topic Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby in Email

Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Mon, 12 May 2025 17:01:28 GMT

People who have been Plusnet customers for many years may remember the email security breach. This was pre BT days. In recompense, those affected were offered a free domain name and hosting. I’ve had mine since then. Perhaps there aren’t many of us left. I am wondering what Plusnet intends to do with our accounts? Will they be transferred to Greenby under the same terms and conditions?

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

RPMozley — Tue, 13 May 2025 02:29:36 GMT

I have no idea what the terms will be, but I too have the "free for life" domain from way back when. I'm sure there are a few more of use still hanging around here.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Baldrick1 — Tue, 13 May 2025 06:57:27 GMT

My personal thoughts:

I suggest that you refer back to the Ts & Cs of the original offer of a free domain. Specifically how/if 'lifetime' is defined and consider how this affects likely charges..

For example, I have a satnav with 'free for life' map updates. I have recently realised (I had not thought about it before) that the manufacturer was not referring to my lifetime, but what it decides is the supportable lifetime of the product. This has now been declared obsolete, so my perfectly working device no longer receives updates.

The positive aspect is that Plusnet is not just pulling the plug on a service from which they are withdrawing, they are arranging the transfer of the service to Greenby at a very reasonable cost.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Tue, 13 May 2025 07:25:34 GMT

@RPMozley Glad it’s not just me.

@Baldrick1 As RPM has said, we were not given any terms and conditions. This was way back before BT came on the scene. Hopefully this will continue to be honoured. I think it should be because those of us who are left are clearly very loyal customers. PN has been my Internet/telephone provider for twenty one years. My ISP is Force9 which was the original name of the company before it became Plusnet.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

dgp — Wed, 21 May 2025 16:55:37 GMT

Has it really been 21 years!!!. I started with PN when it was still dial-up.

My assumption is our legacy domains would be transferred over, but we would have to pay when the 2 years is up. Greenby won't really care what the domain is. If that's right, £15 a year is not unreasonable. I was paying £8 to maintain a .eu address until we left the EU and it was taken away.

One potential benefit for us is we would be no longer tied to Plusnet so could go for the cheapest broadband option once the transfer has taken place. Its one of the reasons I've stayed loyal since the beginning I didn't want to lose my own domain. - I also used to live in Sheffield and the office was across the road from mine.

It would be helpful to have an approximate timeline.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Wed, 21 May 2025 19:12:30 GMT

It is a long time ago but fortunately I do remember the email breach incident quite well. I too was on dial-up with Force 9 and used to pay (I think) £4.99 pm for so many minutes - think it might have been 100 but could be 1000.

I was just thinking about the dial-up tone the other day. Quite distinctive and you couldn't use the telephone when on the Internet. When I transferred to broadband it was £15 pm but wasn't unlimited. Can't remember the limit. Was sent a Voyager 105 modem.

The domain was one of my reasons for staying with PN too. However, I wouldn't have left because I've had no problems that I recall and if it isn't broken, it doesn't need fixing. Also the company is based in Sheffield, and that's my home city.

Just as a matter of interest, do you remember the open days they had when at Tenter Street? A group of us customers were invited to look round. We had a lovely day and were made most welcome. I visited twice.

Anyway, I will leave it up to PN to sort out. Not heard from them as yet. If I have to pay then it hopefully won't be too much and it will be worth it to save the hassle of changing email addresses.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Townman — Wed, 21 May 2025 23:00:05 GMT

If one has their own domain name and has not given out the underlying @account.plus.com email addresses, one could have moved at anytime thought suitable. Moving hosting services for an owned domain name is not overly complicated.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Thu, 22 May 2025 04:57:45 GMT

Thank you for your reply. The underlying account is the email address that was breached so it has been given out although after all these years it will maybe have been abandoned by the spammers.

I like my domain email address and don’t want to lose it, not least because of the hassle of changing it. That being said, I’m old now and my email usage has reduced significantly. Having reflected on it, if the move to Greenby is going to be bothersome then I will probably just use an alternative email address. It’s not about the potential cost but more about keeping things simple.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Townman — Thu, 22 May 2025 06:56:09 GMT

The move should be fairly transparent. At worst some users might need to make minor changes to their connection settings.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

dgp — Thu, 22 May 2025 07:35:39 GMT

Yes. Sadly couldn’t attend any of them☹️

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

dgp — Thu, 22 May 2025 07:43:43 GMT

The emphasis being on SHOULD. I’m glad us old stagers won’t be the first to move. Moving a domain may be fairly easy and I’ve thought of doing it before, but I didn’t really have the need. I’m reasonably happy with Plusnet and if it’s it not broke why fix it?

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

corringham — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:23:50 GMT

@dgp wrote:

I’m reasonably happy with Plusnet and if it’s it not broke why fix it?

With lots of things that aren't broken it can be wise for some occasional preventative maintenance in order to keep it all working, and to ensure that you are in control of things should there be a problem in the future.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:30:12 GMT

@Townman Thank you for the information. I use eM Client on the laptop so will have to change the server settings I suppose. Ditto the iPad/iPhone. Been using the Force9 ones for so many years that I know them off by heart. Do not like change unfortunately but will have to deal with it if/when necessary.

@dgp It’s good that we are being left alone for a while but I wonder how long it will be. I’m in the process of winding up a website and another domain at the moment so it’s coincidence that this is happening at a similar time. Will see how it goes and if it is too much bother I will maybe use one of my free email addresses. I’m at the stage of life where I prefer to keep things simple.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Townman — Thu, 22 May 2025 08:41:51 GMT

The most change that is likely to be required (with some of the brands) is to change the logon userID from account to you@account.brand.tld (that is use your email address rather than account name).

Presently email address works with all brands except some free-online mailboxes. When they come, communications will identify what if any pre-migration changes are required. The email server diagnostics (see link below) details the right settings for each brand.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Thu, 22 May 2025 12:24:37 GMT

Thank you Townman. It just occurred to me that from time to time (not often) I go into my PN account to create or delete an alias. Can also block an email address in there. Will this function be removed from the portal and if so, will it be available in a separate Greenby account? Also, does Greenby use RoundCube? If Greenby has an app, that would useful.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Townman — Thu, 22 May 2025 15:10:58 GMT

Certainly initially Greenby will use Round Cube (the same as the current webmail programme). What they will offer in future ... is something to be determined in the future.

Why might they offer an "app"? They provide email hosting which is accessibly from any IMAP / PO3 / SMTP email client, or which there are dozens in the market place.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

MisterW — Thu, 22 May 2025 15:23:05 GMT

Will this function be removed from the portal and if so, will it be available in a separate Greenby account?

@SteelCity1 email configuration will move to a Greenby provided portal

If it helps, I've used one of the other Enix brands (EcoHosting) in the past and they provided the email configuration via a CPanel based portal. I would imagine they would use the same portal for Greenby. It had similar facilities to the PN one in terms of managing mailboxes, aliases and redirects. I belive the Spam detection configuration was a little different ( but probably better! )

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

SteelCity1 — Thu, 22 May 2025 15:37:56 GMT

@Townman
@MisterW

Thank you for your replies. All clear now. Will just have to wait and see what transpires regarding our domains.

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

the_groundsman — Thu, 22 May 2025 16:39:00 GMT

I am also one of those that got a free for life domain.

I took the decision a few years back that I would move my main email address to a more mainstream provider. My domain address was really only for vanity and pn email was quite flaky and unsecure at the time, also I felt it was a tie to PN when I was considering moving providers.

I still collect any mail that turns up there via redirects so would miss it a bit though I hardly get anything of value. I do still find it useful as a fall back address for signing up to offers or "free" wifi etc so it gets quite a lot of spam. I'll almost certainly let it die off after the 2 years though. I thought the job of unpicking my email address from organisations and subscriptions was going to be difficult but actually, spread over a decent length of time it wasn't nearly as disruptive as I thought it was going to be.

I volunteer to help older and disabled people with their tech and I've seen a lot of people have problems with their bundled email. So many providers Email services cause quite a few problems (EE is the worst culprit)

Re: Legacy domain and migration to Greenby

Uncle_Tupelo — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 10:09:49 GMT

I'm one of those original users and have used my domain for email for the past 21 years and dearly want to continue doing so. Perhaps part of the original question relates to the hosting and renewing being free of charge for life? I suspect that may not be the case as I presume Greenby will charge for hosting and renewing domains.

That's a positive for me as I'm no longer a Plusnet broadband customer (had to leave as they could not provide FTTP when I moved home 3 years ago) but they have continued to provide me with free email, domain hosting and domain renewal which I do feel I should be paying for as I'm no longer a customer, but apparently they have no mechanism for charging in this scenario.

Moving to a more commercial service with a provider set up to provide those services will add a degree of comfort for me as I have had the odd issue with Plusnet at domain renewal time and probably should have moved my domain before now but didn't want the hassle.

One issue I'm curious about (if anyone has an answer) is will Greenby offer a "catch-all" capability as I often tailor email addresses as a way of checking companies aren't leaking or selling my email email address to others - for example, I'd use greenby@uncletupelo.co.uk for correspondence with Greenby (uncletupelo.co.uk isn't my real domain name - hope it isn't anyone else's!) Does anyone know?