Register your own domain for a professional touch

Published 9:10 pm Wednesday, February 29, 2012

If you have Internet service, you have email. Whether you get your Internet service through your cable provider, phone provider or somewhere else you are typically given the ability to create several email boxes associated with your account. These accounts are fairly easy to set up and the providers generally provide clear instructions for accessing your mailboxes on line or with your favorite email program.

You can usually create up to five mailboxes so you, your spouse and the kids can all have an individual email address. You get to choose (whatever)@(your provider).com for your address. The only problem is that the (whatever) portion of the address needs to be unique among all your provider’s subscribers.

If your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a national company such as Comcast, and your name is Sue Smith, the chance of claiming sue.smith@comcast.net is going to be slim. That means you will probably end up creating an address that may not make sense to anyone but you. For example, friends and family may have trouble associating winediva657@comcast.net with you. And that certainly wouldn’t look very professional on a business card.

Another potential drawback to using an address from your ISP is that it could simply go away. That’s what happened to thousands of Verizon subscribers in our area at the beginning of 2011. Everyone who had a verizon.net email account had to create a new account with frontier.com. Any emails saved on the Verizon servers went away, as did address books and calendars. Not only that, but any Internet accounts that used the Verizon email address (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) as a user name or contact address had to be updated. And most shopping sites use your email address for a user name. Then there are the online subscriptions to newsletters, coupon offers, etc. that you would no longer receive. This would also be an issue if you changes ISPs due to a move.

One alternative to using your ISP’s email service is to use one of the popular free email services like Google or Hotmail. The chance of one of these services going away is pretty slim. These services offer calendars and address books just like your ISP. Most offer additional features such as online file storage, file sharing and more.

These free services are great for people who move frequently, for students or for anyone who doesn’t have an ISP. I have a free account I use solely for shopping and registering products — it really cuts down on the amount of junk mail I get in my regular email boxes. Still, these accounts have one of the same drawbacks as an ISP address: you have to compete with millions of subscribers for a unique address. And, if you’re using this email for business, an address ending in gmail.com, hotmail.com or any other free service’s domain just doesn’t look very professional.

The biggest issue I have with using a free account or an ISP email address, though, is security. The bad guys spend a lot of time and effort trying to hack these accounts since there are so many subscribers. They use the compromised addresses to send spam — and worse. And consider this: Once a bad guy has your email address and password, how many other accounts can he get into? Again, think about how many of your online accounts use your email address as your user name. Is your Facebook password the same as your email password?

Thankfully, there is an affordable solution available that offers the best of all worlds. For less than $10 a year, you can register your own domain name. Adding email to your domain costs less than $5 per month (depending on the number of mailboxes you want). As long as you renew your domain subscription, it’s yours for life! Also, a domain/email account registered with a reputable hosting company is more secure since you’re a smaller target (as long as you use good passwords). Best of all, it looks good on a business card. For example, bobthehandyman@gmail.com makes me think of a guy who works part time from the back of his truck. On the other hand bob@bobthehandyman.com comes across as a professional who is serious about his business.

It’s easy to register a domain name. But there are also some tips and tricks. Next month, we’ll look at registering and managing your own domain.

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