Hi For a long while now I've been contemplating the idea of getting a personalised email address. Something like 'name@surname.co.uk'. I'm quite fond on the idea but I really don't understand well enough how to achieve this. Hardware I can understand but I'm still learning how the internets work. So as far as I'm aware, to be able to have an email address of 'name@surname.co.uk' I'd need to own the domain 'surname.co.uk', is this correct? Also, if I need to own the domain then I would need a domain host which would obviously be another expenditure. I don't want a website, just the ability to create an email address and use that email address with my iPhone and computer. Would anyone be able to enlighten me as to the easiest way to go about it and anything I should be aware of? Thanks!
You do need to own the domain. You do not need to get a web host. Domains and web hosting are separate, though interrelated. It used to be the case that you would need to pay for an email provider. Google will provide this for free. Google will also let you host a basic web site as well. http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html
So it's as simple as finding a website that sells domains, purchasing the domain then registering with google? Simpler/cheaper than I was expecting, nice! Thanks tehBoris.
Purchase a domain and basic hosting package through a reputable provider, I thoroughly recommend TSOHost.co.uk (link to Linux package page), their support is genuinely excellent. I've got a few domains and hosting packages with them now, some for personal use, others for people I build basic Wordpress sites for. As a rough guide on price, a .co.uk domain via TSOHost is £3.35 per year, and the hosting is £14.99 for a year for the basic Linux package. A cheap price to pay I think for a custom email address powered by the mighty Gmail. This way, you will be able to have an email address such as name@surname.co.uk (where surname.co.uk is the domain you purchased). Once that's purchased and up and running (usually within a few hours, tops) next step is to sign up for Google Apps as linked to by Boris and run through their steps to add Gmail on your domain. You need the hosting package as well as the domain in order to configure the settings for Google Apps email (I think... will double check this later). This is easily done via 'Cpanel' which is a really nice and easy to use web based GUI administrative backend for your domain. Happy to run you through how to do this in a bit more detail if you like, drop me a PM.
So you say that I have to pay for hosting as well? I don't want any kind of web site in all honesty so would I not be able to use Google Apps as if it were a host and just use the email facilities? I've been doing a fair bit of looking around for this but there doesn't seem to be an easy definitive answer for this anywhere. After doing some brief googling and reading many completely unrelated pages it seems that many are saying that it is possible to use Google Apps with no web hosting if it's just for emails. Do you think this is correct or is there a reason why it wouldn't work? I'm going to go ahead an purchase a domain anyway and I'll see if it works at that point! If not it looks like I'll be purchasing web hosting as well! Thanks for the help!
You don't need any hosting package, just the domain and control over it. If you want to add a proper web site you can do that later (assuming hosting provided by services such as blogger, wordpress and google sites doesn't constitute a proper web site), if you just want email you don't need any, Google will do it for free.
Just to confirm what tehBoris has said. You can definitely use Google Apps for emails for your domain without any hosting. I bought my domain earlier today and everything is working fine, thanks guys!
All you need is a domain name and cpanel account you dont need to host website but if you put a web page there with your introduction, man it will be awesome. go to name.com purchase a domain from there around $9 per yar go to shopaserver.com purchase 1 dollar cpanel web hosting plan and create your email id within cpanel. its damn cheap! giving you email and opportunity to put your own webpage introduction there too. if you have no idea of website you can ask them to give you a ready wordpress website as Shopaserver guys offer ready wordpress website to non technical guys.
Ah brill, will remember that for the future as I always buy them both at the same time so I've never been quite sure! Have fun!
Cheers webtalk. In the end I purchased my domain from www.cheapdomainnames.co.uk, sounds a little questionable but after looking through some stuff I saw that they provided free whois privacy and also a free control panel. So I purchased my domain from there for £6.58/2 years I think it came to. As for the website, within the control panel theres an option to use a feature called 'FirstPage' which makes an incredibly simple web page without the need for hosting. However, as I'm using Google Apps (Free edition) to control my email there is also the option to use google sites to create a website. All I had to do was create a CNAME record within the control panel and voila, I can easily reroot any traffic to my google sites page. Google sites isn't exactly the best way to make a web page but for me its an extra feature that I'm unlikely to even use. Or, will only use to show off to friends the fact that I have my own website and email Hope that's informative and might save you a couple of pennys (sorry, cents for you webtalk) if you ever decided to do something similar. I effectively had to pay for my domain and have paid for nothing else and I know just use Mail on my iPhone and a normal email program on my PC. Cheap and very cheerful! It also really helps to portray an image if you needed to use the email in a professional environment. At the very least it makes your friends want them too!
