services via Namesco. There is a new gotcha coming down the line at the end of the month since "improvements" are being made to increase profitability.

Odd. The local loop shouldn't be more reliable with BT than with anyone else (unless you mean TalkTalk who I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy).

If you have 123-reg email you already have access to their free email server but it doesn't support any kind of encryption at all. Usable as a backup but not entirely satisfactory for longer term use.

Takeovers and mergers mean we live in interest times (Chinese usage).

When this computer is on. it does an auto fetch every 30 minutes. If anything is up with any of the email facilities, I get an error message.

And oddly, 123 reg was down today. But was back by about 12.45. It's far more likely to be BT here.

Yes. I've just found out I can use the 123-reg one.

With the email client I use, you can have several pop boxes. It visits them all in turn - and gives an error message if any is down. I'm not sure if it can try one SMTP server then use an alternative if the first doesn't work.

I did end up with Talktalk after a number of takeovers or mergers. All the many outages I had seemed to be at the exchange end or further up the chain. My local end - including my phone - were OK.

Must admit I don't tend to use email to send anything critical.

If you want to share a mailbox between phone and desktop, you ideally need to use IMAP for both.

To do the snazzy shared calendaring etc needs and Exchange mailbox. That used to mean running your own exchange server, but these days you can get it all in the cloud.

Could be. Some of the office 365 packages include a 50GB exchange mailbox as well.

Do they need exchange mailboxes? If so then most companies just resell the MS hosting option.

Probably no cheaper to do.

I have lots of domains with 123-reg, but would not recommend them for email hosting (or much else) - they seem rather too error prone. The stuff I have hosted with Rackspace is rock solid and well supported generally, but its not a budget option (although their mailboxes are cheaper than their office 365 mailboxes).

If you have a pop mailbox at 123 then you can use their SMTP server to send as well. (connect to smtp.123.reg.co.uk and login with the same details you use for incoming mail)

Thanks for that Martin. I guess unless you were a big / long term user of any particular service (or product) it can be pretty difficult to get a detailed picture. Like, my VM service drops out now and again meaning I can't get access to the WWW or new or email but not regularly or for long enough for me to look for an alternative (although with the recent price hike I might at least give them a call).

And as you say, it only take a change of equipment, management or ownership at their end for it all to be up in the air again.

Cheers, T i m

They may well be set that way already John as many variations were tried in the beginning to get Calendaring to work.

So I think we learned at the beginning.

Yup and out of the question for them at the beginning (especially).

And that was why I mentioned the need in case it had an impact on any potential alternative solution. So, do we just look for a host who offers 'Exchange' servers?

In this case (via 123-reg) I think they only get 5GB / user.

Only in the calendaring function AFAIK John. We looked at alternatives but because most of their customers ruin Outlook / Exchange it we felt it was ether that or nothing (so they deal with calendaring vie emails somehow).

I don't think that would be so much an issue as having something more reliable. Even their customers are commenting on how often their emails are down and it's getting embarrassing (to the point he's willing to jump ship assuming any (reasonably well researched) alternatives couldn't be any worse)?

Thanks for that feedback John. More fuel for the fire. ;-)

Well, we would be guided by anyone who has practical workaday experience in this field and would consider the cost only as a last stage. It is potentially costing him lots of money (lost sales) with his current solution and so something more expensive but more reliable could still be a cost saving. ;-)

So, the 'big question' would be 'how much better' would the group calendaring option be if they went to exchange mailboxes over what they are doing atm (which I think was a 'well, we can do it this way and it sort of works so let's try it like that' and never changed)?

Cheers, T i m

I'm a moderator on a woodworking forum hosted by 1&1, Outages are very rare indeed. So I'd say they are worth a look.

I have domains with 123-reg and use Google G-suite for email. I can't remember ever having a problem.

Good to hear. ;-)

I notice they mention Exchange support (and 2013) so I guess if anything was to give my mate the group calendaring function that should be it.

It's just a matter of doing some sums to see how the prices compare and I need to ask him how much 'ag' his current method of group calendaring is and try to work out what he will get for how much more money going exchange etc (as I'd never really used Outlook or any calendaring I'm not sure if I'm in a good position to suggest anything). ;-(

Cheers, T i m

En el artículo , John Rumm escribió:

Went t*ts up again this morning.

"Another month, another problem with comedy outfit 123-Reg"

I've been with Names.co.uk many years, only ever had to call support once to sort a billing issue (not their fault). Originally ClickNames, which was taken over by Serve 360, then Serve360 was taken over by Names.

Possibly because if you haven't lost access to emails for the best part of a morning then you wouldn't have had any issues (with them)? ;-)

I couldn't even log into the Control Panel earlier but have now and downloaded the website (via ftp) just to see if I could.

Cheers, T i m

In article , Mike Tomlinson scribeth thus

Yes Namesco here too, helpful but only had to call them a couple of times over some five years or so!..

Ok, another one to add to the 'check out services and prices' list.

Cheers, T i m

You have had problems with Google G-suite email?

Office 365 (even if you just go for the email and access to the online version of office only (i.e. no local license for desktop/laptops etc) is usually the easiest way to get that...

That sounds like their normal "personal" email mail box.

One option is online calendaring (google, apple etc) - then that separates that off from the email solution and gives you more choice there.

I had a similar situation with some customers a few years back. They were using 123-reg for domain registration and email. The email bit of the setup was too flaky. Partly down to them not coping with large mailboxes while at the time not actually imposing any hard limit on mailbox size. The mailbox would reach about 10+ gig and then the systems could not cope - you just got timeouts whenever trying to access a mailbox - even via web mail. That was when we went to rackspace - however its quite a jump in cost approx £1.50 month per mailbox, rather than a bundle of tens of them included in the domain registration and a basic hosting package. (123-reg have improved matters now and actually police the mailbox size, so those issues don't occur)

I still use 123-reg for domain hosting, and they are ok at that. They let you do most things you might want to do with DNS etc relatively easily (although if you need something a bit unusual you can meet a brick wall). They also have a very flexible system for creating mail forwards, and splitting mail to multiple recipients, something that you can do without needing to attach a mailbox to an address (something you can't do with the MS offering). So you can do stuff like create a public visible address snipped-for-privacy@domain.com and have that forward to a group of other addresses (which may also be forwards) quite easily.

Indeed - for business use the cost is often secondary.

Not knowing how good what they have at the moment is, its hard to say!

Something like google calendar can work well, can be shared, works on the web and on phones etc.

Generally if its just the domain on 123-reg, then that bit of it tends to stay working. Customers I have with 123-reg hosted domains, that are still using their mail exchangers but not their mailboxes did not see any problem during the outage - i.e. messages were still getting to their (non 123) hosted mailboxes even though they were being directed through 123.