I like the idea of email being stored on my computer. For many years the combination of first Mindspring and then Earthlink coupled with Thunderbird has served me satisfactorily. Earthlink is now $9 a month and becoming ever more unreliable. Customer support is nonexistent.
It is time to do something different. Reliability and customer support is most important. Cost almost irrelevant.
1. Is it possible to keep an email address and move elsewhere? I suppose not.
2. What will Thunderbird work well with?
3. Should I begin anew and choose something else that would provide email and have email downloaded to my computer? Or other?
If you are a Windows 10 user, I suggest using the built in email client, simply named “Mail”. Create a free account on Microsoft’s Outlook.com email server. The service is straightforward, reliable and information on it’s use is available freely on the internet.
'll start the discussion but since I'm in Canada I can't say much about which providers are best for you although you might say if you are looking for land-based or are using Earthlink's satellite internet.
1. I don't think keeping the current email address is an options since it is tied to the provider's server address. I had this problem when I moved to a different provider and IMO when you setup an email address use something like Gmail, Outlook, or .... which is provider independent. It wasn't too much of a PITA to get people to change. I created a "signature" that was a reminder to change to my new email address that went with every email I sent as well as an email telling friends of the upcoming change.
If you have a lot of things that use your email address such as software registration then you have to do them to. IMPORTANT: Do them right away before your current address invalid because if the address they have you registered under is no longer valid communication will be impossible if they send something to the old address!
Logins that use your address as the username will still work with the old name but if they try to send you something then it will fail.
Programs like Gmail and Outlook download email to your computer and also keep it on their server. You can access it directly from your computer or through the web if necessary.
Now whether you can have 100% of old mail instead of just some time interval instantly available on the computer I don't know and there may be a setting.
My Outlook that I get as part of Office 365 Inbox goes back 1 year and there is a link to get more off the server if necessary.
The advantage of having it on the server as well is that it is a backup and you can blow away your email or get a new computer and it will download it from the server.
1. Unfortunately you can't port your email to another provider since you don't own a domain name. At least not as of yet.
2. Thunderbird and many other clients will store a copy of your mailbox on your local workstation if you instruct them to do so. However, there's also going to be a copy of your emails on the mail server provider, because most of them aren't just transfer agents anymore. Not sure whether you care about this.
3. It seems you don't have many options on this one. Switching a mail provider will result in a new email address. Most probably you would want to retain your mail archive, so the existing account has to be synced up with your workstation - you will be able to read and search old emails. Since you're a Thunderbird user your address book should already be local. So the only issue here is that you'd have to notify your recipients that you have a new email.
Depending how often you plan email migrations you might want to consider buying a domain (5-15$/yr) and figuring out email hosting, an involving, but a very future proof method. When you own a domain, migrating from a provider to provider is transparent to everyone.
What does the expense and bother of setting up your own domain name for possible later portability offer than just going with Gmail or Outlook or similar?
If you are also going to have a website then that would make it more feasible.
I left Earthlink. When you tell them you’re leaving, they will offer to archive your existing mail for ~$10/mo. Which means you can go looking for some older piece of mail that suddenly became important to you, and it’s right there in the Inbox. But no new earthlink mail will be delivered.
Maybe there is a better way to maintain your earthlink history, but one option is to pay them to do it.
I went with Spectrum, which may be available to you. In my case, I already had the Time Warner cable in the house, which made Spectrum an easy choice. Spectrum is renamed Time Warner—had to change the name because TWC’s hate level was about tied with Comcast.
Spectrum is OK—I’d give them a solid B. I use their TV+Internet services. Reliability is mostly good, not perfect. They advertised 100Mbps, but have since upgraded on their nickel to 200+Mbps. They will raise rates on you, with a 2-3-month notice. Just figure that in from the start, and go with the outfit that impresses you most, regardless of price—because the price can and will change.
Fiber is inherently better technology than cable, but your satisfaction will depend on how well the companies execute hook-up and signal reliability, and deliver customer service when you call them. Suggest buy more speed than you think you need—like 100Mbps minimum—because you don’t want to watch buffering during the ballgame. Check with neighbors and local papers to get a sense of customer experience near you.
Well, a detailed explanation is going to be very technical, so I'm going to simplify quit a bit.
Basically, a domain name is like an Internet address card that contains many entries, kind of like a business card can have a work phone number, a mobile number, a fax, a mailing address, etc. Purchasing a domain gives you rights to change values in these entries. Whoever wants to email you will have to look for your domain in a global address system (DNS) first, and then look for a particular type of an entry (specifically, the MX type record — "eMail eXchange" in our case). This way they will find a numeric address of a specific server that accepts email for your address.
Say you don't like your current email provider because they charge you 10$/mo for just storing a bunch of text files and provide zero tech support. You would just pick another email provider (which could be Google, MS or Yahoo) and will change addresses of "your" email servers using a domain registrar's dashboard. Your email address stays the same, the switch is totally transparent to your recipients, you can do this daily if you wish.
This is a technical advantage over popular email providers. Another advantage is that you are no longer at a mercy of a big company that might lock you out of your account without any explanation (they will make up one of course) and aren't going to listen to your complaints.
Obviously this is not for everyone. I personally opted for multiple email accounts and manual archival of important emails ('cos I'm lazy). However there's definitely a considerable value in owning an email address completely, especially of you have many human recipients and actively using email for communications.
Bill, I don't remember how you connect to the Internet - dial up phone line, broadband cable, or satellite. If you're using broadband cable, the cable company provides email service already in the cost for the service, which means a separate provider is not necessary. The satellite services out there might also do this but not sure.
1. Is it possible to keep an email address and move elsewhere? I suppose not.
No
2. What will Thunderbird work well with? Should work well with most providers. Shouldn't be a problem.
3. Should I begin anew and choose something else that would provide email and have email downloaded to my computer? Or other? The only other option I can think of might be Yahoo. I'm one that values downloading and storing mail on my computer. Whenever I move to a new computer I just copy the various mailboxes from the current computer and import them to the new one. I have emails going back years that I still refer to from time to time.
In addition to Yahoo, Google Gmail and Microsoft Outlook are free email providers that are not ISP’s, Internet Service Providers. There is a real advantage to going with one of these three. It becomes easy to change iSP’s without making any changes to your email account. Their email can be used with just a browser, or, with any of the popular email clients. I personally like MS Outlook with the embedded Windows 10 email client.
I have a computer guru that fixes stuff as needed and I knew that he used Thunderbird. I asked him what to do. For a modest fee he switched me from unreliable Earthlink to gmail. Every imaginable variety of Tindall was used by others on gmail but our old business name was free, so that is what we used.
I believe you will be pleased with the new email service. Did your library of emails move over with you? And, is your former service forwarding new emails sent to your former address?
On the desk top it appears as two sources of email but one source of information. So whether I am in Earthlink or Google if I type a name in the header to send an email the email is fetched from the Address book, for example. To see mail from gmail I just click gmail in box. To see mail from Earthlink I just click Earthlink in box.
A less known but quite good free service is gmx.com. The company is based in Germany so perhaps the privacy might be better, I'm not sure. It works perfectly with Thunderbird and also offers free "cloud storage", I think 2 GB. worth. I've used that in the past to make large files available to others. Create a link to the file and email the link to recipients. I'm probably on a fool's errand but I try to limit my Google exposure.