Like most people you start on Gmail or Hotmail or AOL, etc. I don't know a single person who started email on their own domain, but no doubt some such genius is out there somewhere....
Hosting without a domain registrar
- Dynamic DNS and CloudFlare go-to's for many.
- duckdns.org is a solid choice to run example.duckdns.org
- Free dynamic DNS provider
- Closed-source backend
- Hosted on AWS
- Requires OAuth login (GitHub, Google, etc.)
- Provides subdomains under duckdns.org
- Tor .onion is available for technically saavy.
- Most hosting providers for Wordpress or similar will offer a domain for "free" or for a few bucks.
- This price is guaranteed to jump to standard pricing once it is time to renew.
- Terms are likely worse than with an actual domain registrar.
.com .org .net = Top Level Domains
Top level domains are extremely limited, but remain the gold standard for getting to a website or sending email.
ccTLD == Country Level Domains
ccTLDs (e.g., .us, .de, .uk, .ca) are regulated and also pretty well received for website and email usage.
High‑Risk TLDs == Everything else
.tk, .ml, .ga, .cf, .gq, .xyz .top, .club, .best, .win, .info, .cyou, .online, .space
Whatever free or cheap domain you are about to purchase
Free and cheap domains are most heavily abused by spammers, scammers, are low‑cost, high‑abuse rates; flagged in bulk.
Unfortunately, this means whatever example.domain is treated as literal trash just by the domain itself!!! The hint is in the price!
Domains are expensive
This is absolutely true. I enjoy james.network, but every year I resent having to fight blacklists and spamlists and everyone else. Every year the price of the domain goes up. $9, $10, $13, $22
What is the answer?!
- Choose your domain registrar carefully.
- Most are trash in terms of upselling. More expensive every year.
- Many do not support Let's Encrypt, forcing you to pay for https (ssl)
- Because of longstanding commits to companies like PositiveSSL, registrars like namecheap may never support Let's Encrypt. This doesn't make them bad, it just is what it is.
- You can get around using cron to generate Let's Encrypt certificates anywhere, even when your webhost does not support them. It just becomes another minor chore until you change registrars.
- or, You can host your own reverse proxy, etc. This means you need a VPS or other server method to keep your reverse proxy online.
- Always buy 10 years at a time. Do not click "Check Out" until you are 100% positive you've paid for 10 years up front if the domain is for real, production usage.
- Another of those blink and you'll miss it things.
- Buying 10 years up front at original cost is the only way to guarantee original promo $ x 10.
- This is the best money saver possible!
Go for a top level domain
Why?
- No. 1 reason = Email Deliverability
- Whitelist = The domain itself will work.
If you still want to use a high risk domain, read below for relay suggestion to add deliverability.
Why is email so important?
- Email is intrinsically tied to your identity.
- Even using your name@yourdomain.org in Gmail is genius.
- You have given yourself the portability to leave whatever service at a whim! No one will know.
By using .network and .xyz I lost...
Registration access denied.
This is huge. This means your utility company, your bank, any person, any ISP, any organization could simply not acknowledge your email as valid. There is nothing you can do if it won't be accepted.
- Spam filters from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo
- Spam blocklists, such Spamhaus. All they want is money. Your domain is likely blocked there, period. Zero customer service. Any the providers and services trust these lists by default...
Losing email deliverability costs you...
- Mailing List. You cannot guarantee arrival.
- Subscribers. You cannot offer a paid service. You cannot accept money.
Using a whitelisted email service as a relay
You can negate these risks by using an email service as a backup relay.
You are paying for their reputation to shield you! If you selfhost an email server, this is even more important.
Conclusion
After many years, much time, multiple domain registrars and much cash.... I would personally either:
- Stick with a dyndns service for light testing.
- Buy a top level domain, or ccTLD, you actually want to use at 10 years max up-front.
- Discard all other domains
- Use other domains for testing or use a reverse proxy for
*.wildcard.mydomain.org for local-only https experiments on a single domain.
Domains become more important the more you use them. Once you use a domain, people tend to email them, which means those people also expect a reply to arrive. So, hope this helps your journey! 😍