[ale] Preferred domain registrars?

[Björn Gustafsson]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 7:45 AM, Geoffrey <lists at serioustechnology.com> wrote:
> James Sumners wrote:
>> Which will be very annoying when your hosting provider turns into
>> garbage and you want to flee. Then you get to pay twice as much for
>> the same domain because you have to pay a transfer fee on top of the
>> registration fee you have already paid.
>>
>> I got to do that this morning :(
>
> I'm using 1and1 and I will say, I'm looking to move.  Downloading email
> is slow, very slow.  I've got clients who complain about the webmail
> interface.
>
> So, I'm looking for some insights.  Say I have a domain that has 20
> email addresses associated with it.  If I transfer the domain, won't
> those email addresses bounce until such time I set them up on the new
> server?  I am having 1and1 host the email and websites.
>
> Further, how does one go about hosting on a different provider?  I'm
> assuming folks are registering one provider and hosting email and web on
> another?

I did that last year, and it's pretty easy when your registrar and
hosting provider are separate. :)

What I did was, I first set up the account with the new hosting
provider, added all the domains, email accounts and forwards, and then
simply changed my primary/secondary DNS servers with my registrar to
point at the new hosting provider's servers.  During the transition
while the DNS is expiring, emails will end up in two places, but with
a TTL of less than 24 hours that transitional time will last no more
than 48 hours in the worst case.  Then you move emails from the old
domain to the new one (you may have to reference the old mail server
by IP address).

In the case where you run your own DNS servers (or use the ones from
the registrar) the steps are pretty similar, but you'll have to point
your hostnames to the new IP addresses last, after you've done all the
email setup and copying website content.

If you have to change registrars first, that part will take 2-3 weeks
to complete.  I would say to plan on a month for that activity.

-- 
Björn Gustafsson