Agree. If you have a domain, you presumably have web hosting, and it seems to be usual for this to come with mail. My hosting provider will host email for any domain (presumably works like pawnmail...) and it doesn't cost any extra. Now, if hosting were $50+/mo then I could see the value of a free service, but you can get it for $10/mo, where the tradeoff makes (to my mind) a lot less sense. After all, you want to pay for services like these, if only to ensure they don't suddenly stop in 226 days' time :)
My ex business partner would argue with me about this sometimes. "You always take the piss out of my daily coffee [which cost £2, mostly to pay for coffee shop overheads]", he'd say. "You're so tight. But you make us pay for hosting and email, like it's a good idea. We could use Google for free." I'd just shrug noncommittaly as I supped my tea [total cost about £0.03, mostly to pay for electricity]. How could he not see? Over time these free services always get rolled back, sometimes without any warning.
(Obviously that happened to Google Apps, or whatever. Maybe that was while we were working together... I don't remember. I wasn't really paying attention, because I didn't have to worry about it. That's what you pay for.)
I've been lurking for a while here. In my observation, the previous consensus seemed to be that it is a bad idea to bundle hosting and email from your domain name registrar. Has this changed? If you have your domain name from Gandi, isn't it a bad idea to let Gandi host your website?
Disclaimer: I have nothing against Gandi in particular. Just curious about the prevailing convention as I always seem to be behind times...
> If you have your domain name from Gandi, isn't it a bad idea to let Gandi host your website?
Why? I'm with a small web shop for nearly 10 years for my private site, and happy as can be. You might say I'm putting all eggs into one basket, but for me it's rather a single point of failure, which so far never failed me. I expect if they, god forbid, ever go down or get bought, to be as gentlemanly as humanly and technically possible about that. I know you'll have to take my word for that, but let's just grant those things; so what am I missing that I should be worrying about?
Well, it could be that I am behind the times as well - I bought my hosting from dreamhost (service has proven satisfactory for my needs) and used their free domain registrations. Seems to have worked out. But even if I'm out of date on that, I do stand by my comment about the risks of free - some things come and go, but other things stay the same ;)
(None of this is a comment on the pawnmail service itself, which I'm sure is fine - just whether it, or any equivalent service, represents good value, all things considered, at that price point.)
My ex business partner would argue with me about this sometimes. "You always take the piss out of my daily coffee [which cost £2, mostly to pay for coffee shop overheads]", he'd say. "You're so tight. But you make us pay for hosting and email, like it's a good idea. We could use Google for free." I'd just shrug noncommittaly as I supped my tea [total cost about £0.03, mostly to pay for electricity]. How could he not see? Over time these free services always get rolled back, sometimes without any warning.
(Obviously that happened to Google Apps, or whatever. Maybe that was while we were working together... I don't remember. I wasn't really paying attention, because I didn't have to worry about it. That's what you pay for.)