topic Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby. in Email

Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

smallblueplanet — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:47:38 GMT

Well my Plusnet email service just hiccuped again, so I came to see if there was any other info and/or complaints on here.

I'm stunned and dismayed by the number of Greenby complaints, I was going to migrate my email from Plusnet to them, but they look totally unreliable.

I know very little about how these things work in general so I am asking for advice, who would I use to provide a reliable email service, I presume paid for gets a better service than say a free Gmail account? Thanks.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

zpeterk — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 11:11:01 GMT

I moved to Mythic Beasts, it was seemless.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

bmc — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:02:27 GMT

@smallblueplanet

Remember - if you move from PN or Greenby you lose any PN or associated addresses.

Brian

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

smallblueplanet — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:57:48 GMT

Yeah thanks. I was thinking of taking maybe a year of Greenby to be able to send replies to emails notifying them of my new email address. We've had a PN email for decades and if anyone had it but not our other details I thought it wouldn't matter if the emails came through in a 'random' manner. But I wanted an email address that could be relied on too.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Kwak — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:13:30 GMT

I use and have been quite happy with Zoho, from my research they met my needs.

But I have a couple domains so .. not everyone does that.

(Zoho config can be a bit wierd, there are two config areas, one is more email and other is more detailed admin settings, and if you don't realis this it can be tricky to find things as you look at "settings" type things and think "where is blah blah?", but once you do it realise there are two different websites, in effect, it all becomes clear).

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Jones — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 18:24:18 GMT

@smallblueplanet ,

Like @Kwak, I use Zoho mail to host my personal email domain. I am happy with them at 80p a month plus VAT.

The domain is registered with GoDaddy at 25 quid for three years. On renewal, I intend to have a look at Freethought. Their prices are very competitive.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Jones — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 16:47:14 GMT

@smallblueplanet

If you want to keep using your Plusnet email address, it should be possible to move your domain to another provider. Somebody will correct me if it isn't possible.

You would need to ask Plusnet, perhaps on this forum, to release your domain. You could then move it to another provider for it to be registered with them. Once registered, you can decide on what you want to put before the @.

To use your domain for email you would need to decide on a provider to host it. You could use the same provider as your registrar, or it could be a different one.

I use different providers for registration and hosting for email and it costs me about twenty pounds a year.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

MisterW — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:01:42 GMT

@Jones

If you want to keep using your Plusnet email address, it should be possible to move your domain to another provider. Somebody will correct me if it isn't possible.

Its not possible I'm afraid.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Jones — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:15:32 GMT

@MisterW ,

Thank you for the correction.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Kwak — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:44:17 GMT

I'm not a fan of godaddy myself? I use ionos now. A lot of it depends if you want to use actual hosting (like a website) or just email. If you want an actual website, that multiplies things to think about by about 100x

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Kwak — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:50:27 GMT

"If you want to keep using your Plusnet email address, it should be possible to move your domain to another provider. Somebody will correct me if it isn't possible."

I'm a bit confused by this. As other guy says you can't keep using your plusnet address if you leave but you can of course have a domain and a plusnet address in parallel. Interstingly I know someone that has a sky address and they STILL have a sky address having left, I think that was because Sky did it via Yahoo as I remember and they are happy to keep providing it, and so they do.

And interesting question however is this: Now Greenby are doing the plusnet email, in a similar way, if you keep paying Greenby but leave plusnet, in a similar way to still having Sky email via Yahoo after leaving Sky, will they allow people to keep their plusnet address hosted at Greenby? That actually sounds plausable or at least very doable technically. If plusnet are washing their hands of email addresses, not sure why not, if they put it into a contract they wash their hands of responsibility for it.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Bookworms — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:04:30 GMT

Like others, I am not sure how the Greenby/Plusnet transfer works.

Will our emails continue to be @xxxx.plus.net... going forward, even after the two year period is over?

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Kwak — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 18:55:10 GMT

"Will our emails continue to be @xxxx.plus.net... going forward, even after the two year period is over?"

I'd assume so? Otherwise it's pretty pointless and would annoy everyone left *hugely*?

Certainly if THAT was removed ... what email address would you then get and why would anyone stay with Greenby?!

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Bookworms — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:19:12 GMT

Not being a techie, I don't quite understand how the 'plus.net.' part of the email address is handled by Greenby. I assumed that the 'plus.net domain has to be hosted by....plusnet!

Does it mean that as long as greenby is managing our emails with 'plus.net.' as the domain (or legacy plusnet domains) they will always be in a form of partnership with 'plus.net.'?

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Jones — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:31:58 GMT

@Bookworms ,

Perhaps the plus.net bit is hosted by Greenby but remains registered with Plusnet?

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Bookworms — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:46:43 GMT

Possibly, but wouldn't that mean they are always going to be interdependent rather than fully separate entities?

If so, it makes me wonder why plusnet would hive off email to a different company in the first place. Wouldn't it have made more sense for plusnet to charge, say £15 extra per year to continue providing an integral email service (hopefully improved)?

I probably haven't read enough plusnet blogs but I don't really get the rationale for this less than smooth transfer

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Kwak — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:56:00 GMT

They are AFAIK moving people over in batches NOT everyone at once so are they doing something funny?

But basically .. On the internet there is more than one way of assigning "how do I speak to the server that handles blah.blah". There is the standard DNS (basically looks up the blah.blah and finds an IP address) but for email there is something similar but different called an MX record. Same idea. So the mail system knows to route email for @blah.blah to that email server. IT's entire possible for them to wildly different, like a domain pointing at a server in the US for web, and a server in germany from a different company for mail. I hope this is all correct.

Ahh wait a minute, an mx record can be done by subdomain and we are user@user.plus.com NOT username@plus.com so they can handle each mx record separately I believe?

Actually looking at Greenby settings they seem to indicate the mx record for my email is still mail.plus.net so maybe it's not that clever, just email comes and it gets to plusnet and they have logic that says "not moved, go there, moved, go to Greenby"..

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

jab1 — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 18:59:09 GMT

@Bookworms wrote:

I probably haven't read enough plusnet blogs but I don't really get the rationale for this less than smooth transfer

Although I MAY be wrong - I'm sure some-one will correct me if I am - but the rationale is that BT (as the parent company) have decided that the Plusnet brand - because that is all it is now - will be a bare-bones internet-only provider, with absolutely no other function.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Protech — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:07:46 GMT

This is chatgpt take on this which makes sense to me.

"Even though Greenby is now processing and storing the emails, the address itself (@plus.net) is still entirely dependent on the domain owned by Plusnet.
Here’s what that really means in practical terms:
🔹 Who controls what?
Greenby controls:
The mail servers
Storage of your mailbox
Spam filtering
The technical processing of messages
Plusnet controls:
The plus.net domain
The routing instructions (MX records)
Whether the domain continues to exist
Whether email for that domain continues to be supported
🔹 So yes — you are still dependent on Plusnet
Even though your emails are physically handled by Greenby’s systems:
If Plusnet removed the MX records pointing to Greenby, mail would stop flowing.
If Plusnet ever retired legacy email domains, the address would cease to function.
Greenby cannot continue offering @plus.net independently without Plusnet’s authorisation.
Greenby is effectively acting under Plusnet’s delegation.
🔹 Think of it like this
Plusnet owns the name on the front of the shop.
Greenby runs the counter inside.
If the shop owner closes the premises, the counter can’t keep trading under that name.
🔹 What this means for reliability
Your reliability now depends on two organisations instead of one:
Greenby’s technical stability
Plusnet’s decision to continue supporting the plus.net domain"

So in theory BT could at some time in the future still pull the plug on Plusnet email unless of course they sold the domain to Greenby?
It's not clean as a migration as might have been thought. Greenby are in effect an email services provider for Plusnet.

Re: Email provider advice, who? Not Greenby.

Bookworms — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 19:58:37 GMT

@jab1 wrote:

correct me if I am - but the rationale is that BT (as the parent company) have decided that the Plusnet brand - because that is all it is now - will be a bare-bones internet-only provider, with absolutely no other function.

That is pretty much what I've been thinking but I would still have thought they'd be able to go on providing email support for 'legacy' members, albeit for a small added fee, if needs be.

With email and home phone both on the way out, what is there to keep once loyal customers carrying on with plusnet?

I think the plusnet brand has been badly tarnished by this downgrading of the service.

I am currently on FTTC but a couple of different providers have recently laid full fibre in my street.

I am now seriously thinking of switching away from plusnet but will that mean I will lose the plusnet email identities even though they are now handled by Greenby?

By paring down the service, I feel plusnet have shot themsleves in the foot as far as exisitng customers are concerned.