Getting a domain is no more difficult than selecting some "easy web hosting and email" bundle on a site and paying for it with bank transfer, credit card or whatever. There's an entire industry around this. I've met plenty of people who are largely clueless about PCs, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc who have their own domain. It's actually extremely common, because conducting business from a Gmail account is a bit unprofessional and sketchy, particularly here in Germany.
My interpretation was that they didn't mean to talk about "intelligence", just meant that the average person is not "competent enough" to have their own domain. Which in all fairness is not wrong.
My question is always: of those who are competent, why is the vast majority not having their own domain?
"own your domain" is technobabble to 99.999+% of email users. Most people understand emails addresses are <something> "@gmail.com" or "@yahoo.com" or "@<somebigcompany>.com". They don't understand the parts of an email address, nor how or why they are constructed that way.
I have been using a personal domain for my email address for decades and when I have to give it out verbally to someone, it is about a 50% chance that the conversation is:
That's why you don't sell it as if you were marketing it to techies:
(*) Choose a personalized email address, like john@smith.com, for $9.99/year.
( ) Choose a GMail address, like john.smith@gmail.com, for free.
They could handle the domain registration for the user, whether by being a registrar themselves, or partnering with another registrar behind the scenes. And yes, most people will still pick the free option. But that's ok.
I've had my own domain for a good 20 years now, and while I've encountered some confusion when giving it out, it's never been as bad as you describe, and people get it without my having to go into a technical explanation. And regardless, the reason there is this problem is because easy, seamless personal-domain options don't really exist. If they did, this problem would go away. I don't really consider this to be an obstacle.
This was the exact kind of trouble I used to have when I gave out @myname.com emails. It was super not worth it. It confused people all the time. I switched to a plain Gmail with nothing hard to spell, just a few letters and (sadly) numbers. (I waited like a decade before 'claiming' a Gmail address, so no decent versions of my name or anything professional remained without numbers.)
Also, Gmail actually blocks true spam, whereas nothing I tried on my shared-hosting server with SpamAssassin ever worked.
I don't have any love for Google, but I'll never go back to giving out a personal domain email for any reason.
I would argue a US mailing address is at least as complicated a structure, but people managed to figure out the state abbreviations and ZIP Codes fine. We just need to teach it in elementary school just like we do addresses.
Speaking of that I do wish the post office had a mail service where they issued addresses to citizens or something.
Worse is the California DMV. All password reset emails going to my custom .com would be subject to multi-hour delays; the password resets were valid for only a few minutes. The only way into the account was to call the tech support phone line. I had them delete the old account and re-registered with a bland gmail email address.
I don't know of any technical reason to delay emails to minor domains. My domain has valid MX records, uses SPF, has valid DKIM TXT records, etc.
The practical experience of having your own domain for your email is that you delegate your domain to Google / Fastmail / Proton / whatever, and it takes care of everything else. Some webmail providers will also let you buy a domain on their own website as a part of registration flow.
It really is not hard. Harder than not having a domain of your own, but not as hard as you make it sound.
Okay, do you think if we just picked some random person they would have any idea what we're talking about?
It's just not something normal people do, but I don't like the snarkiness of implying that's an indicator of intelligence. Otherwise we go down the no true Scotsman rabbit hole, what do you mean you're using Proton. You didn't set up your own mail server ?
What do you mean you're using AWS, your not using a solar powered raspberry pi?
Getting a domain is no more difficult than selecting some "easy web hosting and email" bundle on a site and paying for it with bank transfer, credit card or whatever. There's an entire industry around this. I've met plenty of people who are largely clueless about PCs, doctors, lawyers, artists, etc who have their own domain. It's actually extremely common, because conducting business from a Gmail account is a bit unprofessional and sketchy, particularly here in Germany.
> The average person is not intelligent enough to have their own domain.
You think that that skill (maintaining own domain for email) is an indicator of intelligence?
My interpretation was that they didn't mean to talk about "intelligence", just meant that the average person is not "competent enough" to have their own domain. Which in all fairness is not wrong.
My question is always: of those who are competent, why is the vast majority not having their own domain?
It is an indicator of knowledge, not necessarily intelligence.
I said "own your domain", not "self-host your email server".
"own your domain" is technobabble to 99.999+% of email users. Most people understand emails addresses are <something> "@gmail.com" or "@yahoo.com" or "@<somebigcompany>.com". They don't understand the parts of an email address, nor how or why they are constructed that way.
I have been using a personal domain for my email address for decades and when I have to give it out verbally to someone, it is about a 50% chance that the conversation is:
"My email is <name@myname.tld>"
"uuhhh... at gmail.com?"
"No it's just <@myname.tld>"
"Yeah, but is it gmail or yahoo?"
That's why you don't sell it as if you were marketing it to techies:
They could handle the domain registration for the user, whether by being a registrar themselves, or partnering with another registrar behind the scenes. And yes, most people will still pick the free option. But that's ok.
I've had my own domain for a good 20 years now, and while I've encountered some confusion when giving it out, it's never been as bad as you describe, and people get it without my having to go into a technical explanation. And regardless, the reason there is this problem is because easy, seamless personal-domain options don't really exist. If they did, this problem would go away. I don't really consider this to be an obstacle.
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This was the exact kind of trouble I used to have when I gave out @myname.com emails. It was super not worth it. It confused people all the time. I switched to a plain Gmail with nothing hard to spell, just a few letters and (sadly) numbers. (I waited like a decade before 'claiming' a Gmail address, so no decent versions of my name or anything professional remained without numbers.)
Also, Gmail actually blocks true spam, whereas nothing I tried on my shared-hosting server with SpamAssassin ever worked.
I don't have any love for Google, but I'll never go back to giving out a personal domain email for any reason.
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I would argue a US mailing address is at least as complicated a structure, but people managed to figure out the state abbreviations and ZIP Codes fine. We just need to teach it in elementary school just like we do addresses.
Speaking of that I do wish the post office had a mail service where they issued addresses to citizens or something.
3 replies →
Worse is the California DMV. All password reset emails going to my custom .com would be subject to multi-hour delays; the password resets were valid for only a few minutes. The only way into the account was to call the tech support phone line. I had them delete the old account and re-registered with a bland gmail email address.
I don't know of any technical reason to delay emails to minor domains. My domain has valid MX records, uses SPF, has valid DKIM TXT records, etc.
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Just curious: do you own your own domain? My experience is that many (most?) people who would be competent to own their own domain just don't.
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Or they have better things to do vs fighting Route53 MX records errors.
Records, shmekords.
The practical experience of having your own domain for your email is that you delegate your domain to Google / Fastmail / Proton / whatever, and it takes care of everything else. Some webmail providers will also let you buy a domain on their own website as a part of registration flow.
It really is not hard. Harder than not having a domain of your own, but not as hard as you make it sound.
Okay, do you think if we just picked some random person they would have any idea what we're talking about?
It's just not something normal people do, but I don't like the snarkiness of implying that's an indicator of intelligence. Otherwise we go down the no true Scotsman rabbit hole, what do you mean you're using Proton. You didn't set up your own mail server ?
What do you mean you're using AWS, your not using a solar powered raspberry pi?
7 replies →
Sounds like a business opportunity.