Domains and email forwarding

[8bit]

I have a website for my sideline photography business. The site itself is hosted on format.com and I use 123-reg for the domain name registration and DNS records, and for a simple email forwarder that directs mail to my domain name to my personal Gmail account. 123 recently emailed to advise that the simple email forward I currently have in my £12/year domain cost will no longer be included, to have that functionality from January I need to also subscribe to their "Professional Email" product at an additional £24/year. Nice!

My day job is in IT but not in this area so I'm a bit lost here. In simple terms, if I find a better/cheaper provider can I simply sign up with them and have the domain and mail forward from 123 any time I wish?

Alternatively, I understand you can have Gmail work with mail from another domain - would it be possible to set that up so that 123 only deal with the domain name registration/DNS and Gmail handles the email? Or, can Gmail/Google handle the domain name, DNS and email entirely?

[eltawater]

Google sold off their Domain and DNS business to Squarespace, who will allow you to configure email forwarding rules for your domains you host with them.

If you want 123-reg to handle the Domain reg / DNS server part and Gmail to handle the mail server part, you'll need to sign up to Google Workspace which will cost more per month than you're currently paying.

I have Google workspace with my personal domain and I host both the personal domain and the photography domain with Squarespace since Google sold it off.

Edited by eltawater on Thursday 21st November 12:12

[drmotorsport]

Yes the obvious solution would be to have your vanity domain added to your Google account (you will have to pay for the privilege and possibly convert it to a Workspaces account) and just have the domain DNS MX records pointing at Google.

[SteveKTMer]

Cloudflare offer a free e-mail forwarding service, might only be for domains registered with them but they are a very good registrar and can also sit in front of your website to protect it and speed it up via caching, amongst other things.

I set this up a year or two ago for somebody and I thin it is part of the free plan.

[biggiles]

SteveKTMer said:

Cloudflare offer a free e-mail forwarding service, might only be for domains registered with them but they are a very good registrar and can also sit in front of your website to protect it and speed it up via caching, amongst other things.

I set this up a year or two ago for somebody and I thin it is part of the free plan.

Confirmed - it's part of Cloudflare's free plan. A lot of people (including me) moved to Cloudflare from Godaddy in the last couple of years.

[eeLee]

I have many domains registered at Clouflare which indeed supports email catch-all/forwarding in the domain cost (plus a basic Cloudflare service for websites) - it's excellent.

The other domains I have at infomaniak.com who give me a mailbox free with each domain.

Both are good options, you sound like you want a Cloudflare service - transfer out of 123 and into them.

[8bit]

Thanks, sounds like the simplest thing would be to switch to Cloudflare then, I'll investigate that. I had actually wondered about bringing the email fully into Gmail, being a forwarder it means that when I respond it comes from my Gmail address, would be nice to be properly sending and receiving with my business address. Not sure I fancy paying 123-reg that amount to do it though