Email provider with personal domain. gmail?

[Erik]

I have my own personal emaildomain. It's been on the same provider for years, but now that provider is about to shut down the service. I'd like to keep the email address, so I'm planning to move it to somewhere else. My first idea was to move it to a webprovider, one i already use. That way i could easily manage several mail accounts, and even get a website with the same domain. However, they cant support my domain name (long story, just take their word for it...)

So I'm looking for options. The easiest and cheapest I found so far is to hook it up to a gmail account. Basically, I would direct the email address to go to the gmail account, and then set up my gmail account to present the email address as the sender. Seems straight forward enough. Does anyone know any pitfalls with this, or anything else i should be aware of?

I'm not thrilled about having my mail sent to a google server, but if it's the easiest and cheapest way to do it then I can live with it. It's my personal mail, so I'd like it to be at least as secure as email can be without encryption. Which is pretty much not secure, but as long as it's not wide open to anyone in the world that wants to look I'm pretty much ok with it.

The only other way I can think of would be to find some company willing to host my email that can handle my domain address, but that seems like more trouble than it's worth, and it would also cost me. Basically what I want is to keep my old email address that all my friends know about, so even old friends from years ago can reach me in the future.

[mekender]

So you own the domain?

If so, you can move that .com (or . whatever) to any host... Most hosts have email services as part of the hosting plan.

Otherwise, gmail, office 365 and more allow you to pay to have your .com be your email account that is on their server. Looks like it is $5 a month which is probably about what you would pay for your own hosting:

http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/b ... icing.html

[Erik]

So you own the domain?

If so, you can move that .com (or . whatever) to any host... Most hosts have email services as part of the hosting plan.

Yes, I own the domain, it's registered to me. Right now I only use it for one single email address though, so my first idea was to move it to a host that has webhosting as well. Unfortunately, the hosting server I use for other domains and websites right now cant handle my domain name (long story, short version is that my domain is very old...).
Which is a pity, they charge less than $2/month for a complete website with email accounts included.

I've checked with the internet registrar and in various places, and it's supposed to be possible to use a free gmail account for it, with some limitations that doesn't really bother me. But if I end up paying a few Euro a month, I can probably live with it.
Easiest would probably be to dump the old domain and get a new one, but I've become kind of attached to it over the years.

My main question is if this is:
1. doable without too much hazzle
2. relatively safe to use as an email host (well, as safe as email is)
3. any better alternatives than Gmail and google?

[mekender]

1. Yes
2. Probably safer than your ISP's email system
3. Yes, Office 365, which widely used in companies these days.

[BDK]

We were set up w gmail, mainly as I think some of the employees involved liked the scheduling and disk share features, etc

It works, but moving over was a headache and a half.

I use mykolab for my personal email. They are a bit more than gmail, but better privacy policies.