Ask HN: Experience with using a personal email with a non-standard TLD?

4 points by cole-k ↗ HN
I just bought a Georgian (.ge) domain for a domain hack and would like to use it as my personal email. I am not Georgian nor are the people I'd be sending emails. I've read horror stories here before about companies needing to change from e.g. .xyz to .com so their emails aren't flagged as spam by Big Email Providers.

If you use a custom domain with a non-standard TLD for your email, have you experienced any issues like these before? Do you think it was the non-standard TLD's fault? I've seen people claim, for example, that using smaller email providers can also cause issues.

I know very little about how emails are flagged as spam, so I'd also appreciate any advice you'd give to someone who has only used a Big Email Provider for all their life and would like to now switch.

5 comments

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It's super annoying and you will eventually use Gmail.

The problem isn't tech savvy companies but the rest of them. I can't use my preferred email with my insurers. I actually had a kafkaesque situation with my health insurer (Kaiser) a few years ago where I was able to use the weird TLD initially and then they changed their front end email parser to reject it so I couldn't log in. Which sucked in the early covid days when I needed telemedicine for everything.

Thanks for the insight, I'm not surprised that email parsers refuse to believe that emails outside of .com/.net/.org exist.

Any reason why you said I would want to return to Gmail as opposed to continuing using another email provider with a different address? Have you had issues with custom domains ending in a more conventional TLD like .com? Have you had issues with smaller providers?

Gmail is free and universal. I haven't had issues with others.
I don't have problems with a couple of .rs domain I use.

Setup your SPF and DKIM fields correctly and it will help email providers confirm you are who you say you are.

I have been using an email address with .cat TLD on the side for a year and I've only had a handful of times where I couldn't sign up for a new account because email was not marked as valid. Ps: Email provider is a known hosting/domain provider.