This week I was talking to a friend and the discussion somehow turned onto emails. Then I started explaining why I think that one should have their email address on their own domain instead of having a generic “some.random.thing@gmail.com” or another such provider’s email address.
This is built on the backdrop that your email address is basically your identity around the internet and much of your communication and life is now tied into it. The major (and probably the only) reason is this allows you the flexibility if one day that email provider shuts down their business, or the other case (which is way more likely) of your account somehow getting flagged as not following their terms of service (TOS) and them blocking your account.
Just imagine if you are using “some.random.thing@gmail.com” and due to some weird reason The Algorithm decides that you have violated their TOS and blocks you off. Depending on providers it is probably possible for you to somehow get that misunderstanding resolved and you regaining access to your account. But if that does not happen then you need to register a new email account and then make sure to update the new email address across all the account over the internet. There are even some services which don’t make you set a password when you setup account with them but instead email you an OTP every time you want to login. Good luck with those ones.
If instead your email address is something like “blah@yourdomain.xyz” and it is hosted with say FastMail and they decide that you have violated their TOS then you can just move from them and setup an account with PurelyMail and you will still keep receiving emails on “blah@yourdomain.xyz”
Open offer: If I know you and you want to setup your email on your domain then reach out to me and I will guide you through the whole process 🙂.
That’s it for today, I will update this in future if I happen upon other crucial reasons. In the meantime if you want to discuss this or anything else you can reach out to me on Twitter @varun_barad or via email.