Moving my email

[#1]

I would appreciate some please. Recently I have had nothing but trouble with PN webmail so have decided it’s time to move it.

As I don’t understand all the terminology please bear with me.

First joined FNN on 1999 and our friend who set all this up for us bagged us our own email that was registered with Nominet. That email was routed to FNN, after that MAAF as they bought them out and now of course PN. The only ISPs we have used.

However as the email address is a personal one and the only one we have ever had, I wish to keep it but want to route it from an independent company not the ISP I happen to be with. So if I move ISP a coupe if times in the next 5yrs I don’t have to worry about the email.

Could some in layman’s terms point me how to move my email to an other company please?       

[#2]

As another person who doesn't really understand it can you advise the following

As I don't think that you can have just have an email address via Nominet but a domain such as me.co.uk which would then allow emails to it such as myname@me.co.uk where is the present domain hosted

 This document may help

[#3]

Yes we have ...    'ourpersonaldomain'.co.uk registered and the registrar is MAAF

What I'm not sure about is can I request 123-reg for example take over that registration and obviously pay them to do so?

It's all way above my head!

I'll have a read of what you linked to, thanks OJ.

[#4]

You will need to contact PN to get them to release the domain to 123-reg (or any other registrar).
They will tell you how much this costs, some suppliers do it for free others charge, I have no idea how much PN charge.
Once they have agreed to release the domain, then you can log into another registrar and complete the transfer to them,
NB this does not allow you access to your email YET.
Once you have the domain moved, you then need to look at email hosting (or probably before!)
I use Gmail to host my email. My domain is with 123-reg but my email goes via gmail. There is now a charge of a few $ a month for this. It really depends on several factors:
How much mail you have already, how much mail you expect to get/have over the next year. 123 does email hosting so have a look and see if that is what you need.
There was a thread on here where we discussed the hosting of email recently, probably worth reading that as well.

[#5]

Hi there @Mayfly If you've a domain as part of a Madasafish account, you should be able to initiate the transfer by going to http://www.madasafish.com/support/features/domain_names/transferring_domain.shtml

I hope this helps you

[#6]

Note that there are three separate things to consider:

- who is the registrar (registration agent) for your domain name*

- who ‘hosts DNS’ for your domain. Each DNS file is a machine-readable technical summary pertinent to the domain name such as (via its A-records) where any associated website is to be found and (via its MX records) to which servers any email using that domain name is to be sent. Its prime purpose to enable names to be translated to IP addresses.

- who provides your email service (which is pointed to by the MX records)  

A single supplier such as 123-reg (and there are many of them) can provide all three, or you can cherry-pick.  Some suppliers such as PN will not (for example) provide webspace or email services unless they also host the DNS for them. PN did operate a domain registrar service via sister company Just the Name (that came along with the Metronet ISP service that PN bought in 2005) but this is to be shut down in July.

Of the free email services which are not provided ‘free’ as part of another service such as broadband, there are none that will also allow you to use your own domain name without a surcharge.

And since it is primarily businesses that use their own domain names, these services are aimed at business customers that will pay £40 - £50 p.a. per userid (the prefix to the @ in an email address).

Realistically, there are only two suppliers offering serious email services to businesses: Google (as part of GSuite) and Microsoft (as part of Office 365).  For use online via a browser.  GMail offers a better-organised client (O365's has some rough edges), but for use on a PC the combination of (chargeable) Outlook and Exchange Server (which is the email bit of O365) linked by MAPI over HTTP is the gold standard by a long way, and the various mobile clients linked to O365 via the lighter-weight EAS (Exchange Active Synch) offer a still pretty good service. 

* not to be confused with a fourth body – Nominet – who maintain the central registry for .uk domains (with a few ‘national’ exceptions such as ac.uk, gov.uk and nhs.uk) used by these registrars

[#7]

There are many providers out there offering full packages - register services, DNS and email (plus web) hosting.  I have used lcn.com for several years and their support has been excellent.  Their basic email host service costs £2.50 per month, with sizable discounts for signing up for 1 / 2 / 5 years.  See https://www.lcn.com/email-hosting