Email hosting for home

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 14:11

Hi all,

We are moving away from Plusnet and getting FTTP but currently we use @xxxxx.plus.net emails and want to avoid having to move again in the future so will be buying a domain name and using emails with that.

Now my question is about email hosting, I have been looking at using Office 365 Essentials which seems pretty good for ~£3.10/user/month, however is it possible to use this in a home that is not a registered business?

If not are there other good email hosts around?

Thanks

Ali

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 14:33

Sin_Chase said:
I do not see why there would be any restrictions on Essentials for personal use and can find no literature about such a limitation.

Perfect, I assume it will work with my own domain aswell? On the sign up site you have to create an account email (e.g. [email protected]), so If I bought a domain I could get it to use that email?

hellarda · 29 Jun 2015 at 23:52

Ok so I've decided to go with Vidahost and office 365. Now trying to add my domain to 365 and its asking me to verify I own the domain by adding a TXT or MX record, I have done this on the vidahost control panel but office 365 can't seem to pick it up? I added them a couple of hours a go and it still won't find them?

Screenshots attached.

any ideas?

cheers

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 06:34

Yeah it doesn't show up on that...

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 10:35

I only added the MX record when the TXT record didn't seem to work. The priority was on the Microsoft website and that was the value it said to use. I thought the quotation marks might be wrong but I can't seem to remove them, if I take them out it just RE adds them for me when I update the zone....

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 18:26

bump, still nothing is working. I can't remove the quotes on the TXT record, have tried changing the priority on the MX but hasn't helped

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 19:07

Ok well they weren't showing up on https://domain-records-lookup.com/ earlier and now its saying no records were found for the domain?

Will give Vidahost a call in the morning

hellarda · 30 Jun 2015 at 23:30

Caged said:
Are you sure you are changing the zone on the correct name server?

Mxtoolbox and the other link above are both saying the domain doesn't exist?

I can't see a different DNS page and I can't see any option to change it on specific nameservers

hellarda · 1 Jul 2015 at 00:00

Caged said:
This is going to be easier if you tell us the domain

Yeah I just realised that, not sure why I blanked it out in the first place, doesn't really matter its thehellards.co.uk

hellarda · 1 Jul 2015 at 00:51

Caged said:
There doesn't seem to be a DNS zone at Vidahost for that domain. WHOIS shows them to be:

Name servers:
ns1.vidahost.com
ns2.vidahost.com
ns3.vidahost.com

But there's nothing on the domain:

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> ns thehellards.co.uk
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54640
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;thehellards.co.uk. IN NS

;; Query time: 48 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.254#53(192.168.1.254)
;; WHEN: Wed Jul 1 00:17:26 2015
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 35

No MX either:

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> mx thehellards.co.uk @ns1.vidahost.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: SERVFAIL, id: 53405
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;thehellards.co.uk. IN MX

;; Query time: 12 msec
;; SERVER: 91.198.165.131#53(91.198.165.131)
;; WHEN: Wed Jul 1 00:17:50 2015
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 35

OK so what does that mean? Sorry I've never done any domain stuff before so bit of a learning curve

hellarda · 1 Jul 2015 at 13:35

Sorted. Name servers needed changing, thanks for the help