Vanity Domain Name for Your Family Email Addresses plus Free Email Hosting

Consider this plan for your families digital future… Register a domain for your family. Or possibly one for each kid to reserve it for when they’re old enough.

Plus, I want to show you how to get FREE email hosting.

Don’t scoff at the idea. People do it all the time. How many of your neighbors have their name on their license plates? They’re just showing off. But a vanity domain — that’s an investment in your family future. It gives you and your family members a permanent email address so people will not loose touch with you.

Starting with the vanity domain name, unfortunately you’ll be lucky to get a .COM or .NET. You might have to settle for a .ORG or .US or some other country code. Don’t bother with .NAME or .INFO — those are ridiculous.

I DO NOT recommend using a company like NetIdentity. Years ago they went out and bought up thousands of family sur names to rent back to people with reasonable claims to those names. Very bad behavior IMHO. The wont even consider selling a domain name to a person with the same last name as the domain. It’s more profitable for them to rent it to you over time.

I rented personalized email addresses for my wife and I for a few years but got fed up and bought my own .US domain as soon as they had become available.

Here’s how you get started…

1. Choose an available domain name. Preferably a .COM or .NET.

A great lookup tool is PCNames.com. It’s a huge time saver because you can look up domain names while you type instead of constantly submitting and doing WhoIs lookups.

2. Once you picked an available domain name, don’t dilly dally dude. Register ASAP.

Here’s what you should do. Go to a company like GoDaddy. They’re cheap and the customer service has been really good to me. (No I’m not being paid to say that, I’m just a satisfied customer.) Plus, they’re always running some sort of 10% off special. Do a search on “Go Daddy promo code” and see what turns up.

Or use any company you feel is reputable. Register.com has been around for years, but they were charging me $35 a year for practically the same service GD charges me $8 per year. It’s nuts. I see no difference based on my needs.

Here’s where we save you some Bad Mad Money. Booyah!

When registering a domain, you usually get an email account bundled in. Typically you are only allowed to create one address to send and receive from. That’s fine for a single guy, but not a family situation.

You can pay the domain name registrar for an email account with extra features and addresses, but I can save you some big money.

Let your inner geek shine…

Now here’s the fun part. If you are geek-minded, you certainly should enjoy it. If your faint of heart, tread cautiously, but you should be able to do it.

1. Get a Google Gmail account. They’re free now. You no longer need an invitation.
   www.google.com/accounts
2. Register for a free Google Apps for Your Domain account at:
   www.google.com/a
3. Follow the instructions Google provides to set up the domain.

They require you to make some edits in the domain registrar admin account, but the instructions were clear and worked for me.

It took a few hours for all the changes to propogate online, but everything works. I’ve use this for over a month with no problems or down time.

Once set up, use the Google admin function to add/edit email accounts for members of your family.

So your thinking to yourself, why do all this?

Benefits:

1. Use your family domain.
2. Everyone get’s a personalized email address.
3. Encrypted secure logins.
4. We now have a sharable calendar.
5. Google’s spam filter is pretty good.
6. They also have chat and some basic Web hosting if you want to take advantage of that.
7. The sense of geeky accomplishment you’ll feel when you are done.

Plus, I think the math explains it all.

• GoDaddy charges $20/yr for 5 email address (on top of the domain registration)
• Register.com charges $99/yr for a multi user account.
• Google Apps for Your Domains costs is Free.

Go for it. You have so much to save … and won’t it feel good to be in control?

-Roland




Written by Bad Dad · Filed Under All, DIY, Technology