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.

return path works pretty well, I have used it for about seven years now. Catches things monthly from old accounts.
Check with your current ISP, you might be able to buy a month or year, for very cheap. We did that a few years ago, for 25$ a year, they kept the email alive and active. Worked fine and still does

that reminds me, I need to shut off that old email!

On that subject, does anyone know when gmail will finally permit the "delete from server when deleted from trash" option for POP access? I do route most of my private and business mail through gmail, but no newsletters for that very reason - I get a lot of things that I filter straight to archive for further use in Eudora. With gmail, I would either have to go back and manually delete or else risk my gmail inbox becoming hopelessly cluttered.

It works, when I use OE or outlook, just not 100% of the time. I would say about 97% of the time, the update from OE or Outlook properly sends the delete. POP is prone with this issue, same is true for my yahoo pop access. It isn't 100%.

but, gmail does offer this and it works.

I have a personal domain that I host through DreamHost - $8/mo gives me an obscene amount of bandwidth/storage space (I think something like 250GB storage and 2TB transfers, and it grows kind of like your GMail storage). They include a free domain registration in that, too.

However, I have my mail service hosted through GMail's service - see http://google.com/a/ for details on this. Basically, I go to gmail.mydomain.org, and I get the GMail interface for up to 50 addresses, each with 2GB storage. All free - they offer a paid version that lets you get rid of all the ads.

Similar to the pobox.com option, Yahoo Mail offers a "plus" option that gives you extra storage (10GB), forwarding ability, etc.

Personally, I like having the vanity domain setup - it's nice to have a simple e-mail like ben (at) ben-johnson {dot} org

Agreed on this. I use the domain+GoogleApps method. Teh domain cost me $7.99 to resgister and the GoogleApps, nothing.

Bigfoot is a simple solution
 

I have a couple of my own domains now, but a few years ago I signed up with Bigfoot.com. Unlimited use costa about $20/year.

Basically, you choose your email addres ([email protected]) then you just give people your bigfoot address.

Bigfoot will forward your email to whatever email address you want. So you can change your regular email address whenever you want, and just tell Bigfoot what your new address is. The people who are sending you email will just continue sending it to Bigfoot, and they never need your new address. It's really simple.

A few years ago, when I left AT&Ts ISP, they also offered a few months of forwarding.

Cromely.

Bigfoot = spam
 

I don't trust Bigfoot.

I signed up with them many years ago, when spam was only a relatively small problem and before spammers started to resort to planting address-harvesting viruses on people's machines (in other words, back in the days when addresses were harvested either manually or by web crawler, and when you were deemed to be safe from spammers unless you put your email address on a web site).

When I signed up with Bigfoot I set up a forwarding address of bigfoot@mydomain.

Within days that address - which had only EVER been given to Bigfoot - started to receive spam.

What's more, all the spam came from the Philippines - where Bigfoot have their head office.

There cannot be the slightest doubt that those spammers obtained my address from Bigfoot, or perhaps a corrupt Bigfoot employee. I complained to Bigfoot but only got boiler plate replies so I gave up on them as a bad job.

Another idea: many/most colleges and universities in the United States these days offer a permanent forwarding address for alumni. E.g., you get something like [email protected] and you set it up to forward to your real email address, and can change the forward as needed.

I also use bigfoot as my email address.

I find it very useful. My ISP changed many times as I changed locations, jobs and careers. My email stayed the same I just changed the forwarding address to what ever my current ISP was. I even forwarded it for a time to my gmail, hotmail accounts.

As for spam, I find I get just as much spam with my hotmail account as with my bigfoot email address. Spam filters catch almost everything.

It wasn't my Bigfoot address that was getting spammed, it was the address to which my Bigfoot address was forwarding. Nobody except Bigfoot had this address as it was a unique address.

My point was about the untrustworthiness of Bigfoot or their staff - i.e., there can be no doubt that they passed the address to the spammers as they were the only people who had this particular address.

Just get your own domain, then you keep your e-mail address forever, and if you don't like what your provider is charging you, you take your address and move it to a different service.

Never rely on an ISP (comcast, time warner, AOL, etc.) to let you keep your address. They have no incentive to do so.

You can get a domain for under $10/year from just about any domain registrar. I use namesecure.com, but there are a million others out there.

Then you just need an e-mail provider. I use fastmail.fm because it's reliable, has great support and has an amazingly powerful interface that does everything I want. The downsides are that it's not the cheapest and it's geeky.

If you want cheap and simple, try the free Google Apps service for your domain. Their basic free service gives you a customized version of gmail (and their calendar, docs, and other services) that runs on your own domain. You can give free addresses to other people, too. For example, if you register the domain name "wharveyfamily.com" you can give out "[email protected]" to Mom, "[email protected]" to Dad, etc.

It does require a little technical knowledge to set up, since you have to set the MX records in your DNS settings to point to gmail's servers. If that sounds like gibberish to you, get a tech-savvy friend to help you get set up. It'll take 10 minutes, and then you're good to go.

And once it's set up, using Google Apps for your domain is just like using gmail, google calendar, etc., except it's your own address, so if Google's service ever goes downhill (or they start charging more than you want to pay) you can take your address elsewhere.

I had exactly the same problem you mentioned. They are evil. I shifted to using gmail addresses with nil problems.

MisterNice

correct. has been working fine for me as well.

PM me if you need help setting your own domain and email address

I have 4 different emails, all pointing to my gmail account. I lost some contacts when I used ATT and I couldn't forward my emails then.

I have my last name as a domain. in com,net,biz, and a couple more.
bought them from godaddy which is now easy to work with.

have them hosted on fastmail.net, which is very inexpensive(like free for basic service) at the premium service rate of $40/year. provides up to minute virus service, and a sophisticated spam sorter and a lot of web host bandwith. also hosts virtual domains.

Why would you pay fastmail $40 to host an e-mail account when google apps will do that for free? I used to have a Fastmail free account and it is nowhere near as good as Google's online mail offering.

With Google putting gmail together with your own domain address, for free, on google apps, seems pretty much a category killer to me.

Google Apps is decent and getting better (it now has secure SMTP, for example, which it didn't have before, and reliability seems to be steadily improving), but it's still not as reliable or feature-rich as fastmail. Fastmail includes secure IMAP. Gmail only has POP. Fastmail includes highly customizable spam protection. On gmail you have very little control. Fastmail's web interface works well on computers of all speeds. Gmail's Ajax-heavy interface is panifully slow on older computers. Reading a series of unrelated messages on fastmail requires fewer clicks. And you can reliably control several domains on a single fastmail account.

But perhaps the most important reasons I stick with fastmail: reliability and support.

Gmail often has problems with their servers holding messages for no reason. I've seen messages delayed on gmail servers for up to two hours (both incoming and outgoing). This almost never happens with fastmail, and if it did, a quick alert to the admins would have it investigated and fixed. Fastmail has a frequently-updated status blog (status.fastmail.fm) where you can see what problems they're currently investigating, and they have real computer nerds working there who respond quickly to support requests. As far as I can tell, gmail doesn't even offer support (except an online FAQ system).

For most users, Google Apps will be fine. And it's a great solution for a family or small business who want to run their own domain with several e-mail addresses as cheaply and simply as possible, and don't mind if a very small percentage of their mail suffers a delay here or there.

But for power users who want full control over their mail and accountability when something goes wrong, $40/year (or $70 for 2 years) really isn't that much to pay. I'm a cheapskate, and I'm even willing to pay it.

An Important Consideration - Make sure YOU own the domain!
 

A little late to this thread, but this cannot be repeated often enough.

When registering a domain, and I highly recommend it for the purposes discussed in this thread, Make sure you own the domain!!

Too many people find when they go to move to a new domain registrar or new web host that the domain was registered by the web host or registrar and they won't give it up when you go to move off their service.

Get it IN WRITING that you, and not the registrar or webhost, own the domain and that you can tranfer it without charges at any time.

Personally I register my domains at www.easydns.com and then go off to find hosting.

You don't own the domain unless
a) you register it yourself and put a transfer lock on it or
b) you get it in writing before you sign up

Slightly off topic but where do you host your site for less than $12 per year? I figure it costs ~$8 for the domain registration so that leaves ~$12 for the hosting.

He was talking about e-mail hosting, not web hosting. There are plenty of services that offer free or low-cost e-mail hosting, and some even toss in basic web hosting.

As discussed above, you can host gmail-style e-mail and a basic website for free using Google Apps (www.google.com/a). You have to use their Pages service to create your website (no FTP or shell access), but it's free. That brings the annual cost of running a website and e-mail accounts to about $8/year (i.e., the cost of the domain).

Slightly more powerful and reliable (but geekier and more expensive) is fastmail.fm, which we've also discussed above. Their web hosting abilities are limited, but their e-mail rocks.

There are plenty of other e-mail services out there, too, where you can get a basic account with your own domain for minimal cost.

Misunderstood that part. Thanks. :)