Apologies then, when did that change and was if forced by OFCOM or something? I live out in the sticks and have always accepted that we paid considerably more than those in cities and other densely-populated areas. ... View more

Are you and your sister both served by the same exchange? Prices are not the same nationwide. ... View more

@Stoker Would that also be an upgrade for you, from the phone-inclusive "Unlimited Fibre" to a faster "Fibre" without phone, or is that for a like-for-like renewal? If it's for an upgrade (and you don't mind losing the landline phone) then it's probably worth calling the number @MisterW  posted (0800 013 2632). I don't think the options included an "I'm thinking of leaving" so I went for "Renewals" or something similar and got through to the Customer Options Team anyway. There was no queue and the support agent immediately looked for the best deal they could offer. I should be getting the faster service as of Monday, and it will actually end up costing me very slightly less than than the new customer price. YMMV but I'm satisfied with the outome. ... View more

@MisterW I was thinking I'd wait until renewal is due (July) but, thinking about it, if the Fibre package is available at the new customer price then I should perhaps upgrade now: it would be about a 60%+ speed improvement for slightly less than we're currently paying, and we don't use the phone service anyway. I hate ringing service providers and the seemingly endless time on hold, but I guess I'll have to. What's the best least worst number to use? Oh, and pardon my ignorance, but what does "COTS" mean? ... View more

@HPsauce wrote: I placed an order earlier this week and when I asked about a "loyalty discount" it was explained to me that the price was already reduced as if I was a new customer. See my comment to @MisterW - the offer to me seems to be about £3 higher than the offer to new customers.   ... View more

@jab1 wrote: @Boxersoft My advice would be 'ring them and haggle'. Come time for renewal I will, if I decide to stay with PlusNet. It's a pain that shouldn't be necessary though. ... View more

@MisterW wrote:   @Boxersoft could it be that the price you have been offered includes the March annual increase whereas the new customer price is for an immediate order and would be subject to the March increase ? Don't think so, although my caveat about misinterpreting was because I have sometimes found the pricing confusing. I'm currently on "Unlimited Fibre" (18 month contract) at £25.16/month, which will be going up by £1.99, so would be £27.15 from April. The offer to me is for "Fibre" (24 month contract) at £27.99/month, which it says increases 31 March. Footnote indicates that will be by CPI +3.9%, which I gather works out at 7.9%. I make that £30.20 from April. New customers are only offered the newer "Fibre" package, and that's at £24.99/month with a note that it goes up 31 March, so that would be £26.96.   ... View more

@Townman wrote: MB offered great value for money. It is functionally rich having all the functionality of the Plusnet service and more besides. I'm certainly satisfied, and SPF/DKIM are nice to have. I don't think I had either with my previous arrangement, but I gather Gmail now require one of them and as far as I know I wasn't having trouble sending to gmail addresses. Bit baffled about that. I've also noticed that although an SPF header appears in mails sent out from my domains to other addresses, it doesn't appear in mails sent from one of my addresses to another within my Mythic account. Just mildly curious: is it skipped because it's all staying within Mythic's servers, or because it's specifically between addresses in my Mythic account? The status of the Plusnet service has now been clarified - personally I am sitting tight - the (main brand) service provides everything I really need, it’s free and is not going anywhere.  Good to hear it's staying, despite the regular scare stories, although if it's not really being supported (things like managing associated domains & forwarderd) it's a bit of a dead-end for me. I keep most of my mails going back years so The 1GB storage limit has sometimes been a bit of a nuisance, and I find the webmail almost unusable (perhaps also related to mailbox size). Both of these are much improved with Mythic, but PlusNet's mail has mostly done me very well for what must be 20 years or so. ... View more

@ghamilton123 wrote: £1.67/mo for email hosting is outrageous Only if your outrage threshold is remarkably low. I needed a solution quickly, I didn't want to spend ages scouring the web for the cheapest offering possible. I have three mailboxes, so that would be £18 at Spacehip anyway. I also wanted web hosting, so Mythic's smallest mail + web hosting package suits me nicely and I'm not going to go apoplectic about thirty quid a year. I think an extra £18 per year for shell access is a bit steep though. ... View more

@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. ... View more

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. ... View more

@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.   ... View more

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? ... View more

@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.   ... View more

@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  Other I wish to specify DNS records for mail to this domain Domain Hosting Settings  Default I wish to have this domain hosted automatically under my webspace Other I 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.     ... View more

@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.   ... View more

@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.   ... View more

@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. ... View more