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Ask HN: How do you view emails with their custom domain as the person's name?

10 points by mikaelmello ↗ HN
Last year I was somewhat unsatisfied with my gmail account and all of the good options were already taken.

Since I already had bought the domain in my own name, why not use it in my e-mail accounts.

I made the switch to use [contact at myname dot com] (you can guess my name) and didn't really look back.

Recent events made me wonder if e-mails like that may appear more than just an e-mail. Would you find it better than a gmail? Equivalent? Worse?

Edit: I also use multiple variations to register on websites, such as [hackernews at myname dot com], the goal being to (somewhat) track who is leaking them (surprisingly almost zero spam since then).

The "recent event" was a confusion from a company where I used my main e-mail to contact them and I also already had an account in one of the related services we were going to use. They had to ask if both are correct.

Perhaps I should just use the same for everything?

Edit 2: Lots of typos and grammar mistakes

7 comments

[ 18.2 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] thread
gervu
Addresses that are obviously professionally inappropriate are one thing. Otherwise I pay approximately zero attention to them, outside the context of "do I have the right one" and "how likely is this to be a phishing email."

In the context of picking one for myself, I would also worry about usability factors, like if people are likely to confuse one thing for another, or not doing things like putting a long random character sequence as the user name.

mikaelmello
Yeah, I guess [ contact at mydomain dot com ] is pretty great and straightforward. I'll just be more careful whenever using other aliases to register in websites with the potential to reach me by the used e-mail.
ggm
Reputation in email is complex. many people dislike @yahoo email addresses, Iranians use them frequently because for their country and language community it was one of the first foreign emails they got. I use @pobox.com because I started over 20 years ago. If I had been one week sooner I would have g@pobox.com and I know a single-letter mailbox holder at pobox.com. Pobox has a very poor reputation in email because of a spam problem, despite being owned by Fastmail which is a high reputation email endpoint.

I know people who use @ieee.com and people who use @acm and people who use @<university>-alumni.com and .. the list is endless.

What are you trying to project, using the @domain is the question.

As well as @pobox I have my own domain. It is not my name but I have it, and I send from it and receive to it.

If you host a domain at google (I do, I have a grandfathered domain) you get postini quality of spam filter and SPF/DKIM outgoing (I believe) so are far less likely to be abused. Hosting your own domain mail means either paying somebody or understanding how to manage email services to avoid being abused.

Using somebody else's domain is more normal but now you carry the reputational risk of their domain.

Using @work email to send @personal traffic risks the work reputation, against things said by you @personal context. How do you feel about that, in your @personal-domain sense?

mikaelmello
I am using GSuite and yes, no complaints.

> How do you feel about that, in your @personal-domain sense?

That's a valid point. After thinking about it for a little while I guess that's not a problem for me.

The only downside is that any e-mail using my domain will be obviously mine (provided they know who owns the domain). If I wanted to "hide" I would have to use another e-mail, which was going to be the case anyway.

intreego
I found it difficult to decide as well.

My instincts are that it looks professio9nal and personal use your own domain. I went with my instincts and I was right. The next day I had to email someone from their business card and it was sooo long that I was worried I'd made a mistake.

I could literally hear myself advising them to use their domain name instead.

So for me much better than Gmail.

mikaelmello
The main reason I got tired of my old e-mail is because of a repeating character that may or may not led people to a different e-mail than mine, making me lose an opportunity. I'll never know.
caseyscottmckay
Using your own domain is smart because you presumably can keep the same email address forever and you are flexible (if a service provider fails, you can switch and be back up and running in less than an hour). On the other hand, commercial providers die all the time, so if you build a brand/reputation associated with the identifier name@company.com and company dies, your brand/reputation associated with that email also dies.

A person using their own name also shows they have the skills to run their own website (or at least navigate through documentation enough to set up a domain name through a third-party).

Using another person's name is okay if it's an employer or you are being paid to use another person's name. Otherwise it's weird/sketchy (are you that person's lackey or are you stealing an identification or committing trickery?).