own domain: user with own domain vs. fastmail.com?
 

Hi,

just setup an own domain and I'm using it with FM.

Everything fine so far.

But know I'm thinking about changing my fastmail username. Away from an fastmail.com username to my own domain as user.

What are the pro's/con's in using my own domain as a username?

What are you doing while using own domain?

Domain is not the same as username. Email address has the format username@domain, e.g. joe.bloggs@example.com

What exactly do you want to do?

If I register my username at fastmail is: somename@fastmail.com

If I use an own domain with fastmail I can change it to somename@owndomain.com

That's what I mean.

If you register your own domain, you can take your email address(es) to any provider. Your fastmail address is valid only as long as you stick with fastmail.

I know. That's not the problem.

I was talking about the fastmail username. The username to login to fastmail. I can change it away from an @fastmail.com username to @owndomain username.

That's what I'm talking about.

I have my own domain, but I didn't change my Fastmail user name. Why should I (or you)?

Maybe because of more security, more convenience (I can use a short name), ...

But maybe it's better to use the @fastmail.com username.

That's why I'm asking.

Despite from login at the website, you also need the username everywhere else when using it with a client (smtp/imap, ...).

I actually have several domains hosted with Fastmail. What if one day you decide to discontinue using your original domain in favor of another one? Stay with the original FM user name for sign in - that's my advice.

I would recommend continuing to use a FastMail tld for your account name, even if (best practice) you never actually use that name as an active email address. The primary reason for my recommendation is that it keeps more flexibility in easily moving your domain to another service provider in the future, should you ever decide to do so. Using the FastMail tld has no downsides, provided you treat it solely for account management, and ensure emails use aliases in your own domain. In fact, it adds a (weak) extra layer of security by obscurity in making it harder for people to find out your account name.

Are you saying that, if you give up your original domain, you won't be able to sign in to FM?

No, what I am saying is that you will have a sing in credentials from an "obsolete" domain, which will be confusing...

No you should not do this. You should keep your somename@fastmail.com login secret and not use it to email anyone. This provides an added layer of security, because even if someone sees that your somename@owndomain.com comes from FastMail's servers and attempts to compromise your account, they will not know your somename@fastmail.com login, and so they will have very little avenue of attack.

Additionally, I'd create an othername@fastmail.com alias if you ever want to use the FM domain to send email (e.g. if your own domain gets spam blacklisted for some reason).

Thank you all.

I will stay with my fastmail.com name as user-login.

Sorry for coming up with this again, but just out of curiosity: are you sure this is possible at all? I just tried to rename my account and was only offered FM domains for my account name.

It is probably not possible with legacy account types, except business accounts. It ought to be possible with the latest generation of accounts, given that they are supposed to provide equivalent capability to the old business accounts, just implemented a little differently.