Forwarding Email
 

Gang,

We are in the process of finalizing a home move from Rochester, NY to Boston, MA area.

I have kept our Roadrunner email account all this time... but will be converting over to Comcast in a few weeks.

Is there any service that will automatically forward emails from one service to another? I am so afraid that I will not be able to redirect all accounts and emails before I cancel the accounts.

Any advice would be appreciated.

William

have you asked time warner? otherwise, i'm neither exactly sure what you are looking for, nor what would give it to you. i'd suggest you not use your cable company's email addresses in the future, and use something else like gmail or inbox.com or whatever that will always stay with you and will give you smtp forwarding too.

Not helpful with forwarding this time, but for your next move, consider getting an email address that won't change when you move: gmail and yahoo are both free, accessible from anywhere and portable. And they are free. Gmail works nicely with email clients, too. (I'm not sure about yahoo.) Hotmail and juno are also free, I think but I dont have experience with either. I have a yahoo account that I use for anything I think will generate junk email (when I buy on line, etc) and a gmail account for my friends that I have managed to keep relatively spam free. With one of these email services, you never have to worry about what will happen when you move or has happened here, when comcast acquired time-warner's operations.

There are no forwarding options available, once you close an '@ISP.com' account, unless the ISP in question chooses to provide such a service (which is very rare).

By way of a suggestion, WHarvey.com appears to be available, and registering your own domain name gives you the most control in terms of e-mail forwarding, etc.

I agree with some of the above suggestions. You'll only get the forwarding option if the original ISP allows it, which is a serious long shot. I think AOL does it, but that's about it.

This is one of the reasons I recommend spending less than $20/yr for your own domain and email hosting. You'll then own the domain and you'll never have to change your email address. No one can ever force you to give it up (except maybe a court order). There is no advertising, not as much spam, etc, etc, etc. It always amazes me that people use the email addresses provided by their ISPs.

If you want to keep your email address, you'll have to continue the service. Man that is an expensive email account :td:

If I were in your situation, I would choose to pay for 1-6 months of service depending on how important the email address is and then notify every single person who sends you email on the old address of your new email address. Even if you're spending $100/mo on internet access, that is still probably less costly than losing a future customer and/or sale.

unfortunately, I have no idea how to even go down this road... :)

This may or may not help... it's certainly something that works with many if not most UK ISPs, but I have no idea what the situation is in the USA.

Here in the UK many (if not most) ISPs will NOT automatically disable a customer's mailbox if that customer stops buying their connectivity (broadband or dial-up) from them. Instead the mailbox stays open and continues to accept mail... until it eventually goes over-quota and starts rejecting mail with a "mailbox full" message.

In most cases (i.e., unless the ISP has blocked remote access) ex-customers can continue to pick up mail from their ex-ISP's mailbox (thus stopping it from going over-quota), by either setting up their mail client (Thunderbird, Outlook, whatever) to collect mail from their old mailbox, or by using a generic webmail client such as www.mailreader.com.

This definitely works with the majority of UK ISPs... it may or may not work in the USA. If it does it would solve the OP's immediate problem... though long-term the best solution would be to aquire a permanent email address by either registering a domain or going for a forwarding or webmail service such as Yahoo or Gmail.

I am not sure, but I think you may be able to access your old e-mail account even though you do not have an internet account, if only for a little while.

Sometimes you can setup auto-forwarders within the ISP's webmail but this isn't always the case.

It is much easier than you think.

You could just go the gmail route if your'e so inclined. But keep in mind that gmail works a little differently than other email and it takes some getting used to (no folders and it nests emails from the same sender and same subject).

Otherwise, for your own domain and email, I like godaddy.com (but there are countless other places). But they are huge, reasonable and have good customer service. If you can't figure it out from their web site then call them and they will probably do it all for you on the phone. Basic domain and email is under $10 a year.

I use both gmail, yahoomail and have my own domain. I use them for different things. I use my own domain for most all email, bills etc. I use gmail for email subscriptions that give me tons of mail (one I subscribe to sends me up to 100 emails a day). That way I can just stop forwarding it when I'm out of town and it won't clutter things up. And I use yahoo because I've had it a long time, and it is hard to let go of old things (although I use it the very least).

Finally, I use outlook and it gets my gmail and godaddy mail for me automatically every minute, which is great. Yahoo doesn't let you do that unless you buy a premium service.

Good luck.

Its amazingly simple... just go to godaddy.com (for example) and pick a domain name.... if you can buy something from Amazon then you can buy a domain name. Then once its activated you click a link and setup the email accounts you want....

GMail is just as easy.

My parents paid for an ISP that they wernt using for a year until she finally let me get get them a domain name, so I know the drill :)

I have had our own family domain name for five or so years.

It makes changing emailing addresses a one-minute thing, instead of a crisis.

I use domaindirect.com Although it is pricier than some mentioned, it's very easy to use and it's what I know.

Return Path
 

I assume your roadrunner account will eventually be closed. If so, Return Path might ease your pain a little bit during this transitional stage. It's free. Years ago, one of my web email providers went belly up. I didn't have time to contact all those on my addressbook so I registered with Return Path. The service allowed me to authorize the email traffic from the closed account to my new one (I don't think I can explain myself too clearly.:o )

Read their FAQs and see if you want to give it a try. From their FAQs:

Return Path is an email change of address service that helps you stay connected after you change your email address. Friends, family and online relationships who only know your old email address can use our service to find your new email address....

Thanks for all the advice.

Appreciate all the help.

William

I recommend www.pobox.com $20 a year for an email address (up to 3 actually) and they forward it to wherever you want.. then you just set your mail client to use the "from" that you picked at pobox.com.