There’s a super easy, free alternative to using your ISPs email service, and that’s to sign up for Gmail (my choice), Yahoo mail or Hotmail.  But there’s an even better option.  It’s not free, but it’s really cheap.

Buy a domain, create your own addresses, and let Google manage all your email traffic.

You can buy domains for $5.00 to $50.00 per year.  If you are incredibly lucky and have a very uncommon last name, you may find your last name is available as a domain in some form.  Otherwise, you are going to need to get clever, and think of a unique domain name.  You will have much more luck if you go with something other than .com for your TLD (top level domain).  In Canada, the .ca TLD is a good option, and you would be surprised how much easier it is to find a good domain.  Many more top level domains have opened up recently as well.

Once you’ve chosen a domain it gets a little geeky.  If the next steps are confusing you, feel free to send me an email, and I can help you out.  You need to register your domain with a registrar that allows you to manage your DNS records. Some registrars allow you full control over your DNS entries, and some require you to just point your domain to a series of DNS servers.  I manage a bunch of domains, so I use a service called DNS Made Easy that gives me my own DNS servers to which I can point my domains.  They charge what amounts to a couple of bucks per domain annually, and give you full control over where your domain traffic goes.  DNS Made Easy gives you DNS addresses which you give to your registrar.

The next step is to sign up for Google Domain Services.  Google currently offers a service that will manage your domain email for free.  They give you 25 email accounts, each with over 7GB (and increasing) of storage, and each account can have unlimited aliases.  They even give you shared calendars, and distribution lists.  All of the services can be accessed with an address like mail.<yourdomain>.com and can even be customized with your own logo.

Sign up with your domain information and follow the directions.  Google will give you a series of “MX records”.  These are DNS entries that handle the mail traffic that goes to your domain, and there will be several of these to add.  When  the setup is done, Google gives you an admin interface where you can add your accounts, and create your addresses.

Having your own domain email has a ton of perks.  The best way to manage it is to have one main email address that you only give to close friends.  Don’t ever use this address to sign up for anything.  Then set up another address (or several addresses) that you give to everybody else.  Gmail’s spam filters keep almost all spam out, but it’s good to have a throw away address to use for signing up for services that may sell your address.  I also like to register an email address that I use to send nasty messages to people offering $10 an hour for web development jobs on Craigslist.  You don’t need to manage multiple mailboxes for all these addresses – just forward them all into one.

Get your own email.  You’ll be glad you did.