Lost my e-mail, life is chaos

[JSR]

Many years ago my mom - and in the process me to - got herself broadband. With it came an e-mail account. I've since used that one as my only e-mail account. A couple of days ago, she changed broadband vendor, and at the same time the e-mail account got closed. Being used to checking my inbox every ten minutes on my phone, the sudden removal of access was jarring to put it mildly.

Over the years I've gotten very accustomed to have mails from work, my banks, service providers and everything else neatly gathered in a single application. Now that I no longer have access to the account, I feel as a part of my identity is missing. And the task of getting it all straightened out seems pretty daunting. I know that 15 years ago people managed just as well (if not better) without any e-mails, but now it seems as important as hot water. Just as I feel naked if I step outside without my phone on me, I've adjusted so much to this service that it's really hard to be without it. As I don't receive bills via e-mail anymore, there is nothing really urgent that I need access to, yet I can't help feeling very handicapped.

Anybody else experienced something similar? Share.

And also, what's the best e-mail service out there? One that is easy to integrate to Live Mail and such.

[charlesr]

Get your own email address? Then it won't happen again ever. e.g. mail at alexws.net or something.

[Brad]

What Charles said. I have my email forwarded to 2 other accounts as a backup. Sorry to hear of your current predicament dude.

[JSR]

I get one of those through a domain service right? No chance of the provider going under and me losing everything? So to me gmail looks very future proof, though having a custom mail address would be pretty cool.

[charlesr]

I've been using www.1and1.co.uk (or www.1and1.com) for 15 years or something. Not cheap (or amazing) but reliable. Do it.

[Rossco]

Yeah, I've had my own domain for years now but only set up my email on it a few months ago. Much better than having a bog standard @gmail.com at the end of your email address now.

[Robster]

Alex Im in the same situation you were with my main email addrs being connected to my Dad's broadband account.

Im glad I read this thread now, Im cringing just thinking about what I would do if my dad changed his bb ..

[Mr Ono]

Even if you have the domain name email you run the risk of forgetting to renew your domain registration or your email hosting.

What I do now is have my @onosworld emails but autoforward incoming mails to my gmail account for cloud storage too. That way, should I lose my domain, I still have the archive.