Why use your own domain

The obvious question you might be asking is: what does it mean to use my own domain with email, and why should I do it?
Hosting your email with your own domain means that you use a domain you've purchased for your emails. This has several advantages:

• You can't lose access to your email accounts as long as you own the domain
• You can easily switch between email providers while keeping your accounts
• You have more control over your email and security
• You have the ability to switch email providers if you decide you don't like your current one

Using your own domain for emails also has several disadvantages:

• You are ultimately responsible for the security of your email and domain
• Any fraudulent emails sent through your domain are likely to get you in trouble
• You must learn quite a bit about how email works
• Your email accounts will appear much more unique because they are linked to your domain (this may make you more of a target for attackers)
• Once you set up email on your domain, this is a lifelong commitment. If your domain ever expires, somebody can re-register it and control your email accounts.

This approach isn't for everybody, but if you are a technical person who is willing to invest time and effort into setting up email on your domain, you will be able to take control over an often neglected but essential piece of digital life: email.

Registering a domain

Ultimately there isn't much to say about registering a domain. This is a fairly standardized process, and many people register their own domains. However, there are a few things that should be noted by prospective domain owners.

Predatory registrars

Not all registrars are created equal. In fact, some of them are very bad. Most registrars allow you to search for the domain you want to buy to see if it's available. Some registrars will use this as an opportunity to buy the domain themselves, this allows them to charge you whatever they want for the domain. At this point your only option is to go with the registrar that owns the domain, and you are better off looking for a different domain elsewhere.

These kinds of situations can be avoided by doing research before you start attempting to register a domain.

DNS

Generally accepted advice is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. DNS stands for domain name system, it is the system that allows a domain name to be resolved to an IP address. Your registrar most likely also runs their own DNS servers, and will automatically configure your new domain to use their servers. However, you have the option of many DNS providers, and it is better to use a different company for your DNS.

The easiest way to explain why is an example. Let's say that your registrar is undergoing sceduled maintenence at the same time you're changing email providers. You go ahead and cancel service on your current provider, and sign up to a new provider, unaware of the issues at your registrar. The scheduled maintenence gets extended as the registrar runs into some unexpected issues, they estimate the service will be down for 3 days. Now you can't update your DNS entries, and you have MX records that are pointing to broken links. Your only option is to wait for your registrar to finish with their maintenence.

By separating your registrar and DNS service, you don't have a single point of failure. In the event something goes wrong with one service, you will still have access to the other. This can help prevent downtime and allow you to recover from errors or bugs.

Choosing an email provider

Choosing an email provider is much the same as choosing a registrar. You can always transfer, but you will likely be stuck with a provider for a while once you've registered. Make sure to do research ahead of time and pick a provider that will align with your needs.

Ultimately I would suggest using a paid email service. You will generally be treated much better as a paying customer. Customer support generally comes on the condition that you are paying.

Setting up email with your new provider

Now that you've chosen your provider, you need to set up some DNS entries. The only required entry is called an "MX" entry. MX entries are used for mail, and do not effect any websites or web services you might have running on this domain. Your email provider will give you instructions on how to point your domain to the proper servers. You will typically have two servers to point MX records at, a primary and a secondary in the case of a failure.

After you've completed this step, provided you've configured everything correctly, you should be able to recieve emails! Hooray! You can use your email in this configuration if you want, but I would not recommend it.

Security

That's right. Security time. This is best covered in detail in a completely separate guide, but I will summarize why you need to take security into account.

Email as a protocol is inherently insecure. An attacker may pretend that their email is coming from your domain, and fool users into thinking that you're sending them emails. Although most providers won't allow random people to send emails from your account, this doesn't mean they can't send spam from another mail server and say that it's coming from your domain. There are a number of defenses against this that have been created, and that's what we'll go over in the article on securing your email.