topic Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account. in Business

Plusnet discontinuing business account.

Fixxxer — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 13:31:10 GMT

Having come to Plusnet via a Force9 business account back in the days of dial up connections I now find myself faced with the news Plusnet business accounts are to be discontinued and I need to take action. Ideally I'd like to stay with Plusnet but want to know how things would work out with my domain and emails. Unfortunately I can't get at FTTP or FTTC due to my local exchange not being enabled or being at capacity. Therefore it's looking like my only option would be to convert my account to a residential ADSL however I'm not sure how this will affect my @mydomain emails and my domain which has only ever been used for email. Any advice would be gratefully received.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:01:34 GMT

I would like to know the same, particularly with respect to domains and email.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

bmc — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:34:50 GMT

Have you checked recently to see what's available to you. Use the following

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

Are any of the Alternative networks active in your area.

Brian

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

MisterW — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 14:39:04 GMT

@Fixxxer @knowdice there's a faq here https://www.plus.net/business/faqs/?_ga=2.241631426.1562954009.1686839775-1846959279.1686839775

but you will lose email and domain hosting.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

dvorak — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 17:12:16 GMT

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to Business

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

corringham — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 07:22:15 GMT

@Fixxxer wrote:

I'm not sure how this will affect my @mydomain emails and my domain which has only ever been used for email. Any advice would be gratefully received.

Given that Plusnet are discontinuing lots of services I'd suggest you may be better moving your domain and e-mail to a 3rd party a.s.a.p, even if Plusnet are able to continue for now. Otherwise if Plusnet do close these you may be faced with a short deadline to get things sorted rather than having time to move in a controlled manner.

It would also make you more independent of your ISP, so in the future you could change ISP without worrying about your email.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 08:20:33 GMT

I'm lucky that on the Broadband side I have the choice of FTTC, Virgin Cable or City fibre which is currently being installed locally (hopefully up and running before 5th September).

Domain wise the person that deals with our website is suggesting Google as its free and the control panel is "quite nice".

Email, not sure about using Google mail servers, I use names.co.uk for another domain so they are also a possibility for both domain and email (at a cost).

Web server we currently use DigitalOcean so don't need to change that once the domain and DNS is in place.

Landline voice call handling, we currently use Gradwell with SIP but they seem to be pricing themselves out of the market at £14.49 per incoming number.

If you have BT for broadband then there is an option for "Digital Voice" @ £5 per month.

Andrews & Arnold do a good deal at £1.20 setup then £1.44 per month for a SIP account, they are expense if you need to port your existing number to them.

I'm going to try "Numbers People" which is nominally £1 per month per number and free porting. There is a suggestion that they are very expense if you need to port away from them (haven't checked this myself).

There is also sipgate but they have stopped doing their free basic account and now start at £12.95 per month but with the proviso "£12.95per user/month minimum of 2 users" so does that really mean £25.90 per month?

Any other suggestion gratefully received 😁

A word of warning....If you port your landline number away from Plusnet then that effectively shuts down your broadband account, so be very careful as to the order in which you do things.

Please correct me where I am wrong or made assumptions that are incorrect....😞

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

corringham — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 10:41:33 GMT

@knowdice, that's a nice summary.

I also use names.co.uk for my domains, but I run my own e-mail and web servers - if you can set up a linux distro and use something like WebMin/VirtualMin (free version) it is pretty easy to administer (no harder than many hosting companies) and quite flexible.

I also use a L2TP connection from A&A - that gives me static addresses for my servers which is independent of the ISP (so I can switch from FTTP to 4G without any loss of connectivity).

For VoIP I have a basic sipgate account which is still free - if I had to pay I'd move to A&A.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 11:07:54 GMT

I also have a "legacy" free sipgate number, but that may or may-not disappear at some stage in the future.

Running my own mail server is a possibility either on a Linux box or maybe my Synology.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

MisterW — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 12:29:05 GMT

Running my own mail server is a possibility either on a Linux box or maybe my Synology

Running a mail server on a box 24/7 doesnt make economic sense (purely on leccy costs) unless you can run it on an existing box which you already run 24/7.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

corringham — Fri, 16 Jun 2023 13:51:01 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

Running my own mail server is a possibility either on a Linux box or maybe my Synology

Running a mail server on a box 24/7 doesnt make economic sense (purely on leccy costs) unless you can run it on an existing box which you already run 24/7.

It depends on how many domains & users you are supporting. You're almost certainly right for a small number, but I have a number of domains, and I'm not sure how many mailboxes (dozens, not hundreds) and no storage limits, and I can tune my own spam filters etc. I also host a number of low traffic websites, which add to the financial equation.

You can run a competent server on say 30 watts, so something under £100 per year in electricity for as many websites and mailboxes you want.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

Fixxxer — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 20:34:30 GMT

On looking again today it would looks like there's some FTTC capacity available in the local exchange/cabinet. So guess I need to act quickly. However I don't understand why my phone line needs to be part of the package, I'm already a BT customer and that's in the wife's name so don't know if that has any bearing on proceedings, would my landline change? Would I actually be moving the line from BT to Pusnet or BT to BT? Also got to make a decision on domain and email hosting not that I have a web site.

Guess I'll give Plusnet a call in the am and hope I can get some good and accurate advice.

Thanks to all who have replied so far.

To be continued.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 08:01:12 GMT

So you are paying BT for your current landline telephone facility and Plusnet for your Broadband?

Why?

That's just throwing money away 🤔

Get them both combined at Plusnet and save money...

Of course in 2025 there is an issue with the analogue telephone facility going digital over IP, it seems that at the moment Plusnet will not be offering a solution. Maybe things will change in the next 18 months or so as we approach the change over...

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

pvmb — Sat, 24 Jun 2023 13:26:38 GMT

"So you are paying BT for your current landline telephone facility and Plusnet for your Broadband?"

"Get them both combined at Plusnet and save money..."

Whoa! Not so fast... Or "Get them both combined at BT" ? - whether that would save money I have no idea. But there are other considerations:

"Of course in 2025 there is an issue with the analogue telephone facility going digital over IP, it seems that at the moment Plusnet will not be offering a solution. Maybe things will change in the next 18 months or so as we approach the change over..."

Depending on requirements (Email, domains, broadband, landline phone number...) I think you have to be cautious these days, before rushing into doing anything in this area.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

Fixxxer — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:18:08 GMT

I've opted to transfer my domain and am considering setting up email forwarding using a catch all and wondering how I go about getting my IPS Tag changed? When calling 0800 028 0282 none of the options offered by the automated system seem appropriate.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:24:54 GMT

I also need to do that, so will be interesting to find out how to do it...

Will probably use Google Domains initially and I'm going to run my own mail server on a NanoPi - that's only 4-5Watts so not too expensive to run.

Playing with mail server software called Modoboa seems to work quite nicely...

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

jab1 — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:30:23 GMT

@Fixxxer / @knowdice - post a request in the 'Everything Else' board, and a PN staffer will help you sort it.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

Fixxxer — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:37:18 GMT

@knowdice

That sounds like an interesting project, I'm just trying to set the catch all up to forward to Gmail and I can sort hosting or a server out later, right now I'd be happy just to continue receiving email.

I have an old Pi2 running Pi-Hole marvellous bit of kit, only downside was the few occasions where we lost power and the SD card became corrupt and I ended up having to rebuild. It's connected to an APC 750 UPS now so don't have those problems anymore.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

Fixxxer — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 16:38:45 GMT

@jab1

Thanks, much appreciated.

I'll give that a go.

Re: Plusnet discontinuing business account.

knowdice — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 17:23:55 GMT

@Fixxxer I got a .co.uk test domain from Google it's only £10 for a year so allows me to "test bed" this before going live.

Current hardware is a NanoPi M4 with 2GB Ram and 16GB of EMMC so fingers crossed "could" be a bit more robust/reliable than and SD card...Modoboa is a bit tight on 2GB RAM so had to setup a RAM disk which is not ideal on an SD card or EMMC...

Have just ordered this - NanoPi R6C 8GB RAM, 32GB EMMC and M.2 Slot for an SSD. 128GB M.2 is only about £12 at that well know online store...hopefully still less than 8 Watts 😎

@jab1 Many thanks for the heads up with the "Everything Else" board, will pop in there later...