Experienced IM'er's, How do you handle your e-mail accounts?

I always put all my email accounts in a text document with the passwords so I never forget them

Joe,

why do you feel uneased by using Gmail, it's supposed to be the most secure.
Can you add more detail about your questiuon.

John

Right now I am just using a plain yahoo email address which works just fine but sometimes I will add an email on a specific domain.

I use domain emails forwarded to gmails. Gurus often use free email accounts as well, for example: Jeff Walker and J Fladien uses gmails.

Nothing comes close to GMail at the moment.

I'm happy with it but they keep on adding feature after feature.

If you ever want pure security go with HushMail.

All of my various email addresses forward to a central location that I control, which forwards to GMail.

If I lose GMail, I can just go turn off the forwarding on MY SERVER and all email from that point onward stays in the location I control, immediately accessible via POP and IMAP.

If desired, I can then forward that mail to a different location.

Similarly, if I lose that server (or it goes down), the domain where my email ends up automatically redirects to an alternate server which I maintain through a different hosting company.

My single largest risk is the domain itself. If the domain were seized or cancelled by my registrar, I'd be without email until I could resolve it, but I also have domains through a different registrar where I could direct people to email me.

So basically, I have domains through two different registrars pointing at servers with two different hosting companies which funnel all of my email through an account that automatically moves from one server to the other if the current home for it goes down. And since both of them immediately funnel the mail over to GMail, I don't have to do anything to keep them in sync.

If I lost GMail, I could point all this at another service - like, say, Hotmail - in about two minutes. I can literally click a button and type two commands to point each server at a new location.

I use both G Mail and Yahoo Mail sending certain things to one account and other things to the other helps to keep them organized as both allow you to place people into groups.

I have had my email account with a local ISP where I know a number of people there including the Network Administrator. So I don't worry about it as it is very unlikely they would have any longterm problems that would affect me.

Re: gmail. I read recently that someone in the IM area had their google account including their gmail account closed. This wouldn't have been so bad except everything they used was stored on their servers. The moral here is not to have valuable data stored someplace where you don't have access to backups.

Marvin

I have a various AOL and Gmail accounts. I split where email goes so that I'm not overwhelmed on any one address. I've never had a problem with AOL or Gmail in all these years... for me, they are both the most reliable ones.


Cindy

Google apps with Backupify and GmailKeeper running. This creates multiple local and remote backups.

I dont use my precious server resources and space on email when better solutions exist.

I have a LOT of different email addresses due to many different domain names. I was using MS Outlook for everything.

Recently I had problems with MS Outlook and was forced to use Gmail in the mean time. Guess what? Turns out I like using Gmail. Go figure.

Now I have EVERYthing forward to Gmail. I then decide if I wanna reply with my Gmail address... or reply with the actual address.

It's workin' for me.

I redirect all my emails to one of my gmail accounts. Its way simpler that way and I don't have to open my emails on yahoo, my own domains again and again. Also, I just have to remember 1 password

I have been using Gmail since 2007. Works great for me. Never had any problems. If you have an existing business that your customers, clients and visitors are familiar with, I wouldn't change it if you have had no problems with it.

When changing email accounts, you would have to email all of your contacts and there is always the chance that some one misses the email for some reason.

If it works, keep it!

Gmail is one of the safest email services out there. Their password recovery isn't like Hotmails where you can know a single detail on the person and recover their email. Depending on your personal preference, there are other email services out there such as Hushmail that will not allow you to recover a lost password. ( Corporate companies use that for their email security. ) You can even set up Hushmail on your own email server.