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By: Dennis Shank (Steven's older brother)

 

Article for: Anyone considering moving to a privacy concerned email service
Difficulty: Easy
Importance: Better privacy

I am not a computer person and once I have things working; I leave them alone and don’t mess with what works. I’m also new to the Apple environment, after years of being on a PC. My domain registration and email were with GoDaddy. I also had a Gmail account and forwarded my GoDaddy emails to Gmail. I pulled my emails using Apple’s email program and everything worked great.

After reading Steven’s May newsletter, I started worrying about Google mining my emails for sales opportunities and decided I would slowly leave Gmail. Then, GoDaddy had notified me that they were changing their email platform to Microsoft 365 and prices would take a large jump. Steven is absolutely no help for dealing with Apple computers, so I knew that once I made any changes, I would be on my own. I was sure I'd be way over my head.

I studied his article on email options in the May newsletter and chose Runbox for my email and domain. They have no phone support — only email — and they are in Norway so they would be 9 hours ahead of me. Since I did not know what I was doing, I didn’t know how this was going to work. I was anxious that I'd need hand holding and no phone support scared me.

On May 4th I emailed Runbox explaining what I wanted done. Shortly after, I received an email telling me this would be simple and spelling out in layman’s terms exactly what I needed to do:

1. First, open an email account with Runbox and then add a domain account.
2. Contact GoDaddy and have them unlock the domain so they could transfer it and get an authorization code, often referred to as an EPP code.
3. Then notify Runbox that the account is unlocked and give them the authorization code.

I did that late on May 4th. On May 5th I received an email from Runbox telling me everything was ready. I needed to log into GoDaddy and approve the domain transfer. On May 6th I received an email informing me everything was ready to use.

I then went into mail settings on my iMac, opened a new email account with Runbox and entered the incoming and outgoing server locations Runbox gave me. I did the same on my iPhone and in less than 2 minutes I changed both and I was getting mail from my new service. The process took an extra couple days because of the domain transfer; if it had been email only it probably could all have been done in 15 to 30 minutes.

I really did not know what I was doing but Runbox customer service is fantastic. They held my hand and walked me through the whole process. My Gmail is now forwarded to my email account at Runbox and email addressed to the domain goes to the email account at Runbox. Emails now residing at Runbox are pulled by my email client (Apple mail) onto my computer, leaving nothing left for Google to mine.

I can’t speak highly enough about the customer service at Runbox. Even with the time difference, they kept everything moving along and made the process easy. Runbox has various email plans based on your volume, with pricing beginning as low as $19.95 per year. If you want them to host your domain, the cost is $14.95 per year. Since they are in Norway, privacy protection is standard and doesn't require additional payment. It is important to remember that when transferring your domain it can take several days and there is a brief window that some email could get bounced back. In my case, that was done in a couple hours.

Date: June 2021