One alternative is to go to http://mail.yahoo.com/ and signup for a Yahoo email address. They actually support three forms: Free Edition, Custom Edition, and Business Edition.

Free Edition Get a free Yahoo! Mail address (ex: you@yahoo.com) Get your FREE @yahoo.com email address today. Includes plenty of free storage space, Spamguard technology, and advanced virus protection. Sign Me Up! Learn More Custom Edition ($35/year) Personalize your email address (ex: me@my-own-name.com) Get all of the benefits of regular Yahoo! Mail, with your own personalized email address. Includes 5 accounts to share with friends (ex: friend@my-own-name.com). Sign Me Up! Learn More Business Edition ($9.95/mo) The professional email solution (ex: sales@widgetdesigns.com) For your growing business, get the professional email solution that's both easy and affordable. Includes ad-free emails and interface, dedicated servers, and technical support. Sign Me Up! Learn More

The free edition should be enough for most people. You will have an email address like donsingleton@yahoo.com. If you actually have your own domain name, the second form might make sense, but if so I would not recommend that you pay Yahoo $35 a year to register your domain name, but rather I would recommend you go to some registrar like http://inexpensivedomains.com (the one I use) and register a domain name for $15 a year. I am not absolutely certain, because I cannot be sure without actually doing it, but if one already has their domain name registered (through InexpensiveDomains), then it appears Yahoo just charges $10/year for Personal Email services (5 email addresses), and as long as you authorize Yahoo to send you a few spam messages you can have them automatically forward email messages to your ISP provided email address or you can have them provide you with POP3/SMPT access so that you can have your email program automatically get and send email through Yahoo Mail (click here for more information).

This is not your only alternative. If you use InexpensiveDomains to register your domain name, then for $14.95 per year they will provide Domain name and e-mail forwarding. This means that you can attach your domain name to any website, even some of the free ones which don't support personal domain names, AND you can have your email forwarded to any email address you want.

Either of these could be the way I have don@donsingleton.com as my email address. Actually I use a third alternative. Virtual Ave / Hypermart offer a series of webhosting packages, including one for free, as long as you are willing to have a banner ad on your web page. I don't know how much longer they will offer this, because this page does not show the free hosting alternative, except as a link at the bottom. But if you can signup for a free website, you can point your domain name to it, and make use of their free email forwarding to send email to your ISP provided email address.

Actually there is one other alternative I can recommend. Webstrike Solutions provides webhosting which just costs $30 for the first year (they say it is free for the first year, but there is a $30 setup cost), and then $84 a year thereafter, and you can attach your own domain name to your account, and they have a free email forwarding service which can forward email from the domain name to your ISP provided email account. I use Webstrike for my Bush Supporter website, and Paula Sanders has three websites hosted by Webstrike.

Regardless of which of these alternatives you use, you will have an account which people can send email to, and it will be forwarded to the account your ISP provides, and then if your ISP changes your email address, or if you change ISPs, then all you have to do is go online and access your Yahoo / InexpensiveDomains / VirtualAve/Hypermart / Webstrike Solutions account and change the address it forwards your email to. The people you email will never know your real email account changed.

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