Moving Domain - Email Forwarding

[dlevens]

I am the owner of 3 domains:

 

levens.com

levens.net

levens.org

 

Domain Name: LEVENS.COM

Registrar: NAMESDIRECT.COM, INC.

Whois Server: whois.namesdirect.com

Referral URL: http://www.namesdirect.com

Name Server: NS1.****

Name Server: NS2.****

Name Server: NS3.****

Name Server: NS4.****

Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK

 

I registered my 3 domains at namesdirect.com and I use DNS management at **** which is part owned by namesdirect.com

 

For the past few years I have used email forwarding and url forwarding. I have approximately 50 email alias setup to forward to various email accounts for my friends and family.

 

I do not have any hosting of emails or websites, only forwarding. However over the years www.**** has dropped the ball and email is lost frequently usually with no bounce back or notice.

 

I currently have a catch all email setup to forward email to my hotmail.com email account. I have hotmail setup to delete all email that is addressed to my hotmail address but I allow any emails forwarded to levens.com to come through. For nearly 2 years now I have been pretty much spam free since my levens.com domain is rarely targeted unlike hotmail and yahoo which get nailed by the millions daily. I have also gotten used to typing in my email address for bills and websites using this format nameofcompany@levens.com. For instance if I bought something from amazon.com my email would be amazon@levens.com. My catch all handles the rest and I know first thing which company has sold my email to spammers.

 

levens.com is the only domain I use. levens.net and levens.org were only purchased for future possible use and to prevent someone from misrepresenting or misleading the levens.com domain.

 

MY QUESTIONS:

downtime:

I am ready to move to a reliable fast hosting company and TCH seems to fit the bill. However, I would like to know what kind of downtime I can expect if I move all 3 domains to TCH? I would need to resetup all 50+ forwarding email aliases and about 5 url forwarders. Will email be lost and how long will email not be working? I would need to notify many people that the domain is being moved.

 

Space:

Does email that is forwarded to external accounts like hotmail.com count towards your bandwidth?

 

Can I limit how much space is given to an email account I host at my TCH account? Like can I create a few mailboxes @levens.com and give each one 25mb?

 

Email:

I like the way things have worked out for the past few years having my own domain but still getting my email at my hotmail.com account. It is very convienient to get my email anywhere I can find a web browser, and it is nice to have virus scanning built in, and of course the real benefit of everything being free. **** was free DNS forwarding and hotmail gave me 2mb free email space. I am hoping to keep most of this benefit but adding reliability, speed and more space using TCH. Is there virus scanning available if you host email accounts at TCH? I did see the 3 webmail software programs you have and from what I can tell it should not be too painful to setup. The only functionality I am worried about losing is the virus scanning and notification that an email has arrived ( a feature of Windows Messenger that I have been spoiled with ). Is there a way to have both of those features at TCH?

 

Forwarding only:

Does TCH offer free email forwarding and url forwarding similar to the way **** and namesdirect.com do? Or is there only paid plans available?

 

Unused levens.net and levens.org domains:

I want to keep these two extra domains but do not need anything setup for them except maybe url forwarding to point them both to levens.com. How would I do this with TCH? Do I still need to sign up 3 plans even if I only want to use levens.com?

 

Thank you very much for your time and help answering my many questions.

 

Dennis Levens

[TCH-Rob]

downtime:

I am ready to move to a reliable fast hosting company and TCH seems to fit the bill. However, I would like to know what kind of downtime I can expect if I move all 3 domains to TCH?

 

If you set everything up here and then change the DNS you should experience little to no downtime.

 

Will email be lost and how long will email not be working?

 

It shouldnt, most email servers will continue to try and send for a few days before completely failing.

 

Space:

Does email that is forwarded to external accounts like hotmail.com count towards your bandwidth?

 

If it passes through the servers it does count, so I believe, yes.

 

Can I limit how much space is given to an email account I host at my TCH account?

 

Yes

 

Like can I create a few mailboxes @levens.com and give each one 25mb?

 

Yes

 

Email:

 

Is there virus scanning available if you host email accounts at TCH?

 

Yes, there is some filtering.

 

I did see the 3 webmail software programs you have and from what I can tell it should not be too painful to setup. The only functionality I am worried about losing is the virus scanning and notification that an email has arrived ( a feature of Windows Messenger that I have been spoiled with ). Is there a way to have both of those features at TCH?

 

I am not sure about the notification, unless someone has a script for it.

 

Forwarding only:

Does TCH offer free email forwarding and url forwarding similar to the way **** and namesdirect.com do?

 

You can forward all the email you want as part of your hosting account, within the plan limits. Domain forwarding is only done at the registrar level.

 

Or is there only paid plans available?

 

Just paid, at $4 a month starting it's a steal though.

 

 

Unused levens.net and levens.org domains:

I want to keep these two extra domains but do not need anything setup for them except maybe url forwarding to point them both to levens.com. How would I do this with TCH?

 

It is called parking and we can do that.

 

Do I still need to sign up 3 plans even if I only want to use levens.com?

 

Nope, just say "park it" in your signup.

[dlevens]

Thanks Rob for the fast response, I still have a question about forwarding emails and if they would hit my bandwidth.

 

Since I will be setting up most of my 50+ email aliases as forwarders this question is important to me. I am not sure exactly how TCH does email forwarding but I would assume that if I setup for example joesmoe@levens.com to point to joesmoe22@hotmail.com then I think the emails do not actually pass through the TCH servers, sorta like URL webpage redirecting.

 

Is there a way we can confirm this though? It would really make a large difference on what plan I would need to get and how much it would cost me to move from **** to TCH.

 

Also, regarding my two unused domains and "parking" them on levens.com, if they are parked can you still have it so that if someone types www.levens.net or www.levens.org into their browser that they are automatically sent to www.levens.com? Or would this cost extra money?

 

Dennis Levens

[TCH-Bruce]

Also, regarding my two unused domains and "parking" them on levens.com, if they are parked can you still have it so that if someone types www.levens.net or www.levens.org into their browser that they are automatically sent to www.levens.com? Or would this cost extra money?

That's what parking is. You have your primary domain www.xyz.com, you also have www.xyz.net and www.xyz.org.

 

No matter which they enter in the browser they will end up at your index page for www.xyz.com.

 

There is no extra charge to park a domain.

Edited May 12, 2004 by TCH-Bruce

[dlevens]

Thanks Bruce for the clarification. That makes perfect sense now.

 

Do you happen to know if email forwarding would hit my bandwidth or do forwarded emails just get redirected before going through the TCH servers?

 

Dennis

[TCH-Bruce]

Do you happen to know if email forwarding would hit my bandwidth or do forwarded emails just get redirected before going through the TCH servers?

No, sorry I don't but will try to find out. Or you can open a Help Desk ticket to support and I'm sure they can tell you.

[TCH-Don]

forwarding is just an alias you set up

so if some sends to aname@yourdomain

and you set up an alias to forward it to their home e-mail

it still comes to your server and then is sent on its way.

 

So it passes through your server twice,

incoming and out going and does count as part of your bandwidth,

as does any request to or from your site.

[MikeJ]

Do you happen to know if email forwarding would hit my bandwidth or do forwarded emails just get redirected before going through the TCH servers?

On email forwards, every mail will get counted twice against your bandwidth. Once coming in to the server, then again as it leaves the server after it is processed by the forward. Unless you have a lot of attachments, though, email in general is pretty low bandwidth. (Edit: Apparantly TCH-Don typed faster than me. )

 

There is no way to redirect individual mailboxes without accepting the email first. The SMTP protocol (how mail is delivered on the internet) doesn't have a provision for allowing that.

 

A couple other points to clarify, TCH servers do not have virus scanning on emails. The filtering that is done is via simple blocking of certain attachments that are most commonly used by viruses. Spamassassin is also available (although would only help with viruses if it thinks it's spam. )

 

There are scripts available for email notifications I believe, including one for Horde that a friend of mine is experimenting with. There are also, I believe, Windows notification programs that monitor via POP3 connection.

 

And finally, as far as moving the domain, you should experience absolutely no downtime. For email being forwarded, they will simply migrate to being forwarded by the new server over a couple day period (just keep the old forwards active for a few days after migration). Any mailboxes you have hosted on the old service that you are migrating to TCH, you may have a couple day period where mail goes to both services. You would just have to check both mailboxes for a few days to make sure you get all of your mail. No mail would actually bounce.

Edited May 12, 2004 by TCH-MikeJ

[TCH-Bruce]

There are scripts available for email notifications I believe, including one for Horde that a friend of mine is experimenting with.  There are also, I believe, Windows notification programs that monitor via POP3 connection.

I use a program called PopTray )www.poptray.org)

 

You can set up unlimited accounts I believe and also preview mail with it. As well as delete specific messages. Has a rules filter for spam detection too.

 

Best of all it's FREE

Edited May 12, 2004 by TCH-Bruce