topic Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail in Email

Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 14:23:03 GMT

As a long-standing customer I still use PlusNet's email service. I have a couple of domain names registered with 123-reg and I have been using their mail forwarder rules to route mails to my PlusNet mailboxes, something like:

him@mydomain.co.uk => him@myaccount.plus.com
her@mydomain.co.uk => her@myaccount.plus.com
us@mydomain.co.uk => him@myaccount.plus.com,her@myaccount.plus.com

It's been working well for years but 123 are withdrawing the forwarding mechanism unless you subscribe for a mailbox with them, which I don't want to do.

AIUI I should be able to point my domain's MX record directly at the PlusNet mail exchanger and set up aliases/redirects at the PlusNet end. In fact I think I used to do it that way originally before moving the forwarding management to 123: my domain name shows that my domain name is "Registered and Hosted", and I have lots of aliases set up in my PlusNet mail account. I'm having trouble getting it to work though.

What I have tried:

Enabled catchall in my PlusNet mail settings and confirmed it works. For example, abc123@myaccount.plus.com correctly arrives in the catchall mailbox.
Changed the MX records in my domain's nameserver so that they point at mx.avasin.plus.net (found that address using nslookup -type=mx myaccount.plus.com)
Mail to abc123@mydomain.co.uk now seems to resolve the MX but is bouncing (550 Invalid Recipient)

What am I missing?

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Townman — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 14:47:45 GMT

Support for adding that facility was dropped years ago.

Given the issues which arise from email forwarding, it is not surprising that Reg123 are dropping the service ... also though they do not charge at the moment for what they provide ... it still costs them money.

You need to find a proper (paid for) email hosting provider for your domain name. Mythic Beasts offer a good service for not very much.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:01:08 GMT

@Townman wrote:

Support for adding that facility was dropped years ago.

Not sure which facility you mean. If it's the association of a domain with an email account, I already have that added.

You need to find a proper (paid for) email hosting provider for your domain name. Mythic Beasts offer a good service for not very much.

Last time I looked around I didn't find anything that ticked as many boxes as the PlusNet offering. I think one of the hurdles was that most allow only a very limited number of addresses, and we currently use dozens. I'll take a look at Mythic Beasts (thanks for the recommendation) but if there's any way I can make use of my existing PlusNet then that would be my preference, at least for the short term.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

MisterW — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:18:13 GMT

@Boxersoft Mythic allow unlimited mailboxes and aliases (forwarders) just like the Plusnet system. You can also host multiple domains on one account. The basic product at £20/yr provides 2GB of storage

As regards your existing Plusnet account, a domain hosted by Plusnet MUST use the Plusnet nameservers (ns1.force9.net & ns2.force9.net if I recall correctly ?). If your account still THINKS the domains are hosted then changing to the PN nameservers MIGHT work. If it works then the MX record should automatically be correct.

TBH I'd still take @Townman s advice and move to a 'proper' mail service that provides SPF & DKIM support.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 16:50:23 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

@Boxersoft Mythic allow unlimited mailboxes and aliases (forwarders) just like the Plusnet system. You can also host multiple domains on one account. The basic product at £20/yr provides 2GB of storage

Mythic does sound like it would suit us quite nicely and inexpensively. I might create an account and register a domain with them to try out their offering before jumping ship. I'd probably go for an account that provides web hosting while I'm at it.

a domain hosted by Plusnet MUST use the Plusnet nameservers

That doesn't actually seem to be the case, unless I misunderstand what you mean (quite possible, I don't claim any expertise with this sort of stuff). Both of my domains use a third-party nameserver (Hurricane Electric, fwiw) and simply have their A records pointing at the server that provides PlusNet's CCGI web space, which is happily serving content for both domain names.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

MisterW — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:02:37 GMT

@Boxersoft there's a big difference between just pointing an A record at your Plusnet account webspace and getting the PN mail servers to accept mail for a domain. For the latter I'm fairly sure (but not certain!) that you need to use the PN nameservers

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Townman — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:08:33 GMT

You are most certainly pointing at a grey area.

I used to have my business domain registered elsewhere and hosted on a Plusnet account. I think it used the Plusnet name servers.

When I closed the business, I moved the business domain on to my residential account so as to keep closed down correspondence not disappearing into a black hole. The business domain expired ... however my account still has the domain name in the domain name administration panel.

Does your domain name still appear on the manage domain name page in the user portal? See https://www.plus.net/my.html?action=domainv2

If it is there, what are the settings for the domain name?

If you are pointing the domain name at Plusnet's MX servers, somewhere herein PLUSNET has to map your domain name on to your Plusnet account. I am not clear how that happens ... and getting support for this is highly unlikely.

Given that you have broken the domain's email service ... you can do no more harm by pointing the domain at Plusnet's name server and see if it "recovers" to function the same as it once did.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:13:50 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

@Boxersoft there's a big difference between just pointing an A record at your Plusnet account webspace and getting the PN mail servers to accept mail for a domain. For the latter I'm fairly sure (but not certain!) that you need to use the PN nameservers

I am also using PlusNet mail for one of the domains and, as I said, both domains are using third-party nameservers.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

MisterW — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:20:34 GMT

Sorry, I thought you said you were just forwarding to your Plusnet account using 123 forwarding ?

As @Townman said, what does your domain control panel show for the domains ?

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:48:43 GMT

@Townman wrote:

Does your domain name still appear on the manage domain name page in the user portal? See https://www.plus.net/my.html?action=domainv2

My .co.uk domain appears there, with the status "Registered and Hosted". That's the domain whose forwarding from 123-reg is no longer working and for which I wanted to point the MX records directly at PlusNet.

My .com domain doesn't appear there, but the PlusNet mail server does accept mails addressed to that domain and forwarded by the 123-reg system, and allows me to send mails from addresses in that domain.

If it is there, what are the settings for the domain name?

SMTP mail service only available on accounts with static IP address component

OtherI wish to specify DNS records for mail to this domain

Domain Hosting Settings

DefaultI wish to have this domain hosted automatically under my webspace

OtherI wish to specify DNS records for hosts under this domain

Additional DNS records (Advanced)

Left field	Type	Pri	Right field
blackmyre.co.uk.	a		91.136.8.9

If you are pointing the domain name at Plusnet's MX servers, somewhere herein PLUSNET has to map your domain name on to your Plusnet account.

Understood, but that must already have been done because the PlusNet mailserver had previously been perfectly happy with the domain name. Originally the domain would have have been using PlusNet's nameservers, and more recently the third-party nameserver and mail forwarding by 123-reg.

you can do no more harm by pointing the domain at Plusnet's name server and see if it "recovers" to function the same as it once did.

True enough, I guess. I might give that a try, but at the moment I'm more inclined to invest the time investigating your suggestion of Mythic Beasts.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 17:57:00 GMT

@MisterW wrote:

Sorry, I thought you said you were just forwarding to your Plusnet account using 123 forwarding ?

Yes, using 123 to forward me@mydomain to me@myaccount.plus.com. The mails show as being to me@mydomain rather than the plus.com address, and I can send and reply using mydomain addresses. I thought you were saying that shouldn't be possible unless using PlusNet's own nameservers for the domain but, as I said, I might wasily have got the wrong end of the stick.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

MisterW — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 18:42:29 GMT

But in that case mail received by the PN servers isn't being directly sent to your domain , it's going to your account.plus.com

See below for the difference between TO and Envelope TO

To understand how mail is delivered, an email message has two TO addresses, a HEADER TO address and an ENVELOPE TO (RCPT TO) address. The HEADER TO is read by users and mail clients but is not used for mail delivery. The ENVELOPE TO is used by mail servers to determine where the mail is being delivered

When the mail is forwarded , the Envelope TO is changed but the TO is left as is

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

RealAleMadrid — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 20:22:37 GMT

@Boxersoft I would recommend that you forget about Plusnet e-mail, even plusnet staff are saying it will not be around for much longer, it is already withdrawn for new customers. No actual end date has been announced but be warned.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:50:05 GMT

Ah, fair enough - said I'm not great with this sort of stuff!

I've taken up the suggestions and created a MythicBeasts account. I'm currently finding my way around their systems. I realise this isn't really the place for support for other mail providers and hopefully there will be an active user forum out there somewhere, but a quick question since you and @Townman evidently have experience with it...

The setup I had at 123-reg before it got trashed was that all my main forwarding rules were on domainA. I On domainB I just had a single rule that forwarded *@domainB to *@domainA. That retained the value of [*] so I didn't need duplicate rules for each domain. Do you know if there's anything similar on MythicBeasts' system?

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:48:22 GMT

@RealAleMadrid wrote:

@Boxersoft I would recommend that you forget about Plusnet e-mail, even plusnet staff are saying it will not be around for much longer, it is already withdrawn for new customers. No actual end date has been announced but be warned.

Understood, thanks. I got the impression that reports of its withdrawal are just a somewhat persistent rumour though, and not official policy. In any case I have now created an account with MythicBeasts and I expect to be switching over to that as soon as I can.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

MisterW — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 09:58:48 GMT

@Boxersoft not done it myself, but I think 'domain grouping' will do what you want

https://www.mythic-beasts.com/support/hosting/mail/server

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 10:47:31 GMT

Ah, yes, it looks like that will work nicely - thanks very much, that's probably saved me some time hunting around a system I'm not yet familiar with.

I haven't yet found a "community forum" type site for MythicBeasts, do you know if there is one? I'm coming across a few such newbie questions that aren't obviously covered in the support pages but would probably be well suited to asking on a forum.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Townman — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 10:49:10 GMT

MB Support are excellent - just send them an email.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Townman — Fri, 08 Dec 2023 11:12:10 GMT

@RealAleMadrid wrote:

@Boxersoft I would recommend that you forget about Plusnet e-mail, even plusnet staff are saying it will not be around for much longer, it is already withdrawn for new customers. No actual end date has been announced but be warned.

Be aware that the SUs have an active discussion at the highest level about these unsubstantiated and confusing comments from CS Agents. There have been years of speculation on this subject, none of which have indicated what the end game might be. Until there is a formal announcement, it is business as usual.

Re: Using domain names with PlusNet mail

Boxersoft — Sat, 09 Dec 2023 16:10:18 GMT

@Townman wrote:

MB Support are excellent - just send them an email.

I did, and they were. I have since learned that they don't have dedicated support staff but instead have their tech guys cover the help desk on a rota. What a refreshing change!

Have to say I'm very impressed with Mythic Beasts and their platform, I haven't yet found anything I don't like. I've now migrated my email and websites to to them and they're working very nicely (especially webmail - the PlusNet one was dire). In due course I'll be moving my domain registration to them too, and bidding good riddance to 123-reg whose changes and poor communication have caused me quite a bit of hassle.

Thanks very much @Townman and @MisterW for recommending Mythic Beasts.