Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: renluop on January 10, 2018, 06:50:32 PM
-
I have always preferred not to get tied in to one supplier for many services; phone and XDSL being an example. Currently they're split between BT and PN.
What is the split of members taking separate services to those taking a package, and what cause the decision?
A matter which would be a hassle changing ISP would be email addresses. How many of you have personal addresses because of that inconvenience?
-
At home: Phone and VDSL from separate suppliers.
Remote: VDSL, no phone service.
My email address is independent of the many ISPs I have used.
-
I've had our phone and broadband with Plus Net for a long time, can't remember why I originally did it that way but probably cost. Once VM goes live in our area we will do away with the phone, and just have broadband with VM.
I registered our own domain name around the same time we joined PN, 2003 comes to mind, but can't really remember. The domain name is with 1&1 and it allows me to create email addresses and then I just redirect to my ISP email address. When I change ISP I'll just change the redirect, so my actual email addresses stay the same.
-
I have never used an isp for my email, wouldn't dream of it as indeed it ties you to that one isp, and looks naff too, indeed downright gauche if you are a small or large business. I use an excellent small mail service provider.
Concerning the splitting of phone and internet access. At the moment I don't have a landline at all, don't need one and it's all more potential for quality degradation having to have DSL filters, so I don't have filters at all and no phones and no extensions. I do have to pay 'line rental' (ultimately goes to BT) for copper lines, and I switched to pay it to my ISP as then there is only one place where the buck stops and no arguing about what 'kind' of fault something is, as aside from crosstalk or some types of interference bad copper is just bad badness and it is all complete utter nonsense anyway - faulty copper lines affect DSL unless you pretend they make your 'phone' ill and choose to deal with it that way.
Re: Ronski's post, I don't do that kind of email redirect as then there are two things to go wrong so double the risk of failure. I get superb email facilities from my mail service provider for cheap money and they handle everything. Also I can send email wherever I am because I can do so through the mail-SP's SMTP servers regardless of how I'm attached to the internet, seeing as most outgoing email servers that are operated by ISPs tend to only allow users to send mail out through them if coming from IP addresses that are inside the ISP's own network, so they are totally useless if you are travelling. All a lot more hassle.
Basically I can't think of a single reason to use an ISP for email, just hassle, limitations, reduced functionality and reliability and breakage.
-
I was under the impression that hardly anybody uses ISP provided email addresses any more? They've long been overshadowed by Gmail/Hotmail/Facebook/Messenger/iMessage/snapchat comms haven't they? This is apart from people clinging on to legacy ISP addresses they've had for many many years that are hard to give up due to how far they have spread.
-
@Weaver, out of interest who do you use for your email? I've looked around in the past, but often just decided the cost is too much (there is four of us at home), all these little monthly charges add up.
I also have no problem sending email from where ever I am via Plus Net, it used to only work from within their network but at some point it changed.
ETA. Also whilst there is four of us in my immediate family, I've also set up redirects for my brothers families as I registered my surname as a domain name, so I wouldn't want to lose these redirects nor have to pay for them.
-
We have had our phone and broadband from TT for some years now. The original switch was on cost plus other family members with TT which reduced my landline charges as those calls between TT were and still are free. We have 3 domains, one for my wife and two for me, we dont use TT email although I do have an address with them it is rarely used. Our email is hosted with my hosting provider which I use for my website, the domains are registered with them as well. Not sure about the future, will depend on what VM have to offer.
Stuart
-
I have never used e-mail via an ISP for all the very good reasons mentioned above. :)
I have both telephone service and broadband access to the Internet supplied by TalkTalk. Both are adequate for my needs.
-
@Ronski I use UKServers.net aka virtualnames.co.uk. a very small company in Somerset and I've used them for over 15 years and you get to know everyone, tech support is superb. For an optional £10 p/a you get 10 separate mailboxes (ie storage) and an unlimited number of redirects, very configurable fantastic anti-spam, optional blocking of exes and nasties, various kinds of sophisticated server-side rules as well, POP and IMAP and optionally various flavours of webmail. I have DMARC and SPF set up too. Their DNS servers do what you need as well, you can configure the usual record types on them but not PTR records yet. The outgoing mail servers support encrypted SMTP with SMTP-AUTH. Registering a eg .com or .uk domain name with them costs the usual going rate and with that you just get numerous mail redirects no storage and sophistication, the mailboxes fee is an optional extra. I have had Linux / Apache / PHP web hosting from them in the past too for another tenner. Unfortunately they don't do email DNS and web hosting over IPv6 yet, but that is just the pedant in me. I asked them to upgrade their software so I could define my own AAAA records in my DNS control panel and they just did it in no time flat. I can't think of a single bad thing to say about them and all my home and business customers have used them after I simultaneously tried other providers. One oddity: It appears as if you don't get a huge amount of mail storage, all depending on some people's expectations though, but I just asked (on behalf of someone else) and they just upgrade it to whatever you want, it's just that oddly they don't document that very well, so just ask them for how much total mailbox storage you want. You get a certain total amount of combined-all-mailboxes storage and you partition it between your n mailboxes as you wish. If you need more than ten mailboxes then you just buy more.
-
Historically, we often used to have different DSL and line rental suppliers - the preference being to keep the line rental with BT for features such as carrier pre-select and short code services while benefiting from LLU ADSL providers (Be etc)
More recently, the benefits gained (lower prices, less hassle) from bundling the line rental and FTTC services generally seem to outweigh the disadvantages of doing so - unless you are specially after cheap line rental (Pulse8) or some other niche feature - while the need to make calls from the landline has also decreased with the advent of unlimited mobile minutes/apps
At the moment, we use BT for this and are on a decent deal so its competitive against the other big ISP offers - and we have found BT Infinity much more reliable (effectively trouble free) than its ADSL services ever were - with the decision marginally driven by the desire to maintain an old btinternet.com that one of my parents uses. The rest of the family use gmail/yahoo etc, though I do also have a domain name but that simply forwards emails to whatever webmail account(s) I need.
I suspect the market is going to take another interesting turn with the launch of g.fast and SOGEA and at that point I might eventually consider VoIP as an option
-
With ADSL, I kept the phone line with BT and went to other providers for Broadband. When moving to FTTC, I've bundled them together. No choice with Pulse8 as theirs is a TTB SMPF offering. Phone line now back on BTW, but I've kept the phone line with the Broadband provider, just to keep things simpler.
Our use of the phone has diminished to practically nothing anyway, now that we all have contract mobiles. The mobiles do cost a small fortune, so it is a bit of a case of spending pounds and saving pennies. ;)
Email has always been separate. I do pay for a personal domain. My original intent was to use that for personal emails and use a gmail account for site registrations, e-commerce transactions, but I just use gmail for everything now and just have the domain forwarding to my gmail address to pick up any odd emails that go to the domain address.
-
@weaver Thanks for the info, it's very useful. When I move from PN to VM I may move the email across to them, prices look very reasonable.
-
We have always had phone with BT, Internet access with somebody else. I know that’s suboptimal for cost, but it is my choice.
Soon after getting online, circa late 1990s, I decided to stop using ISP mail for all the reasons already cited.
So I registered a domain name, at first with a registrar that did mail forwarding. That worked but was unreliable, I suspect that the forwarding process did not cope well with errors. Also, for outgoing mail, it meant I had to ‘spoof’ the sender address, which led to some of my sent mail being flagged as spam.
These days I use Google Apps to host my domain’s email. Works very well indeed, and compatible with everything under the sun, but I was lucky enough to snap up the free version which has long since ceased to be available to new users. Unaffordable for most folks these days but existing ‘free’ customers were allowed to continue to have legacy access. :graduate:
I try not to worry too much about Google’s famous contempt for privacy. ::)
-
@weaver Thanks for the info, it's very useful. When I move from PN to VM I may move the email across to them, prices look very reasonable.
I too use ukservers/virtualnames email service, pulling mail from them into my home system with fetchmail. Very cheap, very good.
I also have a gmail address, accessible from my phone, which also forwards mail to my main email address.
-
I just like supporting small companies. The tech support is out of this world and they will just do things for you if you ask. It's sometimes a bit hard to find stuff in their website, so ask if lost. One thing that I don't like is their own domain names, referring to themselves. Not all the domain names are consistent, I sometimes get mixed up with
ukservers.net - hangs
admin.ukservers.net - works - the main control panel),
ukservers.com [!] - different company - watch out,
ukservers.co.uk hangs - poss a redirect to .net
virtualnames.co.uk - correct
virtualnames.com - ?different company ??? bad news
virtualnames.net - some holding page for a web server not really set up yet (who knows)
-
I contacted them yesterday about moving my domains and received an immediate response, very impressive. Think I'll move one over and try their hosting services out. They are certainly cheaper than my current registrar and email host.
-
Another alternative, also a relatively small uk company. I suspect they may have moved on a bit since it was written, all the same, their ‘about us’ blurb is quite endearing...
https://www.vidahost.com/about
Vidahost is founded by Seb and Dom, aged just 16. Wanting a better quality host for their own hobby websites (an Invision Board forum and Harry Potter fan site) they take matters into their own hands and buy a server, selling spare capacity to friends and family to help cover the costs
They were first mentioned to me by Kitz herself, some thread from long ago. :)
I use them just as registrars, though they do web hosting and mail hosting too. Performance (as registrars at least) has been faultless.
-
Yes I've used Vidahost for a long time now. I don't know how I originally stumbled across them as they were relatively new at that time, but I was looking for a new host after the likes of 123.reg and easily hadn't been working out because of the amount of site traffic.
Everywhere else was saying I needed dedicated, but Seb and Dom back in about 2006 put together a bespoke business package for me at a reasonable cost. Since then, and as the site grew further I've upgraded several times through with them and my experience with them has been on the whole very good.
However my requirements are obviously more than the average user, so Ive no experience with their general shared type hosting.
-----
Talking of small hosts, there is also our own d2d4j who runs a hosting company and is extremely knowledgeable.
He offers special rates for members of this forum from time to time which may be worth looking at. linky (http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,18530.msg334345.html#msg334345)
-
Had a BT line in the days when that was the only provider. Added Claranet broadband in 2002 - migrated to Plusnet in 2008.
Changed line rental to Plusnet in 2010 or 11, mainly because I was increasingly frustrated by BT's labyrinthine bills, and their offshore 'help'-desk. There was the added bonus of a £2·50 discount for having BB & phone. If a fault occurred, there would be no ping-pong battle between the landline and BB providers.
At the moment email is 50-50 ISP & MS/Gmail - gradually migrating all off ISP.
-
Hi
Many thanks kitz for mentioning me. The offer will remain in place should anyone wish to take it up
Many thanks
John
-
Tips hat to d2d4j :hat:
-
UKServers.net aka virtualnames.co.uk
Really bad news. They have either folded or cashed-in / sold out, but anyway they will soon cease to exist, after over 16 years. Taken over by who <random-entity>. So I now have to move a vast number of domain names and some services, and very quickly as time is limited.
[Moderator edited to add the above "headline".]
-
Hi weaver
If you want to take my offer up, please pm me
I hope ronski doesn’t mind, but you could pm the users who have currently taken the offer to ask for their honest opinions so far. Albeit relatively too soon for an long period use
We can handle/transfer as many domains/clients as needed and usually within hours. Our biggest transfer was 238 domains to one of our platforms
Anyway, I wish you well on finding what you
Many thanks
John
Sorry tried pm you before posting here but you’ve blocked me sorry, but I don’t think I’ve pm you before but if I had and upset you, I didn’t mean too sorry
-
From an article
One trick you may or may not have picked up about Gmail is that you can add in periods anywhere in the front part of your address and it makes no difference whatsoever: john.smith@gmail.com works just the same as johnsmith@gmail.com. What's more, you can add a plus sign and any word before the @ sign (e.g. johnsmith+hello@gmail.com) and messages will still reach you
This caught my eye, as with my PN ISP there are mail boxes for me, my wife etc. Will the same be available, were I to use Gmail in preference to Plusnet?
-
Really bad news. They have either folded or cashed-in / sold out, but anyway they will soon cease to exist, after over 16 years. Taken over by who <random-entity>. So I now have to move a vast number of domain names and some services, and very quickly as time is limited.
Was in same boat, but only just one domain. :phew: Have taken up John's offer and the experience has been excellent. :thumbs:
-
Sorry tried pm you before posting here but you’ve blocked me sorry, but I don’t think I’ve pm you before but if I had and upset you, I didn’t mean too sorry
It's not personal. :) Members can choose to switch off PMs in their profile settings, which will block all PM's except from admin.
-
Hi kitz
Ooops sorry. I mainly use Tapatalk so I don’t think I have ever looked at profile settings sorry.
I did think it strange though, as I do not like to pester people and just wanted to keep it off thread if possible
@vic - thank you for your kind words
Many thanks
John
-
I hope ronski doesn’t mind, but you could pm the users who have currently taken the offer to ask for their honest opinions so far. Albeit relatively too soon for an long period use
I don't mind at all, all went very smoothly, no problems at all just a little learning on my part, but very simple really, administration interface is great, as is the web mail especially with the choice of three web-mail clients. It a big :thumbs: from me.
-
From an article
This caught my eye, as with my PN ISP there are mail boxes for me, my wife etc. Will the same be available, were I to use Gmail in preference to Plusnet?
If you and your wife use different gmail addresses, you will each have a separate account/mailbox.
If you decide to use 1 gmail account and differentiate your email address using + (such as johnsmith+hello@gmail.com) then you can filter the emails for each '+' into different sub folders,
-
Thanks. :) Will outgoing mail be separable too?