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Comment by dkdbejwi383 | Hacker News Reader

The main reasons for me that I stopped using my own domain:

- some sites will just silently refuse to accept addresses on unknown domains and signing up becomes impossible

- worse, some sites accept it for sign up, but later on refuse to send a password reset

- every time you have you write down or say out our your email address to a non-technical person, you are then obligated to host a mini Q&A on domain names and how email works

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I co-founded a vanity e-mail provider around 2000, and we 1) registered about 60,000 domains that we provided e-mail for, and we never had problems like that despite tens of thousands of those domains being with then-obscure ccTLDs, 2) a bit later launched the .name top-level domain, and for that we had some very limited initial teething problems because people back then still stupidly used regexes that assumed tld's could only be 2-3 characters. Aside from that it was not a problem, and it resolved itself more than 20 years ago.

I'n the 25+ years of having my own personal domain this has never been an issue for anything but really obscure TLDs unless your mail host fails to stay off blacklists.

With respect to saying it out loud, I occasionally have to repeat my e-mail address once, but that's usually all it takes; we must be dealing with very different people.

> With respect to saying it out loud, I occasionally have to repeat my e-mail address once, but that's usually all it takes; we must be dealing with very different people.

It's not so much having to repeat myself - it's just me@myname.com - but people who apparently have never encountered an address that isn't @gmail.com etc before, who then want to have a 10 minute Q&A/tutorial session where I explain to them how domain names work, how anyone - yes, even you - can buy a domain, how email works, etc. Some people have just never looked behind the curtain, and I understand their curiosity. It's just sometimes quite annoying when I just need to get on with something.

> but people who apparently have never encountered an address that isn't @gmail.com etc before

I've just never had that occur in the 30 years I've used e-mail, and it seems absolutely bizarre given that most people deal with e-mails from schools, or workplaces, or all kinds of other providers all the time.

I get the occasional question of how I got <mylastname>.com, and that's it.

- some sites will just silently refuse…

→ their problem, not yours, don't take on.

- refuse to send a password reset…

→ is it a payed service? request moneyback, involve customer protection. is it free service? no warranty for you. don't rely on it heavily.

- say out our your email address to a non-technical person…

→ don't connect to people who can not copy ascii letters, written or verbally. my daugther is 5, she can. "@domain" monoculture is bad.

Giving in to sites refusing to take custom domains is what leads to for example self hosted email being so difficult now because the big 3 run the show and defacto control internet mail.

We should also stop "dumbing down" to a point of sacrificing security and anonymity because people are unable to take down an email address in 2023. Remember when Google and others wanted to get rid of urls and use just words because "it is too difficult for people to remember urls"?

People used to remember multiple phone numbers in their head!

Humans can learn, we should stop encouraging brain lazyness, it leads to mobs of idiots who think another man won the presidency no matter how much evidence you provide that it's not the case.

The whole concept of "custom domain" is absurd - a domain is a domain... Or why does Google use that google.com custom domain instead of a respectable one like ibm.com ?

I have had my firstname lastname domain (.dk as I am danish) since 2001 and have never seen a website refusing my domain or refuse to send a password reset.

I also have not had issues with giving the address to a non-technical person, only issue I have had is that the risk of spelling mistakes are higher than @gmail.com

*for weird TLDs

I've had all of these issues and more but only with my address that uses an unusual TLD.

As a joke I've considered creating an inbox at something like atdot@atdotatdot.com just so I can cause havoc when someone freaks out over my address or the subsequent use of NATO phonetics over the phone.

I've used a non-standard domain (@iki.fi) for a good decade or so, I've never had any of these issues.

Was your personal domain a newer "vanity" tld one?

This is like saying because their services suck, then I should downgrade my workflow accordingly.. even though I have never came across a service that will deny unknown domain, but if they do, I will just walk away, it gives you an idea what service is that anyway.

For the QA part, deal with it as if it’s a company email, definitely it won’t be at gmail or yahoo.

I've been using not one, but several email domains since '00 and never ran into any of these issues. Not a single time.

These are all the exact reasons to do it! -the more of us who won't sign up because they won't take our domain-bsased email the quicker they will see these failed sign-ups and the reason, and adjust. - hmm. Let the account go dead I guess. They pay for that. - great, the more ppl who understand, the better!

I can confidently say I’ve never had these issues using firstname@firstnamelastname.co.uk and firstname@firstnamelastname.com…

Are you using an unusual vanity domain TLD?

I'm just in the process of migrating from my own domain email to a "normal" mail address because of your last bullet point.

This is very surprising as even my aging non-technical mother uses a custom domain and never complained once that she had her email address refused somewhere.

I recently gave my .io mail to a bank and it was rejected by their system.

While stupid, that's more likely to be because of the TLD than anything general with custom domains. I can guarantee that your bank deals with thousands of different "custom" domains.

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