Account suspended - need new email server hosting thingy

[NotAllThere]

This morning, I had access to my email. This afternoon, I don't. Can't log in, and my holding frontpage on the domain says "account suspended". My domain was set up by "a friend", who I think used websitewelcome.com, which is in turn a reseller from hostgator.com

I've checked his web site, and his account is also suspended. I guess he hasn't paid the bills. Oh yes - and I can't get hold of him...

What I need to do is get my email set up asap. I've been using cpanel, but I don't care what the admin tool is so long as I can set up as many email addresses on my domain as I like, with forwarding etc.

And having it in place by end of today would be kinda nice too.

[NickFitz]

Easily's email hosting lets you use any number of email addresses per domain. By default they all go to the same mailbox, but you can specify other destinations for specific ones - I don't know if there's any limit, as I do all my filtering on the client.

The problem is going to be getting your domain transferred to another provider: your friend may be listed as the administrative contact, or more likely the reseller company is and has your friend on their customer records, so you may have a hard time proving to them that it's actually your domain. Also, they're unlikely to allow the domain to be transferred if they're owed money relating to it.

You may be able to get somewhere by offering to pay up yourself, although you'll probably then have to pay your friend's entire bill off as well which could be pricey if he's been doing this for (to?) a lot of people. If you're uncertain who actually controls your domain, check out the WHOIS records for the registrar - if it's a co.uk that would be Nominet; for a .com or similar try Whois.net

It's a bit late, I know, but you shouldn't trust anybody with your domain - well, unless you also trust them to have control of your business, the deeds of your house, and so forth. It's just too important for it to be under somebody else's control.

Good luck

[NotAllThere]

Fortunately the domain is seperately from the hosting. I've got new hosting set up, and I've just had the dns updated to point to the new hosting. In a little while I should be up and running again.

Seperate hosting from domain is a really really good idea, and I'm very glad I did it.

My main worry is that fact that I didn't really know how everything fits together. But I do now.

I pleasantly surprised about how painless it was. I've maybe lost a few emails, but I downloaded everything this morning.

[NickFitz]

Fortunately the domain is seperately from the hosting. I've got new hosting set up, and I've just had the dns updated to point to the new hosting. In a little while I should be up and running again.

Seperate hosting from domain is a really really good idea, and I'm very glad I did it.

My main worry is that fact that I didn't really know how everything fits together. But I do now.

I pleasantly surprised about how painless it was. I've maybe lost a few emails, but I downloaded everything this morning.

Depending on how the previous hosting worked, it might have temporarily bounced emails to that domain, in which case the sending server should retry after a little while, and they'll come through to the new host. (In theory, anyway.)