Tip: Don't use free email addresses

13 Aug, 2025

If I were to give you one tip for your digital life, it would be:

Never use a free email address

Examples of free email services include: gmail.com, outlook.com, hotmail.com. You know the type.

Let's qualify that tip slightly. By all means use a free address for your fake account -- you know, the email address you use to sign up to all the crap services.

For your actual real, bona fide, personal email address use your own domain.

Why?

Simple, if you use a free address you are basically stuck with them. And that's exactly what they are counting on. Imagine the effort involved in telling everyone your new email address if you decided to move -- or worse still, the free service closed down or became chargeable. You're locked in. Your entire digital life held to ransom by a corporate.

You can of course setup a new account elsewhere. Will you remember everyone you need to inform of the new address?! There's always going to be people or companies you forget.

How?

The how is surprisingly simple. You buy a domain name (the bit after the @ in an email address). You can then decide what you want as your name before the @, as it's your own domain.

You will need a mail server to host your email and domain. There are many service providers that will host your mail, and respect your privacy.

Cost

There will of course be costs.

However, by using a free email service there are costs too, just not immediately obvious to you. They give you a free service, and sell your profile to advertisers, or use content to train AI models. That's the cost -- your digital identity; and it is worth a lot to them.

Buying your own domain can be as low as a few notes a year. Having someone host it will cost a little more, but you will be safe in the knowledge that you are not being profiled and sold on.

This post is not about promoting a specific mail host, but here are a few examples for info:

• Fastmail, £5/$6 per month
• mailbox.org, €3 per month
• Proton Mail, £4/$5 per month
• Tuta Mail, €3 per month

Gmail and Outlook do offer a facility to host your domain for email, but the prices are higher than those above.

Most email services will import your old mail from the free provider, making the transition simpler.

Summary

The basic steps:

• Buy a domain name
• Select a mail host
• Import your old email
• Inform everyone of your new 'forever' email address

If you're lucky your free email service will forward on future emails to your new address.

I've had my own domain name for 24 years. It has allowed me to move mail providers several times, but never change my email address.

#blaugust2025