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 Email is becoming an increasingly predominant and integral form of communication for many people and is being used for a wide variety of purposes.
Whether it be for keeping in contact with friends, family and co-workers, or for transmitting and sharing files, documents or photos, or even just for sharing your favourite quote of the day, email has become a vital part of the every day life of virtually all computer users.
Consequently, it is important to start considering the ownership, management and long-term sustainable use of your email address.
Master Your Domain - Own Your E-Mail Address
The vast majority of internet users use one or combination of either a (i) free
webmail address, (ii) the email address provided by their ISP, or (iii) an email
address provided by their work. This article discusses each of these accounts,
and the potential problems associated with them, and then presents the
advantages of owning your own email address.
Free webmail address
The best example of this is probably Microsoft's Hotmail. In January 1998,
Microsoft, recognising the value that email would play in any future online
strategy of their company purchased Hotmail for US$400 million. At the time
Hotmail only had around nine million users; it now has well over 120 million
users and is easily the largest free email account provider. Over the years,
Microsoft has continued to use Hotmail to lever its other products and services,
and drives users to upgrade to paid accounts which provider greater disk space.
Microsoft is far from alone with this strategy - virtually every other "free"
email account provider attempts to lure their users into paid accounts and may
even reduce the services in the free account to provide more incentive to
"upgrade". It is logical that as the recipient of a free email address, you have
no guarantee over how your account is being run, what sort of service you can
expect, or what limitations will be imposed upon it in the future, or indeed
whether it will remain in existence at all.
Email address provided by an ISP
Internet service providers (ISPs), such as Coralwave, Batelco and BahamasOnline
provide email accounts as a standard part of their service. Unlike the "free"
email accounts described above, ISPs don't tend to use the email addresses for
promoting other services - chances are you are already a paying customer. The
main problem with making use of the email address that your ISP provides, is
that you become bound to your ISP - most ISPs will not allow you to shift to
another ISP and retain your original email address (at least not without paying
for the privilege). There are many reasons that the ISP you first signed up with
may not be ideal in the future - substandard service quality, lack of associated
services (e.g. broadband, virus/spam filtering), uncompetitive pricing, or even
just a change of address, are just a few reasons why you may wish to change ISPs
in the future. Changing ISPs should be as simple a decision as changing an
insurance provider or bank; however, being bound to your ISP by an email address
adds a whole layer of undesirable complexity to the matter.
Work email address
Many work places provide email addresses for their employees. Although these
email addresses are obviously provided for work purposes, for many people their
work email address is their only email address. There are many potential
problems with relying on your work email for non-work communications. Apart from
the fact that you may not be able to access your email outside of work and that
your employer may object to the work email account being used for personal use,
the major concern lies with privacy - it's just too easy for work colleagues to
get access to your email. Most of the other disadvantages with using work email
address for personal use are the same as those already described with free and
ISP provided addresses, i.e. minimal control over account features and no
guarantee over the future of your email address.
Owning your own email address
Apart from a personalised domain name (i.e.
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), the fundamental
difference between the three types of email addresses discussed above, and
owning your own email address, is control. When you are the owner of the domain
name that your email address belongs to, you automatically have full control
over where, how and with whom your email is managed. This brings many
advantages: you choose how much disk space you have access to, what filtering
features you can use, how securely your mail is delivered, your preference for a
webmail interface, and so on. Furthermore, in the event that the host managing
your domain name and email account becomes unreliable or uncompetitive in terms
of price and features, you can change with minimal fuss. Consequently, the
owning of your email address represents a guaranteed life-long online contact
solution.
Summing up
The use of free webmail, ISP, or work email addresses does not provide a viable
long-term solution for using the internet as a personal contact medium. Owning
your own domain name, and hence email address, allows your email address to be
entirely independent of any specific company or organisation. It provides
complete freedom in how your online contact identity is managed.
Register a
Domain Name: BahamasB2B Domains
Get Your Own
Domain Based Email Account |
