Business to Residential change: keep domain but not webspace?

[#1]

I've been a customer since 2001 (I think) when I took on my domain name and worked freelance. I have therefore had all emails re-directed to allmyaddresses@myowndomainname.co.uk and I have a small website, hardly used really, at www.myowndomainname.co.uk

I have asked Plusnet to move me from Business to Residential in order to cut costs as I have now retired and things are much cheaper over on residential. I would like to keep my email addresses and also the webspace. I expect the website would be used for personal stuff rather than commercial gain.

I have looked on the Help & Support pages and it appears that I might not be able to keep my domain if I move to residential.

Is this true and If this does happen, will it mean that I would lose the emails as well as being unable to have a small site hosted? The primary need is to keep allmyaddresses@myowndomainname.co.uk.

If the domain can remain and it's just that I'm not allowed any webspace then a follow-up question is, as I have a QNAP nas that can run a website, is it possible to use this to host the site with the domain still "owned" for me by Plusnet? Will I run into a problem trying to 'point' at my own nas?

Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Hi there.

Moving from a business account to a residential one involves closing your account and re-opening a new one. This is something we'll take care of for you, but as we don't offer webspace on residential accounts I'm afraid you'll lose this.

With regards to your domain, we should be able to add the relevant component on the new account we'd create, but I can't guarantee that there won't be any downtime as the work takes place.

If the domain can remain and it's just that I'm not allowed any webspace then a follow-up question is, as I have a QNAP nas that can run a website, is it possible to use this to host the site with the domain still "owned" for me by Plusnet? Will I run into a problem trying to 'point' at my own nas?

That should be fine, as webspace can be hosted by another provider whilst a domain is hosted by us.

Hope this helps.

[#3]

Thank you Gandalf, that really is helpful. Of course a little service interruption would be understandable.

This is at the edge of my current understanding of these things and so forgive the next bit...

I intended to use a dynamic DNS provider to link my domain name to my NAS webspace, however, if I don't need to do this because I can 'point' at a my NAS (which I presume has a dynamic IP address) from Plusnet, can you tell me how to do this please?

Thank you

[#4]

No problems at all.

I intended to use a dynamic DNS provider to link my domain name to my NAS webspace, however, if I don't need to do this because I can 'point' at a my NAS (which I presume has a dynamic IP address) from Plusnet, can you tell me how to do this please?

That's kind of outside my depth too I'm afraid. 

Other people over here may be able to offer advice.

Might be the wrong person to tag here, but @bobpullen might be able to help...

[#5]

Whilst I've never posted before, I have lurked on here and I know that's the name to tag. Thank you! I'll wait a little bit to see if Bob can help.

[#6]

It'd be easier (and cheaper tco) to pay a one off £5 for a static IP address, move your domain to a different registrar and handle the DNS settings yourself.

[#7]

How would I arrange to pay for a static address? Is it an option on my portal?

[#8]

Yeah, once your new residential account is up and running you should see it.

[#9]

Static IP is the best bet.

If you did want to use a dynamic solution, then you could create a CNAME record on the Plusnet domain and alias it to the Dynamic DNS address, e.g:

www                   CNAME                   somedomain.ddns.net.

That would redirect http://www.yourdomain.co.uk to your dynamic DNS address (in this case somedomain.ddns.net).

You'd come into problems if you also wanted to redirect http://yourdomain.co.uk though, because you can't use a CNAME for that. 

[#10]

How does the advice offered here fit with the change in policy of Dec 2017 of no longer offering hosting for domain names on new accounts?

Have I misunderstood or is something special being offered here?

[#11]

I don't believe I'm being offered anything special. I only want to keep my email address through the hosted domain that I've had for years. It would be nice to have a little webspace too as a residential account (existing residential users do have this) but it seems as though my fifteen years as a business customer don't count towards that.

[#12]

Right I am nearly "there" with the Customer Options team. They are ready to push the button and change me from Business to Residential and at the same time, move me over to fibre. They seem to be uncertain about handling the retention of my domain so I want to check one more time that I won't lose it and therefore that the emails will continue to route to allmyaddresses@mydomain_name.co.uk

Is there anything that I need to do to make this happen, even if includes asking you guys to do something that you wouldn't ordinarily do? Will I need to change any mailbox settings for example?

Thanks in advance

[#13]

Why have you decided to go with keeping the registration with Plusnet as opposed to the cheaper option of moving it to one of the much cheaper options and then forwarding the email to your Plusnet mailbox(s)?

[#14]

Hi Jelv and thanks. Well the short answer is that there isn't a charge for domain hosting...or have I missed something?

[#15]

Keeping the domain registration with Plusnet used to cost £1 per month for *.uk domains - I haven't seen anything to suggest that has changed.

123 reg have a promotion on at present that is less than that for the first year!