Are you using an ISP email address?

Are you using an @comcast.net email address? What about @(city).rr.com? @verizon.net? @cablevision.net? Or some other email address tied to your ISP?

Have you thought about the long-term considerations of doing so? When you use an ISP email account, you are now bonded to that service provider. Now, if something else comes along that’s newer/cheaper/faster comes along, what do you do? You have to either stay with your old provider in order to keep the email address, or forfeit it and potentially abandon a key way for people to reach you.

By using an ISP email account, you also run the risk the company can either go out of business or suffer a name change that will eventually make your email address seem antiquated. Think @earthlink.net, @mindspring.com, @prodigy.net, @compuserve.com, etc.

What can you do instead? A step up from an ISP email account would be one of the major free email providers such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail. These accounts aren’t tied to a particular provider, so you remove that dependency. But, I’m still a bit leery of doing business with someone that’s conducting all of their affairs through sirdrinksalot42@yahoo.com or brian213@aol.com. These accounts are easy to get… which is both good and bad.

I recommend that people register a domain name and use a service such as Google Apps in order to have a completely portable name. With about 15 minutes of knowledgeable help, you can have your own domain name registered AND a free email account with Google that includes that domain name. I registered bbhart.com years ago for myself for this purpose and haven’t looked back since. Since then I’ve moved three times in two different states without ever losing touch with anyone.