Various email reliability??

[Peter Creasey]

I have email addresses with several providers but have always used CIS Classic as my primary account; thus, I am not very acquainted with other services.

The past few months with CIS Classic, I am fairly often being told by correspondents that either (i) they didn't receive email that I sent them or (ii) they sent me email which I didn't receive.

So, my question is this. Are periodic failures of email delivery without notice (both sending and receiving) to be expected with most any email provider in equal measures? Or is CIS Classic probably somewhat less reliable than other providers?

I am a strong supporter of CIS Classic, but if its reliability has fallen below other providers, then I may have to make a tough decision about whether to switch... WHICH I DON'T WANT TO DO.

Thanks for any opinions!

[earler]

CompuServe classic continues to exist only because it still generates some profitability. The number of subscribers, as you weil know, has dropped, first precipitously, then little by little. It is a fact that the profitability is largely because many still pay the full monthly rate and because of significant breakage.

In other words, CompuServe classic will eventually disappear. I'd begin looking for a replacement now because no one knows when the blade will fall, and it is likely that little advance notice will be given.

Frankly, CompuServe is less reliable and lacks features that other email providers offer. First of all the maximum size of the mailbox is limited to 250 megabytes. There is no ability to forward mail. Any problems that occur during the weekend must wait until monday before they are addressed. In the old days CompuServe had technical personal on duty 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Your best solution would be to get a domain and have incoming mail forwarded by it to whatever email address you wish. Thus you give out your domain address, say peter@creasey.com and there is no need to inform your correspondents if you must or choose to change your email address.

Right now my choice would be gmail. It has an almost unlimited size for the mailbox, 6 gig, can be used with mapi or pop3, your choice, and it has a very good filtering procedure, certainly far better than the one used by CompuServe.

[Peter Creasey]

Your best solution would be to get a domain and have incoming mail forwarded by it to whatever email address you wish. Thus you give out your domain address, say peter@creasey.com and there is no need to inform your correspondents if you must or choose to change your email address.

Earl, Thanks for the good reply!

So you are suggesting that I get my own domain address and have it be forwarded to, say, a gmail account. Can you recommend an easy and merit worthy source for getting a domain address?

[davidh]

Earl, Thanks for the good reply!

So you are suggesting that I get my own domain address and have it be forwarded to, say, a gmail account. Can you recommend an easy and merit worthy source for getting a domain address?

Can anyone comment on Yahoo domain/web hosting?
You can get what is called a "parking domain" very cheaply, e.g. under $10/yr. However, it might not be worth the trouble to do so if you do it only for email. Because you will have to do a little bit of setup to make a parking domain work with a free service such as google hosting (so that you can get your email at your own domain hosted on google. I think you can get a parking domain directly via google too, and in that case the set up might be easier than renting your parking domain via another registrar).

In other words, it would be less setup just to get a plain old gmail account. You can use your google email ID for other google services too, such as, google groups, youtube, google apps (online word processing and spreadsheets , etc.).

By the way, google is one of the first email providers to offer full SSL security during the complete online email session via the web to your online google email mailbox. That gains you security in Wi Fi locations such as internet cafes, where your wireless comms could be subject to snooping. That's in addition to all google's other excellent email features such as IMAP, POP3, forwarding, popping from other POP3 services, huge storage, etc. IOW, you could set up a new google account for yourself and have it also gather your POP3 compuserve email and any other POP3 email you have and also "label" those msgs as to their source so you can easily distinguish which msgs come via which path.

So unless one wants a personalized domain name for vanity purposes or for commercial purposes or for hosting a personal web site, it may not be worth even the relatively small effort and small annual fee to get one.

If you register a personal domain via google for say $10/yr and get a free web hosting site at google, however, you can have up to 25 free email accounts on that host. So for example if you have a large extended family and they all want to use a creasey'ized domain you could do that <smile>.

DH

P.S. BTW you can also collaborate on documents and spreadsheets online with live interaction via google apps and google instant messaging with others of your co-workers, friends, family who also have google accts. without having to install any IM or Office-type software. It's all done by the browser. All you need are your browser and a google email ID.

[davidh]

I also have email ID's on other free services such as AIM, AOL, Google, Yahoo which accounts I hardly ever use for email per se. But I might use such email ID's to receive notices of messages posted in Prospero CIS or in Yahoo Groups, etc.

So instead of using the browser to look at those mail boxes, I use a multiprotocol Instant Messaging program such as Pidgin to check for the very seldom messages I receive there. So it saves having to set up additional POP3 accounts in my mail program (Thunderbird) for rarely used server mail boxes. Of course, Yahoo does not provide POP3 for free, so I could not check my Yahoo mail with T-bird anyway, but Pidgin does work for that. Other multiprotocol IM programs can do this too (e.g., I think, Trillian and Miranda would do it too). Of course, if you actually want to read the messages and not merely be notified then you must use the browser to open the web based mail box (or use T-bird, etc. , if applicable).

BTW, I think AOL and AIM can be set up to DL POP3 msgs from other servers and you can access your free AOL and free AIM email via web and POP3 and IMAP like google but I don't think AOL and AIM would be as reliable as Google. Time Warner could sell AOL/CIS/AIM/Netscape whenever they get the chance.

DH

[davidh]

I forgot to mention that one of the main reasons I use IM programs is the free PC to PC LD calls and plus $0.01/min outgoing calls to landlines & cell phones on Yahoo Messenger. I haven't used Skype much so but the little (FREE) I did PC to PC worked ok.

If you get a lot of incoming calls from a particular area code , I think you can set up a phone number in AIM in that distant area code to receive calls for free from your friends there, it's a local call for them.

DH

[earler]

Davidh has made some good arguments for gmail. The single advantage of having your own domain, however, is in case gmail changes its policies to your detriment. It is for that reason I suggested the domain. It can be called a vanity domain as davidh as done, but I consider it less vanity than a pure way of having a permanent email address.

There are many companies offering hosting. The unreliability that plagues some is more in the area of site hosting rather than email.

[Peter Creasey]

There are many companies offering hosting. The unreliability that plagues some is more in the area of site hosting rather than email.

Earl and David, Thanks for the helpful info thus far. I have had a gmail account for a long time now but I believe I might like the "permanence" of a personal domain email account..

The reviews of some of the domain/email providers are pretty brutal.

Does someone have a domain (with email forwarding) provider that is recommended?

[sidney]

The reviews of some of the domain/email providers are pretty brutal

Godaddy.com is good and inexpensive at providing domain names. They don't meet your criterion of being "deserving" of your business, and I definitely would not recommend their other services, but they do provide an inexpensive and easy way of getting a domain, and once you have the domain you can point it to any email service. I recommend using Google apps for your email, which is what we did with tapcis.com. It is free and it gives you gmail for your domain, which means that you can have as many mailbox addresses in your domain as you want, each with 6 gigabytes of storage and the gmail interface and services.

-- sidney

[Peter Creasey]

GI recommend using Google apps for your email, which is what we did with tapcis.com. It is free and it gives you gmail for your domain, which means that you can have as many mailbox addresses in your domain as you want

Sidney, Thanks!

Your recommendation assumes, I believe (?), that the domain registrar will forward numerous email addresses received at my domain...sending each to its unique correct recipient address.

[sidney]

the domain registrar will forward numerous email addresses received at my domain

The domain registrar just gives you the domain. Google apps gives you the ability to create as many email addresses in that domain as you want, giving each one its own mailbox or assigning it to some other existing mailbox as you wish. You also have the option of directing all unspecified email addresses to some catchall mailbox, but that is not a good idea because it attracts spam sent to made up addresses.

-- sidney

[Peter Creasey]

The domain registrar just gives you the domain. Google apps gives you the ability to create as many email addresses in that domain as you want, giving each one its own mailbox or assigning it to some other existing mailbox as you wish.

Sidney etal, I must be missing something.

For incoming email, let's say I have my personal domain mydomain.com and want email addresses such as husband@mydomain.com and wife@mydomain.com. I want husband@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, husband@compuserve.com and wife@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, wife@gmail.com.

Don't I set up the mydomain.com addresses and the forwarding guidelines in mydomain.com? And then the forwarded emails are handled by, in this case, compuserve and gmail as though they arrived directly?

Now, for outgoing email it is unclear (i) how I would set up my email processor, SeaMonkey, so that the outgoing email would show mydomain.com as the sender and (ii) how I would use SeaMonkey to reply to an email, say to my compuserve.com address, so that mydomain.com is referenced as the sender of the reply.

Thanks again for the helpful communications.

[davidh]

Sidney etal, I must be missing something.

For incoming email, let's say I have my personal domain mydomain.com and want email addresses such as husband@mydomain.com and wife@mydomain.com. I want husband@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, husband@compuserve.com and wife@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, wife@gmail.com.

Don't I set up the mydomain.com addresses and the forwarding guidelines in mydomain.com? And then the forwarded emails are handled by, in this case, compuserve and gmail as though they arrived directly?

Now, for outgoing email it is unclear (i) how I would set up my email processor, SeaMonkey, so that the outgoing email would show mydomain.com as the sender and (ii) how I would use SeaMonkey to reply to an email, say to my compuserve.com address, so that mydomain.com is referenced as the sender of the reply.

Thanks again for the helpful communications.

Peter, there are at least two totally different kinds of forwarding.

One is the forwarding from your parking domain (vanity domain) to the web hosting server or email hosting server. I.e. at the domain level.

The other is forwarding for individual email accounts within the actual email server. I.e. AFTER the domain has been "forwarded" from the parking server to the actual email messaging server.

This complication is why I suggested skipping the private domain stuff and going with a vanilla gmail account.

Messing with the domain stuff may or may not be intimidating:
http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/topic.py?topic=9196

I put my own personal web site (actually my wife's) on the free google apps. however I did not bother to mess with using google apps for email in connection with the parking domain (wife's domain) because my first attempt at email domain forwarding did not succeed and I did not have the patience to work it out since we already had plenty of email accts, so why bother. If it were more than a tiny tiny part time business, maybe different situation, but not now.

Maybe I don't know the most user friendly way to navigate thru all this stuff, but to me there needs to be a significant pay back to bother to use a private domain for email.

The main place to start out would be at google.com/a

But I'm not sure that you really want to bother reading thru all that just to figure out if it's worth doing a "vanity" domain.

If you really want a "vanity" domain, merely for email, it might be worth paying a little extra and get a package where you don't have to understand much.

As I get older, I find that my geek quotient seems to decline.

But I still occasionally dream of resurrecting DOS TAPICS on my PC to work with TCP/IP and any POP3 server (fantasy land).

Before going into parking domains, etc. I'd recommend making sure that you understand all the capabilities available to you with vanilla gmail.

David H.

[davidh]

P.S. If you want to muck around with a vanity domain, Yahoo sometimes has a deal for parking domain at $2 for the first year.

That way you are "out" very little if you decide not to master the complexities or decide that it's not worth paying even a more standard rate of around $10/yr for a parking domain.

DH

[Peter Creasey]

I put my own personal web site (actually my wife's) on the free google apps. however I did not bother to mess with using google apps for email in connection with the parking domain (wife's domain)

David, Thanks for the good info!

I am coming around to your line of thinking...the personal domain appears to be more involved than I anticipated and prefer.

If you are willing and have time, I would be interested in hearing the details as to exactly how you structured your wife's parking domain.

Whatever I do will need to work harmoniously with my SeaMonkey email handler (which is very similar to Thunderbird).

[davidh]

If you are willing and have time, I would be interested in hearing the details as to exactly how you structured your wife's parking domain.

Whatever I do will need to work harmoniously with my SeaMonkey email handler (which is very similar to Thunderbird).I've forgotten what I did to connect my wife's parking domain to her free google web site. As I said, I never bothered to fix the email so we don't use the domain for email at all, only for web hosting.

If you want to learn how, the easiest way is just do it. I'd suggest setting up a free web site at google and putting up a sample dummy web page. Then go anywhere and buy the cheapest parking domain you can find.

Then you'll have to read the instructions from Google on what to do on the google side and read the instructions on the site of the company that holds your parking domain about what to do on their end.

Just to set up a sample dummy web site should not take long. If you decide not to go thru with the whole set up you may be out as little as $2 and 1 hour time.

-----------------------

If you want to set up SeaMonkey to work with regular google mail just go to the settings tab of your google mail on the web and look at the POP3 settings and the google web based email pages will give you help instructions on how to set up your POP3 (SSL) google email.

Thunderbird has an option in it to pick Gmail as an option when setting up a new acct. in T-bird. This eliminates even the small complcation of setting up the SSL port as opposed to the standard POP3 TCP/IP port. Maybe SeaMonkey has such an option too?

If you are not using google POP3 in SeaMonkey yet, I'd recommend doing so as a first step. I don't think there's much risk going with Google for a while. It's not like Google is in danger of disappearing soon.

--------------------------

I haven't modified my wife's web site for a couple years. Google has a browser based interface to edit and maintain your web site. I would prefer using something like old Netscape (probably sort of like SeaMonkey) for editing the web site. I don't know if Google now lets you use FTP or secure-FTP to upload files to free google sites or not. I have not kept up with google's innovations. I would sort of expect that google would let users of web site hosting at the paid-for level to use more professional type tools than a mere web based interface. Of course in actual practice one would use whatever tools for HTML editing that one knows and probably test the web pages offline before uploading and testing "live". YMMV.

[sidney]

For incoming email, let's say I have my personal domain mydomain.com and want email addresses such as husband@mydomain.com and wife@mydomain.com. I want husband@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, husband@compuserve.com and wife@mydomain.com email forwarded to, say, wife@gmail.com

Peter, there are two parts to the setup for email. One is the email address in a domain. The other is a mailbox in which mail goes. By using Google Apps you let Google take care of both parts. In fact, if you do not already have the domain, you can say so during the sign up process and it will guide you through ordering a .com domain through GoDaddy for $10/year. That is the easiest way to do it. The end result is that you have a domain that is set up so that any email to an address in the domain is handled by Google's mail servers. At that point you can go to a control panel web page in which you can create email addresses and mailboxes in your domain, for example husband@example.com and wife@example.com. You use those addresses just like you would use husband@gmail.com and wife@gmail.com, with the choice of using the web based gmail interface or configuring Seamonkey to get mail from pop.gmail.com or imap.gmail.com and send mail out through mail.gmail.com with a from address in your domain.

The Google Apps home page is at http://www.google.com/a/
If you click on the "Compare editions and sign up" button on the right it will take you to a page where you can sign up for the free edition. In the signup process if you say that you want to sign up a new domain, it will take you through buying a .com domain "powered by GoDaddy" for $10/year. I think the billing in that case is handled by Google as a GoDaddy reseller, but I don't know that for sure. It might be that you would end up a GoDaddy customer and billing is through them.

If you want something other than a .com domain, e.g., .net, or .org, or .name, then I think you have to register it first and will have to take a step to tell the registrar to switch mail handling to Google.

At the end of it you would have a domain and can set up mailboxes, forwarding, etc. How you would handle compuserve.com addresses depends on what facilities Compuserve gives you for email. But Google can handle just about every possible thing that Compuserve would do. For example, if you want mail to your compuserve.com address to end up in your Google apps mailbox for your domain address, you can configure the compuserve.com address to forward to your domain mailbox, or if Compuserve doesn't let you do that you can tell Google to grab mail from the compuserve.com mailbox using POP, pretending to be a mail client, and then it appears to you that the mail was forwarded to your mailbox.

Sending mail from your domain address when you use Seamonkey is just a matter of configuring Seamonkey to use the Google outgoing mail server using the settings as specified in Google's documentation for it.

-- sidney

[Peter Creasey]

David, Thanks again! I already have some gmail accounts. And, yes, they work fine with SeaMonkey (the only way I access them).

Google's tutorials (at least in my view) are short on details as to how the structure of domain communications would look and be set up.

Elsewhere, each time I have thought I had a handle on how things might work simply there seems to crop up a complication.

I'm inclined at this time to forgo the personal domain idea.

[earler]

In fact, one of the many missing features of compuserve.com email is the inability to forward mail from it to another email address.