Using my own domain name as a personal email

Privacy and Security Get Advice
1

Hi, I’m new to the forum and new to privacy as well.

I wanted to have my personal email with my own domain name.

I don’t want my personal email address to be tied to a company’s domain name. I’ve switched email addresses so many times I don’t want that to happen anymore.

Right know I’m using an icloud email address (firstnamelastname@icloud), I wanted to switch to a more private and secure email provider but I want to use my own domain and not be tied to that company.

My plan is to buy “myfirstnamemylastname.com” , create “contact@myfirstnamemylastname.com” email and use it in tutanota.

I wanted to know the most cheapest private and secure ways to do that. I live in a very very poor country in Africa, so it doesn’t make any sense to me to spend a lot of money on yearly payment for domain name and email hosting.

My budget is $ 12 a year for domain name and email hosting.

Thanks for helping me and sorry for my English, I’m a beginner.

1 Like
2

I don’t know about the domain, because it depends also which kind of domain is it. Some are more expensive than others - .dev, .io, .eu etc.

But for the hosting you can use Github pages for example.

EDIT: Sorry, I did not read your post carefully enough :man_facepalming:

The problem is that even if you find some really cheap domain, usually to connect custom domain to the email service is paid feature :frowning:

3

Tutanota is the cheapest provider I know of that will allow you to use a personal domain, they will host your e-mail for $12 per year, if you get the 12-month subscription.

Keep in mind this doesn’t cover the year cost of owning the domain.

4

Sorry, the $ 12 doesn’t include tutanota, so my real budget is $ 24 a year

5

So all I need is tutanota premium plan and a domain provider?

What is the most private and secure you can think of.

6

Tutanota or Protonmail are your best options, but Proton is a lot more expensive at $45 pr year.

Tutanota Premium 1 year subscription is $12, you don’t get a lot of space, but you can use 1 user defined domain.

7

Njalla and orange website but I’ve used NameCheap and Netim in the past both are fine just make sure whatever TLD you get has full whois privacy when you buy from Netim. The first two own the domain on your behalf meaning their contact information is kept on the whois servers while NameCheap and Netim require you to put your own contact information. As you want to do this with a small budget use NameCheap as whois privacy hides your information and it is free, it doesn’t make sense to pay extra to hide the fact you own it if it is firstnamelastname.com. Personally, I would check if lasname.com is available so you can use firstname@lastname.com and maybe get your family to use it. It seems the Tutanota plan you are going with will allow you to add more users with $1/month. Right now NameCheap has new users who get a .com for $6.98 deal if you use NEWCOM698 at checkout and don’t select any of the other services they suggest to you like email or hosting.

8

There are a few I know of that respect your privacy.

The first (and I believe cheapest) is Orange Website

Other options are 1984 hosting and Njalla (they both appear to be about the same price)

A cheaper option that does not respect privacy is Freenom

9

Personally I would avoid Freenom as they don’t respect GDPR (at least in my case). They have ignored my requests to delete my data and they have also ignored my DPA (Data Protection Authority) trying to get in contact with them. So I would avoid them at all costs, but, it is totally up to you :grinning:

You should definitely look into the Domain providers listed out in this topic, although some of them are more expensive they are better for your privacy.

10

Here is a description on justdeleteme.xyz

11

The cheapest domains are €15 at njalla, and it looks like they are $16.90 at orange

12

I only mentioned them because they are very cheap. From a privacy perspective, they are not great.

13

I saw one on orange for $13… i think it was ending in .link

14

True, .link is only €13

Seems like they are “scamming” people who buy .io, it’s €85 at orange and only €45 at Njalla. They have different prices, but the other domains are much closer in price.

15

Registrars can set whatever price they want, some do low purchase and high renewal some keep it similar throughout. I wouldn’t recommend getting a new .gTLD because of situations that have happened in the past like .hosting price hikes.

16

Yes, the registrar can charge any price they want, but the registrant can move any time they want, which is why overpricing popular TLDs by 100% seems like a very bad idea.

1 Like
17

Thanks you, do I need to pay extra for email creation and hosting or is it possible to create an email address in tutanota?

Like, I buy my domain in namecheap (only my domain), buy the $ 12 tutanota plan, create my custom email address in tutanota and host my email in tutanota.

It is possible to do that? Or do I need to create my email address in namecheap.

18

No, once you buy the Tutanota plan you can add the domain to your Tutanota account and then you can create addresses in Tutanota.

Tutanota will ask you to edit/add DNS records through your registrar and point it to theirs and once that is done your domain will be connected to your Tutanota account.

If you have any more questions I would recommend emailing Tutanota support - they have been really helpful in my experience :grinning:

19

Thanks I will reach out to them

20

You can use the free email tutanota gives you from their domains because if they try to notify you about expiring domains but the email domain cant receive emails then that is quite an issue, sir. If you have signal I can help you set it up.