Everymail transition - question on aliases

[robink1]

We have two TalkTalk addresses from legacy providers - pipex.com and ukgateway.net which we wish to keep alive by porting to Everymail as we are no longer TT broadband customers. The 'core' addresses are <random 6 characters>@domain (I think this was common in the early days of the internet) and so to make it usable in the real world both addresses have aliases setup in the form firstname.lastname@domain. I can see the aliases in the mailbox manager. Simple question is - will the aliases be ported to when we sign up to the Everymail service? There is no mention of aliases in the FAQs that I can see. 

Hope that someone can help clarify.

Many thanks, Robin

[Gliwmaeden2]

Thanks for the useful feedback, @robink1.

[robink1]

Here’s an update on my question from a couple of weeks ago about the transition to Everymail and whether existing email aliases would also be supported.

@fr8ys  & @Gliwmaeden2 thanks for your help earlier with this.

Short answer is that the transition to Everymail went smoothly and now seems to be working fine - the aliases on our legacy pipex.com and ukgateway.net emails (which was my original concern and reason for raising the question) are working OK. No need to change any server settings or passwords etc. and we now have 15Gb of storage each.

Some more background and information…

We used the link that my wife was emailed by TalkTalk, as her account was the more critical, and my account was already listed there as a second email. The aliases were already showing against each account and after signing up, the only obvious change is that the webmail interface is now branded Everymail and not TalkTalk. Note that there ARE scam emails around exploiting this email transition issue but they are fairly easy to spot.

We are technically in our 30 day free trial period at the moment but we have signed up for the annual service, so the payment should be taken in about 3 weeks now & I don’t anticipate any issues when this happens. The mailbox manager can be accessed via https://tt.everymail.com/myaccount/

Having been through the experience, I am now 99% certain that (for our accounts at least) our email had already been switched to Everymail behind the scenes, so this transition was effectively just a “sign up to pay a subscription to continue the service” process. There wasn’t any downtime at all which I would have expected if signing up triggered a transfer of data to another provider.

Things that were not to good… 

The ONLY form of support from Everymail is via the EVA chatbot which didn’t have any specific information about my question about aliases being supported. It didn’t inspire confidence when it effectively said it didn’t have any information but said “it probably won’t be a problem”. This is a common issue with AI chatbots where they are keen to please when they don’t have the information. When asked to speak to a human, I was put through to another person - who actually turned out to also be a chatbot. I didn’t persist so don’t know if there any ANY real people you can contact if there are issues that the chatbots cannot resolve.

TalkTalk themselves were not able to help. They have clearly already outsourced the email provision to Everymail. While I did manage to speak to a person on the phone, they weren’t much use. Maybe not surprising as we are not TalkTalk customers, having moved to another ISP about 3 years ago.

In summary we didn’t have much choice if we wish to continue using our legacy emails. The transition WAS as smooth as the FAQs said.  The good thing is that while we are now paying for the service that we used to have for free, at least there is now a clear contract in place for the service. About £1 per week seems fair and we hope that Everymail don’t exploit this and raise the fees disproportionately in future.

[robink1]

@fr8ys - thanks for the suggestions about a managed transition but the aim is to have my wife's email continue to work (via a first.lastname alias) as she has 25 years+ of connections. We're happy to pay for this service - just need to see if it works!

I'll check with TT Helpdesk and report back on any insights I get.

[fr8ys]

@robink1 not sure on this but it would make sense.

Re the aliases, maybe sign up to the monthly plan and set up free Google or Outlook email accounts and gradually transfer things over to these. If you get your email right at the outset you won't need aliases

Once you are happy you have changed everything, then cease your monthly payments and close your TalkTalk addresses.

[robink1]

@Gliwmaeden2 - thanks for the info. We have now received our direct invitation links in the last couple of days, so will definitely be using these to signup. Just wanted to get some clarification on the aliases issue before we commit.

[Gliwmaeden2]

@robink1, you should only be trying to sign up for Everymail through Talktalk's own link that they send you after a grace period, some time after you have left.

Don't try to do it independently, directly with Everymail. 

[robink1]

@fr8ys  Just realised I missed off the second part of my reply earlier. Here it is...

You may not know the answer to this but I’ll try anyway - is TalkTalk email already being managed/run by Everymail? They have been championing upgrades to the service recently so I wonder if the transition has already happened and all that is now happening is that they are (understandably in my opinion) charging non-customers to provide the email service in future?

[robink1]

@fr8ys  thanks for the quick reply and suggestions. I'll probably contact TT direct as you suggest as this is pretty important although, unless I'm lucky to find a tech expert, I'm not sure I will get a quality answer that I can rely on. It's a pity they have taken the TT team off the forum support - there were some really good people here before who knew how to get problems solved with the main Helpdesk hadn't!

You may not know the 

[fr8ys]

No idea on this for certain but as the emails are being transferred along with existing mail etc, I would assume this includes data such as aliases.

There are no staff here to check with so if you wish an answer before you transfer you will need to contact TalkTalk directly. Please see my signature for ways to make contact.

If this is, however, going to stop you transferring, you will lose all access to your mail addresses. May be best to transfer, check on the aliases, and if missing set them up again or ask Everymail how to do so.