How do you handle email?

jasonhallphoto

I have my domain (jasonhallphoto.com) with a general-purpose hosting company. I was thinking of switching the domain to Smugmug. I love what I've seen in the 7-day trial except one critical thing - they don't support any email functionality. I have a ton of cards out there with my jason@jasonhallphoto.com address, and I get emails there all the time, and I'd lose this by switching to Smugmug.

I don't see any DNS way of having my domain with Smugmug but having my domain email handled by a third party. I doubt many professionals (or "part-time pro's" like myself) have an ISP or Hotmail email address, instead of an address on their domain.

Browsing and searching isn't really showing anything about this, so apparently I'm missing some easy way to set this up or some workaround.

Can someone help? What do you do?

Barb

jasonhallphoto wrote:

I have my domain (jasonhallphoto.com) with a general-purpose hosting company. I was thinking of switching the domain to Smugmug. I love what I've seen in the 7-day trial except one critical thing - they don't support any email functionality. I have a ton of cards out there with my jason@jasonhallphoto.com address, and I get emails there all the time, and I'd lose this by switching to Smugmug.

I don't see any DNS way of having my domain with Smugmug but having my domain email handled by a third party. I doubt many professionals (or "part-time pro's" like myself) have an ISP or Hotmail email address, instead of an address on their domain.

Browsing and searching isn't really showing anything about this, so apparently I'm missing some easy way to set this up or some workaround.

Can someone help? What do you do?

Hi

I host my domain via GoDaddy. Via their DNS manager, I was able to change the A record to Smugmug for my domain and I stil receive my domain email by using email forwarding at GoDaddy. That way, any email that comes in to my domain name, gets forwarded to whatever email address I tell it to. That way, you can still use your domain email. Does that make any sense? When I read it back, I confuse myself ... .

jasonhallphoto

DigitalDaze wrote:

Hi

I host my domain via GoDaddy. Via their DNS manager, I was able to change the A record to Smugmug for my domain and I stil receive my domain email by using email forwarding at GoDaddy. That way, any email that comes in to my domain name, gets forwarded to whatever email address I tell it to. That way, you can still use your domain email. Does that make any sense? When I read it back, I confuse myself ... .

Thanks for the reply! I understand, but after playing around with it for a while I don't think it'll work with register.com, my registrar. I hear that's the MX server that handles mail - but register.com won't let me change that if I have my DNS with another company (currently hostrocket, was going to be smugmug). Ugh, this stuff is so complex - too bad smugmug won't throw in a simple email address at least with the pro account (all I need is one!!!). This piece is critical, so I'll have to stick with what I have, unfortunately. Again, thanks for the input!

mbrady

jasonhallphoto wrote:

Thanks for the reply! I understand, but after playing around with it for a while I don't think it'll work with register.com, my registrar. I hear that's the MX server that handles mail - but register.com won't let me change that if I have my DNS with another company (currently hostrocket, was going to be smugmug). Ugh, this stuff is so complex - too bad smugmug won't throw in a simple email address at least with the pro account (all I need is one!!!). This piece is critical, so I'll have to stick with what I have, unfortunately. Again, thanks for the input!

I think that Register.com charges extra for email forwarding, but it's been awhile since I've checked.

jasonhallphoto

mbrady wrote:

I think that Register.com charges extra for email forwarding, but it's been awhile since I've checked.

I've done some checking into this for the last hour.

All my hosting companies before have wanted me to change the registrar's DNS record from the regristrar DNS to the hosting company's DNS. If this is done, any mail to that domain is sent directly to that hosting company - that's why registrars don't offer email services like forwarding if you're not using their DNS servers. I was thinking Smugmug would be the same.

However, it APPEARS that smugmug is able to use a specific IP record at the registrar, which allows me to continue using their DNS servers and therefore their email services like forwarding - I'm basing this on WHOIS info on http://www.moonriverphotography.com/ which is on Smugmug according to them. www.nevadaoutback.com is another example.

I'll bite the bullet and order. Like I said before except for this smugmug looks fantastic. Thanks for the help!

Barb

jasonhallphoto wrote:

I'll bite the bullet and order. Like I said before except for this smugmug looks fantastic. Thanks for the help!

Hi

I hope you get it worked out. It works great with my domain host, GoDaddy. And I just know you'll love SmugMug