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Saving money on email servers & domain names

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superFoolish
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Saving money on email servers & domain names

#140007

Postby superFoolish » May 19th, 2018, 2:41 pm

Short version (or TLDR, as the cool-kids call it); I have cut my domain name / email hosting costs by about 40% per year by rationalising and moving from 1and1 to Google services. The most interesting result (from my point of view) is that I have discovered that Gmail can be used for sending/receiving emails from a 'private' domain name, without the need for access to an external email server, and I now also have free web hosting.

Long version:

I work part time for someone else, but still do a bit of private consulting, so I need domain names for email and a few static websites.

Over the years, I have built up a collection of domain names (over twenty live at the moment), ten of which I still use, but the others are 'parked'. I also have hosting with 1and1 in the UK, which I mainly used for domain name hosting and email server; it's pretty good value at about GBP60 per year. However, with the domain name renewals averaging over GBP200/year, I was paying over GBP260 per year in total. I also used the 1and1 hosting for a couple of static web sites.

So, time to review and consolidate:

I have been putting this off for a couple of years (due to fear of 'breaking' web sites and email flow), but it has turned out to be very straightforward. My goal was to cut my costs and dump 1and1; I have lived in Australia for a while, and it's becoming a pain paying them in GBP. I also suspected that I could find either a local (to me) or (preferably) international solution for less money. I would add that I think 1and1 offer a reasonable service (see note 1 at the end).

The steps to dump 1and1: 1) transfer the domain name hosting/registrar, 2) move the email hosting, 3) move the static websites.

1) Cancelled automatic renewal of the 10+ domains that I no longer use and transfer the ones that I want to keep. I had hung onto some 'old' domains for the following reasons a) I may want to resurrect them, b) To prevent someone impersonating me or my businesses, c) An element of sentimentality, d) the vain hope that someone might buy one of the domains. Enough time has passed for impersonation to be of no concern, so I have bitten the bullet and cancelled the renewals, saving about GBP60/year. A good start. I have transferred the remaining domains to Google Domains, which is cheaper for renewals (about GBP3 cheaper for each domain), and has a better dashboard for managing domains (the 1and1 dashboard is S...L...O...W!). That's 1 of 3 solved! Also, see note 2, at the end, with regards to an annoying issue with 1and1 domain renewals / incoming domain transfers.

2) Next problem to solve was being able to use Gmail with my own domain names without the 1and1 mail servers. In addition to a few business-related domain names, I was early-enough onto the Internet to register the .co.uk, .com and .net domain names that are my surname (also got the .com.au!), so my email address is first@last.com. For over 12 years, I have had my domains hosted with 1and1 which allows for many email aliases, 'catchall' email addresses (i.e. they accept anything@mydomain.com). When I moved to Australia 7 year ago, I switched from Outlook desktop email to Gmail (which I think is great). Gmail connects to the 1and1 mail servers to receive / deliver mail, and no one can tell that I use Gmail when I send / receive email using first@last.com (or my other domain names). I have always been under the impression that it was not possible to use a 'private' domain names with the free Gmail; in fact, Google sells 'private domain' emails as an advantage of their commercial G Suite product over free Gmail. I was in the process of testing G Suite, and was very close to starting to pay for it (about GBP6/month for two user accounts), when I stumbled across a method of using private domain names on free Gmail without using a third-party mail-server. It takes 2-3 minutes to set up for each unique email address, and it works perfectly for domains registered on Google Domains (see Note 3 at end for link to instructions). One of the disadvantages of using 1and1 mail servers was there was a delay in receiving mail; usually about 10-30 minutes (not a major issue, but sometimes irritating). With Gmail, all my email is pretty-much instant (depending on the sender's mail server). The result, fast email with my private domain names at no cost for mail servers, and reduced per-domain registrar costs. That's 2 of 3 solved!

3) Transfer web hosting. My professional hosting requirements are very modest; I have a handful of static web sites, and I was going to transfer them to one of the many cheap hosts available. However, during my research into Google Domains, email, etc, I came across Google Cloud Platform (GCP). GCP is primarily aimed at enterprises (similar to Netflix, Adobe, etc. using Amazon's cloud service). GCP has a 12 month free trial which includes USD300 of credit to use on almost all their cloud services, but even when the trial expires, they have an 'Always Free Tier' which covers many of their cloud features when used on a low-usage-level. I was aware that it is possible to host static sites on GCP, but I thought it would be very technical and not worth the trouble (these are enterprise-level services aimed at technical experts who manage high-throughput online services). However, one YouTube video and 60 minutes later, and I had my first static site transferred and live on GCP, using one of the domains that I had transferred to Google Domains. I have now transferred 2 more of my static sites, with each taking fewer than 15 minutes from start to finish with no interruption to service. Another free-of-charge solution; I am fairly confident that my usage will remain on the GCP Always Free Tier, but the billing dashboard gives a detailed breakdown of costs, so I can review potential costs regularly and consider transferring the sites elsewhere within 12 months, if necessary. That's 3 of 3 solved, and I can now let my 1and1 account expire at the end of the contract.

I haven't transferred domain names between registrars for many years (at least 7) and, based on past experiences (web sites and email down for several days) I was dreading it, but the process is now very straightforward, with the whole process taking fewer than 5 minutes to complete for each domain, and the way that Google Domains transfers the DNS information meant absolutely no interruption to web and email services.

I do quite a lot of programming / web development as a hobby, but I never use 1and1 for that kind of thing; I have been using Digital Ocean's virtual servers which cost (literally) pennies to use, because you are only charged whilst the servers are running (plus a small fee for storage). My notional costs are always under USD$5 per month, but in practice I have spent about USD$2.50 (yes two dollars and fifty cents) in 10 months, by using introductory coupons! I also have another $60 of free coupons lined-up. However, I will be seeing if I can learn to use the equivalent features of Google Cloud Platform, as they are more flexible, definitely free for the next 12 months, and possibly free forever!

Bottom line, I have reduced my total costs from GBP270 / year to (equivalent) GBP165 / year; about 60% of what I was originally paying, and all managed through a single Google log-in (yes, I use two-factor authentication, and multiple recovery methods, including other accounts that can log in!).

I was particularly pleased to be able to continue using free Gmail rather than moving to G Suite, not only because it's free (G Suite is AUD120/year for the two accounts that I would have needed), but it also avoids data/email migration, and I can stay on my legacy Google Storage plan (GBP4.89/year for 38Gb). Although the newly-announced Google One storage plans are cheaper per Gb, I don't need the amount of storage provided by their lowest-cost plan which will be USD24/year for 100Gb, so I'm still better off paying more per Gb.

Note 1: I am not aware that I have had any interruption in email or web hosting service in the 12.5 years that I have used 1and1, and their tech support is okay (as long as it's not too technical). I would not recommend 1and1 for web hosting anything other than very basic sites with low traffic; their web services are way too slow and technically crippled.

Note 2: A bit of a long one relating to 1and1, but this annoyed me... I had an issue with a domain for which I cancelled automatic renewal on 1and1... It is normal, that when you transfer a domain to another register, you have to pay the renewal fee for the required period, and that gets added to any remaining time on the existing registration. e.g. I register a new .co.uk domain with xyz-hosting in Jan 2015, which means that it expires in Jan 2017. All well so far... If I transfer it to 1and1 in (say) January 2016, I still have one year registration left on the domain, but I have to pay 1and1 for another two years (for a .co.uk) at the time I do the transfer. This means that the domain will now expire in Jan 2019, and If I check the Nominet registry, the expiry date is confirmed as expected. During 2017, I cancelled the automatic renewal for the domain name, because I only wanted to use the domain name until Jan 2019 (that's what I have paid up to), at which point it would expire, and would drop off the registry. However, this is the part that surprised me: In January 2018, the .co.uk domain name disappeared from my 1and1 control panel. How so? The domain does not expire until Jan 2019, I paid 1and1 for an extra 2 years when I transferred the domain name, and I have an up-to-date web-hosting account with 1and1! When I spoke to 1and1's tech support, they advised me that, although I had paid for the additional two-year domain name registration, at that point, they are only agreeing to host the domain for two years from the time at which I made the transfer to them, so exactly two years after the transfer date, they remove it from the control panel and it seems to be in limbo; registered, but not hosted! I could see that this might be fair practice if I had only paid for the registration fee, but I had it registered on a hosting plan that supports 'unlimited' domains. I consider this to be sharp practice, and if it had not been one of the domains that I was going to dump, it could have caused me major problems; web site down and no email. As luck would have it, it didn't matter to me, and I only noticed it when I logged into my Nominet account to check my .co.uk domains. As far as I can determine, if I wanted to continue using the domain, I would have two options: 1) pay 1and1 for another two-years' registration (but still effectively 'losing' the one year of registration that was still remaining) or, pay Nominet GBP10+VAT to transfer the domain-in-limbo to a different registrar. When I transferred the domain to 1and1, it clearly stated that it was an additional 2 years of registration, but there was no obvious (if any) warning that the domain would disappear off the hosting panel after two years. I am interested to know if this is standard practice; if so, it makes a mockery of that 'additional' registration period. For all practical and financial purposes, it appears that what you are doing is cancelling the existing registration and starting a new one.

Note 3: Link to set up a private domain name with gmail, without using a third party mail-server. This will only work for domains hosted on Google Domains. The 'Best Answer' at the top of the linked page (it has instructions in the attachment) is perfectly accurate, but is very terse and not easy to follow if you are not familiar with Gmail configuration and two-factor authentication. The next response (by 'Somnath', immediately below the first) is very detailed, with step-by-step instructions and screenshots. It looks complicated, but should only take 2-3 minutes per email address. This answer enables you to both send and receive email from your private email address; it is not just forwarding incoming emails. https://productforums.google.com/forum/ ... 4vrbItLTX0

I hope the above is useful to someone. I wrote it, partly so I have documented what I have done, and why (for my own benefit); I suppose, if I had a blog, I would have recorded it there! Also, I have a stinking cold, and don't want to carry out the few remaining tasks (domain name transfers and web hosting transfer) in case I make any mistakes whilst feeling unwell. This has been a useful distraction from my painful sinuses!

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142088

Postby gbaps » May 29th, 2018, 2:23 pm

Hi superFoolish

Great post and of interest to me on the e mail setup you have described.

Back on TMF some years ago with the advice on HWTBC I bought my own domain for e mail only with 1and1.
I have no website or any other add ons just e mail for which I forward to various g mail addresses which has worked pretty much flawlessly since setup.
As mentioned the 1and1 account is e mail only which I think is no longer a product by 1and1 as there is no webmail option (without upgrading as far as I know).

I have used the catch all for sign up to every different web service/retailer as learnt back in the days of TMF.
I also saved around 25 (of 100) for the more likely long term aliases but stopped when I realised the catch all did enough mostly.

Domain renewal is later in the year (Sep/Oct) and recently the domain costs have jumped compared to what they were. If I was to shift the renewal to Google Domains would I still be able to use/receive existing and new catch all addresses via Google. I couldn't be sure reading your post and doing some searching whether the catch all feature would work for my @ gbaps. com (not real/mine) or if I needed a different e mail product that would allow webmail in the product.

Any ideas on the above much appreciated.

TIA

Gary

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142136

Postby Julian » May 29th, 2018, 5:56 pm

Hi SuperFoolish,

What an amazingly helpful post. I have just initiated the first transfer of my most crucial domain to Google after reading your post. I use Google for lots of stuff and have used GMail for what seems like forever (way back to the days of the beta program) but for some reason I never took proper note of the fact that Google do domains until I read your post. It's such a natural fit for me so I can't thank you enough.

When I last shopped around one thing that was important to me was for domain privacy to be included in the price or, if billed separately, that it didn't make a registrar's price uncompetitive. I am glad to see that Google does include privacy in the base price although I was interested to see that quite a few countries including the UK and US don't allow privacy on their country-specific TLDs.

- Julian

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142139

Postby Slarti » May 29th, 2018, 6:08 pm

Just asking questions, mainly triggered by all the GDPR stuff going round.

Where are the domains hosted?
How secure are they out of the box, or do you have to secure them - there's been quite a lot of stuff about "Google S3 buckets" (what they?) being on the internet unsecured with LOTS of data in them.
How do you stand if Google decides there are inappropriate emails in your system and so they lock you out? This has happened with websites and Google Drive being used to store things like people's thesis, or family photos that showed naked babies.

Just wondering if you've considered these things.

Slarti

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142152

Postby mc2fool » May 29th, 2018, 8:01 pm

Julian wrote:... I was interested to see that quite a few countries including the UK and US don't allow privacy on their country-specific TLDs.

Uh? Privacy on personal (non-commercial) .uk domains was always available, and was free -- and now, with GDPR, it's the default for all .uk domains.

https://registrars.nominet.uk/namespace/uk/gdpr-changes

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142160

Postby johnhemming » May 29th, 2018, 8:46 pm

I have had all sorts of structures for domain names (and have been a member of Nominet in the UK since the mid 1990s). I found some of the older registrars to be particularly naughty with charging things wrongly on a credit card and decided to transfer all my accounts to name.com (except for the UK ones which are handled internally). There was a particular difficulty with the @john.hemming.name registration because that structure of domain name did not get the traction it was expected to get and the software run by registrars cannot always handle a third level domain registration.

The thing about the internet is that in the end businesses have to make a profit. They can burn cash creating a presence, but they then have to make sure their charges balance out.

Google as to be fair quite efficient (as are Amazon).

In the end these things will gravitate to the most efficient organisations.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142170

Postby Lanark » May 29th, 2018, 9:43 pm

Well done on escaping from 1&1
If you ever need hosting for a non trivial website I have had good luck with Pair.com

Using price is generally not a good indicator of quality when it comes to online services, both cheap and very expensive companies can have horrible service if/when you have any kind of problem.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142303

Postby superFoolish » May 30th, 2018, 1:03 pm

gbaps wrote:If I was to shift the renewal to Google Domains would I still be able to use/receive existing and new catch all addresses via Google.


Yes, in the Google Domains email setup, create an email forward for *@yourdomain.com to whichever real address you want it to go to (I’ve got mine going to myname+wildcard@gmail.com). All emails for which you have not specified a forward, will be trapped by the catchall (*) just as they would be by 1&1. These are sent to myname@gmail.com where I filter them into a wildcard folder (actually labels in gmail)

For those who are unaware, if your email address is myname@gmail.com, you can add a + and anything you want after my name. E.g...

myname+spotify@gmail.com
myname+netflix@gmail.com
myname+whatever@gmail.com

Everything after the + is ignored, but you can filter on it in gmail if you want to.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it in my OP, but when you transfer a domain to Google, they take all the settings (e.g DNS), so absolutely nothing changes until you are ready. When I did delete the 1&1 MX server references, mail started coming straight to Gmail pretty-much instantly. My changes to DNS for web hosting also propagated very quickly.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142305

Postby superFoolish » May 30th, 2018, 1:06 pm

Julian wrote:I am glad to see that Google does include privacy in the base price although I was interested to see that quite a few countries including the UK and US don't allow privacy on their country-specific TLDs.


If I remember correctly, when registering with nominet, one has to specify if it’s a personal or business registration. Personal registrations have always had the option to be private, whereas business registrations had to be public (I don’t know if the latter is true any more)

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142310

Postby superFoolish » May 30th, 2018, 1:20 pm

Slarti wrote:Just asking questions, mainly triggered by all the GDPR stuff going round.

Where are the domains hosted?
How secure are they out of the box, or do you have to secure them - there's been quite a lot of stuff about "Google S3 buckets" (what they?) being on the internet unsecured with LOTS of data in them.
How do you stand if Google decides there are inappropriate emails in your system and so they lock you out? This has happened with websites and Google Drive being used to store things like people's thesis, or family photos that showed naked babies.

Just wondering if you've considered these things.

Slarti


S3 buckets are an Amazon thing, although Google Cloud Platform has a similar offering. Buckets are not really related to domain hosting; buckets are for storage (e.g. websites), whereas domain name hosting is simply managing the registration of your domain, and offering DNS services (which Google does brilliantly; ultra-fast in my experience). Google Domains and Google Cloud Platform are different services.

As far as being ‘locked out’ of my data, again this relates to storage, not domain name hosting, because domain name hosting doesn’t have any storage; it simply redirects.

Regardless of which email / cloud storage anyone uses, I would always recommend backing it up. For example, my gmail / google drive is automatically backed up to a third party service for $2/month. If I was locked out of my google account tomorrow, it would be an inconvenience for a few days, but I know I can get all my data back within a few days.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142311

Postby superFoolish » May 30th, 2018, 1:23 pm

Lanark wrote:Well done on escaping from 1&1
If you ever need hosting for a non trivial website I have had good luck with Pair.com

Using price is generally not a good indicator of quality when it comes to online services, both cheap and very expensive companies can have horrible service if/when you have any kind of problem.


I’m now hosting a couple of my sites on firebase.com (now part of Google Cloud Platform); it’s free (for low-level use), incredibly fast, and includes free SSL, so all sites are HTTPS.

I will be experimenting with Google Cloud for dynamic websites over the next few months.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142313

Postby mc2fool » May 30th, 2018, 1:25 pm

superFoolish wrote:If I remember correctly, when registering with nominet, one has to specify if it’s a personal or business registration. Personal registrations have always had the option to be private, whereas business registrations had to be public (I don’t know if the latter is true any more)

As I've already said, just a few posts up...
mc2fool wrote:Privacy on personal (non-commercial) .uk domains was always available, and was free -- and now, with GDPR, it's the default for all .uk domains.

https://registrars.nominet.uk/namespace/uk/gdpr-changes

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142316

Postby Julian » May 30th, 2018, 1:44 pm

mc2fool wrote:
superFoolish wrote:If I remember correctly, when registering with nominet, one has to specify if it’s a personal or business registration. Personal registrations have always had the option to be private, whereas business registrations had to be public (I don’t know if the latter is true any more)

As I've already said, just a few posts up...
mc2fool wrote:Privacy on personal (non-commercial) .uk domains was always available, and was free -- and now, with GDPR, it's the default for all .uk domains.

https://registrars.nominet.uk/namespace/uk/gdpr-changes

That explains it I think. When I initiated the transfer of my main domain to Google yesterday I seem to remember that Google Domains popped up a message saying the domains it registers are only for commercial or business purposes which seemed a bit odd to me but I clicked OK anyway (I'm retired but I do have a rental property so I felt that was enough to consider my domain having a commercial use). Given that Google message the price list in which Google specifies which domains do not support privacy must have been written on the assumption that all registrations are commercial. If I understand mc2fool's link correctly then Google really should update the price list to reflect the GDPR change that now allows commercial .uk registrations to have privacy.

The Google price list that I'm talking about is here (https://support.google.com/domains/answ ... 1527610096) by the way. At time of writing it clearly says ".co.uk domains do not allow private registration" but perhaps people following the link at a later date might find that Google have fixed it.

- Julian

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142322

Postby mc2fool » May 30th, 2018, 2:21 pm

Julian wrote:If I understand mc2fool's link correctly then Google really should update the price list to reflect the GDPR change that now allows commercial .uk registrations to have privacy.

Methinks part of the problem is that ICANN only realised GDPR applied to it (and specifically to WHOIS) around six months ago and has been in a shambles working out what it's going to do since, with the latest twist being ICANN suing a German registrar to try to force them to violate GDPR!

If you want to read up on the farce https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/2 ... n_lawsuit/ is a good place to start, or just google GDPR WHOIS.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142341

Postby superFoolish » May 30th, 2018, 3:10 pm

Julian wrote:The Google price list that I'm talking about is here (https://support.google.com/domains/answ ... 1527610096) by the way. At time of writing it clearly says ".co.uk domains do not allow private registration" but perhaps people following the link at a later date might find that Google have fixed it.
- Julian


The private registration to which Google is referring on that page, is a third-party service that obscures you personal details, by registering the details of a proxy organisation. Google do not offer that (free) service for .co.uk domains because it is prohibited by Nominet; its in breach the terms of Nominet’s registration conditions. Therefore, Google’s statement is accurate in the context of the privacy service that they are offering.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142377

Postby Slarti » May 30th, 2018, 5:26 pm

superFoolish wrote:
Slarti wrote:Just asking questions, mainly triggered by all the GDPR stuff going round.

Where are the domains hosted?
How secure are they out of the box, or do you have to secure them - there's been quite a lot of stuff about "Google S3 buckets" (what they?) being on the internet unsecured with LOTS of data in them.
How do you stand if Google decides there are inappropriate emails in your system and so they lock you out? This has happened with websites and Google Drive being used to store things like people's thesis, or family photos that showed naked babies.

Just wondering if you've considered these things.

Slarti


S3 buckets are an Amazon thing, although Google Cloud Platform has a similar offering. Buckets are not really related to domain hosting; buckets are for storage (e.g. websites), whereas domain name hosting is simply managing the registration of your domain, and offering DNS services (which Google does brilliantly; ultra-fast in my experience). Google Domains and Google Cloud Platform are different services.

As far as being ‘locked out’ of my data, again this relates to storage, not domain name hosting, because domain name hosting doesn’t have any storage; it simply redirects.

Regardless of which email / cloud storage anyone uses, I would always recommend backing it up. For example, my gmail / google drive is automatically backed up to a third party service for $2/month. If I was locked out of my google account tomorrow, it would be an inconvenience for a few days, but I know I can get all my data back within a few days.


Thanks for clarifying my confusion.

Slarti

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142448

Postby superFoolish » May 31st, 2018, 5:16 am

For anyone who is thinking of moving domains to Google Domains, it really was incredibly easy, and the transfer does not interfere with your current setup (mail, website, etc.); all you are doing is changing your registrar (i.e. the company that is managing your domain name).

When you do the transfer, Google copies all the DNS settings so everything carries on working until you are ready to change your email / web host (if that's part of your plan).

1and1's process for transferring out was good; far better than I remember from a few years ago, but maybe that is a change across the industry.

The steps are something like this:

1) In Google Domains (GD), provide the name of the domain that you want to transfer in.
2) GD will ask for a transfer code
3) At your current registrar (CR), in my case 1&1, UNLOCK your domain for transfer and request the transfer code (1&1 displayed it instantly)
4) In GD paste in the transfer code

Your domain will be transferred. Note, you will receive a confirmation email from Google Domains and from your Current Registrar (e.g. 1&1) confirming your request at various times during points 1-4 about. Including waiting for emails, it took me no more than 5 minutes to transfer each domain.

When I changed the DNS settings for mail and web hosting the propagation appeared to be pretty-much instantaneous; I was receiving emails via google's mail servers immediately. As mentioned previously, I am trying out firebase.com for my web hosting, and it took about an hour for the SSL certificates to become active, which is pretty impressive; they suggest that up to 24 hours is normal. I have a couple of less-important domain names that I used for a trial run first, so I was confident that it would all work smoothly with my live domain names; not everyone will have that luxury, so I hope the above helps.

One of the reasons that I am posting this information is that I was nervous about transferring my domain names (due to a past 'traumatic' experience), so I had procrastinated for a couple of years; I could have saved myself a couple of hundred dollars if I had just got on with it. I hope my posts can save someone some money!

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142453

Postby johnhemming » May 31st, 2018, 7:14 am

Some registrars take this system and make it as difficult as they can, but they are required to have such a system. What I decided to do was to make sure I transferred everything from one registrar well before the renewal dates. I then made sure they didn't have a valid credit card detail as they tended to make charges on the credit card without authority.

I have never used 1and1 or google registration so cannot comment on their systems.

Julian
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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142550

Postby Julian » May 31st, 2018, 1:44 pm

superFoolish wrote:For anyone who is thinking of moving domains to Google Domains, it really was incredibly easy, and the transfer does not interfere with your current setup (mail, website, etc.); all you are doing is changing your registrar (i.e. the company that is managing your domain name).
...
Your domain will be transferred. Note, you will receive a confirmation email from Google Domains and from your Current Registrar (e.g. 1&1) confirming your request at various times during points 1-4 about. Including waiting for emails, it took me no more than 5 minutes to transfer each domain.

When I changed the DNS settings for mail and web hosting the propagation appeared to be pretty-much instantaneous; I was receiving emails via google's mail servers immediately. ...

One of the reasons that I am posting this information is that I was nervous about transferring my domain names (due to a past 'traumatic' experience), so I had procrastinated for a couple of years; I could have saved myself a couple of hundred dollars if I had just got on with it. I hope my posts can save someone some money!

Could you please help clarify something about email please because I'm a bit confused about how that could be seamless. I'm only talking about incoming email, setting up the different SMTP server for sending outgoing email does not seem problematic.

I'm not sure if you have the same setup as me but right now I have my domain with another company (Namecheap) and I have email forwarding set up. I think (had always assumed) that the way that works is that the email routing fields in the DNS record for my domain are set up such that all emails to any address at my domain are actually delivered to the Namecheap servers that then check if I have set up any forwarding for the recipient being sent to and, if I have, then for instance all(*) emails received by Namecheap addressed to "julian@<mydomain>" will be forwarded on to the Gmail account that I specified in the email forwarding rule for "julian@<mydomain>" that I set up via the Namecheap dashboard.

What I'm trying to understand is why there wouldn't be a potential loss of incoming email for a brief period of time when I move to Google. One possible way this works is that my domain gets transferred to Google and at that point the Namecheap servers stop forwarding incoming emails to my GMail account. In order to fix that I need to update the DNS entry to make sure that incoming email to <mydomain> gets sent to the Google email forwarding service rather than the Namecheap one (or whatever previous email forwarding service I might have been using) in order to ensure that I continue to get incoming emails forwarded to my Google inbox.

Right now I have done the unlock and had the emails from both Google and Namecheap that the transfer is, as long as I don't flag it as a fraudulent transfer request, due to take effect on Sunday 3rd June. Until that happens I don't see the domain being transferred in my Google Domains dashboard, it is still in the Namecheap dashboard, so I can't pre-set the email forwarding that I want. This makes me worry that there might be a window of email loss in between my domain appearing in my Google dashboard and my actually setting up the new Google email forwarding rule. Maybe many domain companies actually keep their email forwarding for a transferred-out domain active for at least a while after the domain itself is no longer under their control so that, as long as all the DNS record transfers to the new registrar without immediately overwriting the email delivery data fields, emails will still be delivered to and processed by the previous domain company's email forwarding service until the owner sets up the new forwarding rules in their Google Domains (or alternative new domain company) dashboard at which point the DNS record is updated to reflect the fact that Google is now the email forwarding service.

Is that your understanding of how it works and why you said that incoming emails are unaffected or do you do something different with how you handle incoming email? As I see it I'm going to want to be checking my Google Dashboard very frequently this Sunday (which is unfortunate because I'm almost certainly out for most of the day) and as soon as I see my domain transferred in and available to be managed on the Google dashboard I must then immediately set up the new email forwarding rule to ensure that incoming email delivery continues with as narrow a window of potential loss of incoming email as possible.

- Julian

(*) Frustratingly Namecheap also has a spam filter so if it thinks it's spam it doesn't even forward certain emails. I find this very undesirable since I know of a few cases where it has blocked genuine emails and is a big motivation for my jumping on Superfoolish's email as a call to action.

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Re: Saving money on email servers & domain names

#142589

Postby johnhemming » May 31st, 2018, 4:42 pm

If you are transferring services that are time critical then it is best to take a step by step approach.

The registrar registers the Domain, but does not necessarily host the name servers. The name servers can point to a different Mail Server to the normal one.

Hence you need to work out a plan before starting it. You could, for example, set up a new mail server and change the MX records at the old registrar/name server. That means that your email shifts first.

There is a "time to live" on name server records which means that at times things can go to different places whilst the old DNS records cached around the internet hit their TTL.

Hence I would recommend:
a) Get the new mail server running
b) Transfer the MX records at the old Name Server.
c) Transfer the name server from the old location to the new one.
d) Shift the domain registration.


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