Moving away from your reliance on ISP Email services

A fair number of people I encounter feel that they are unable to move to an alternative Internet Service Provider (ISP) because they will lose their e-mail address. You may want to move to another ISP for better service, a better price, a better package including phone calls, along with numerous other reasons.

The best way to minimise your dependence on a specific ISP is to create an independent email account (or accounts). This could be a Google, yahoo or hotmail address which you can create and use for free and can be accessed through webmail or through your computer’s email client program. The other way to obtain an independent email account is to register your own domain name. For example tknowit.net, bluebeardesigns.co.uk or yorkshirelad.com. These can cost you less than 20GBP a year with email accounts included.

Once you have created your new email address you should send everyone (you wish to keep in touch with) an email from this account asking them to use this address in future. You will also need to go through all your mailing list subscriptions to ensure you still get your special offers from the supermarkets and money saving tips from the likes of moneysavingexpert.com.

Within a month or so you should find that everyone you want to keep in touch with have got the message and are corresponding via your new email address. The only things arriving in your ISP provided mail box will be spam emails, phishing attacks from your bank -that you have never had an account with, and your ISPs bill.

At this point you should feel more independent and more confident to move to another ISP offering you a service that meets your needs and pocket.