Background
Hopefully this is your first time setting up a new email but in some cases, this may be your second or third time. But, sometimes something happens that we are not sure how to recover from. In this case, my friend, Jeff, had a computer that crashed AND he had just changed his cell phone provider and got a new phone number so his recovery number was not updated with his email hosting provider, yahoo.com. After his computer crashed, he was unable to access his account because he lost all of his passwords and browser cookies and whatnot that permitted him to access his account. There was no way for him to recover so he had to move on and start fresh.
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to explain the general thought processes, considerations, and an overview of the tasks associated with the task of “getting a new email account”.
Let’s Begin
First, decide what it’s worth to you. Everybody has a defacto price that fits the budget: FREE! If it’s free, it’s for me! In many instances that works great. And, in many instances, it’s the best, or by far, the easiest option. For instance, if you just want the free stuff from yahoo.com, like brian23@yahoo.com, it will be super easy to just go through the process and create a new email account and pay nothing for it. However, if you want yahoo.com to be your host provider for your custom email address, brian@247roadies.com, it’s going to cost and it’s going to be complicated. HOWEVER, you get what you pay for. If you want support, it will be difficult. If you want help when you’re in trouble, it will be difficult. And in these cases, “difficult” means, unless you have lots of time and possibly a some money to burn, it will be almost impossible to get any resolution. You, therefore, need to cross your “t”s and dot your “i”s – you need to stay on top of your account and know what you’re paying for (or not paying for) and how to manage things yourself – this includes how to RECOVER things yourself.
Did You Say FREE?
So, let’s assume FREE is still our goal here. Most “global email hosting providers”, namely Google Mail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook Mail, etc., have a free tier that’s pretty easy to set up, with a few steps here and there for verification. You need to decide which one you are interested in. There are plenty of people out there who have reviewed different “global providers” so I won’t do that here. For instance, here is a concise and short comparison with minimal details and here is one packed with information from top to bottom.
I suggest doing some research yourself and pick one. Also keep in mind what your email says about you. Do you want to be brianb23@gmail.com, brianb23@outlook.com, or brianb23@yahoo.com? Maybe you don’t care. Great! Pick one. Of course there are dozen other hosts who will probably host your email for free but keep in mind you’re always offering your personal data in return for $0 and these “top three” may be the most ‘moral’ of them all, if there is such a thing – they will use your data in many ways AND tell you how they are using them. I’m generalizing, as I often do, but the bottom line is YOU are the product with almost anything you do nowadays and if you are not paying anything for a service, then you ought to know how YOU are being consumed by that company.
Anyway, pick one. I use Fastmail.com which starts at $30/year. I also use GMail.com (Paid) and Yahoo.com (Free), and Hotmail.com (which is now live.com) (Free).
Get your Details Straight Ahead of time
Chances are the one you want isn’t going to be available so be flexible and creative. You may need to use some numbers (pick your favorite or pick the address of the restaurant your significant other and you had your favorite meal at) and an initial or two. brian1107wb@gmail.com, for instance. But DO NOT make it TOO complicated. Try to keep it simple but make sure if it gets complex that it makes sense and it’s easy to tell somebody over the phone. You do not want to have to say brianone1zero7tpbc@gmail.com to a teller or customer service representative when people are standing behind you in line or you are on the phone with spotty coverage.
Use your legal name, because you may have to verify with an I.D., and a number that isn’t going to change often, better yet, EVER. If it needs to be your nephew’s cell number then so be it – use their number if you have any doubts of being able to keep your own number for the next 20 years. Decide these things ahead of time. In fact, if your nephew’s address is more stable than your address, then you may also need to use their address as your “home address”.
Last but not least, pick a strong password. If you can, you’ll want to also set up two-factor authentication, or 2FA. Also called multi-factor auth, or MFA. If you set up 2FA or MFA, you will typically need either a phone that receives text messages or a phone or tablet that you can load an authentication app onto which generates a code.
Sign Up
Once you have picked one, sign up. Go through their signup procedure(s) and get yourself your new email address.
What’s Next?
Well, that’s pretty much it. Once you decide who your new host is, you can open a web browser (Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Safari, Google Chrome), go to their webmail interface on any computer (https://gmail.com or https://outlook.com or https://fastmail.com or https://yahoo.com) and log in using your email address and your password. You can check your email this way from any device – phone, tablet, desktop computer, laptop, etc. This is a built-in feature and makes accessing your email easy.
The other option is to configure an email client to manage your email on your personal machine. This is not an unusual thing to do and many providers make it super easy to do through downloadable configuration files or by using specific DNS records and server responses to your client.[1][2] If you chose wisely, your host will make this step easy for you. As before, this post isn’t about configuring your mail client so I won’t cover that here. There are several resources available to walk you through that part so I’ll leave it up to you to seek those resources out. Each mail host may have their own specific set of instructions.
[1] – https://serverfault.com/questions/172326/how-to-configure-email-autoconfiguration-for-a-domain
[2] – https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc6186
Need More Help?
Send me an email or leave a comment (when comments are enabled) and let me know what other information would help me to help you!