back to article Users of 123 Reg caught out by catch-all redirect cut-off

Users of web hosting company 123 Reg are up in arms after it abruptly stopped supporting free email redirects and instead required customers to subscribe to a paid mailbox service or migrate to another service provider. The issue seems to stem from 123 Reg introducing a new platform for email services, which according to some …

  1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

    When it's better to say nothing at all...

    "In March 2023, 123 Reg made the decision to discontinue the free catch-all forwarders feature on mailboxes as part of our commitment to improving our products and services

    Really? That's meant to convince customers that removing services is a good thing?

    It added: "Whilst we understand this decision will be disappointing for some customers, our catch-all email forwarding was not performing to the level our customers need, or what we expect. So, we made the difficult decision to stop offering the service."

    Difficult? My arse. "We couldn't fix a basic service, so we removed it"

    I don't rely on domain registrar's for anything but the registration, but if I did, and this fiasco affected me, reading such waffly upsidedown-world bullshit like that would definitely make me leave.

    The patronising contempt is unbelievable!

    1. ChoHag Silver badge

      Re: When it's better to say nothing at all...

      > our catch-all email forwarding was not performing

      Outright bald-faced lies. There is nothing difficult about a catch-all email address for a domain. Not setting one up is harder work in some mail servers. This was done because they decided that they want to make money from a check-box (Button As A Service?). That is all.

    2. Anonymous Coward Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: When it's better to say nothing at all...

      I assume (because I'm on the verge of doing the same) that the reason for them removing such a feature is because gmail is making it harder and harder to deliver such messages as the user wants. Which then means that the forwarding servers end up flagged as spam sources, which reduces deliverability even further.

      Yes, it's a very simple feature. One entry in the virtusertable. Until the final destination requires SPF alignment, which forwarders won't be able to achieve without sender rewriting. If they implement sender rewriting, they get a reputation as being the root source of the spam.

      Obviously you run your own spam filter before the forwarding stage, but no spam filter is 100% accurate (not likely to agree with gmail's filter)

      Google has recently implemented a policy requiring all incoming emails to have SPF or DKIM alignment.

      Basically, email forwarding is only really workable these days if the forwarding server is trusted by the receiving server (and good luck getting google to trust you!). Getting rid of catchall forwarding will save them a lot of headaches while trying to decide whether to scrap forwarding altogether.

      1. HereIAmJH Silver badge

        Re: When it's better to say nothing at all...

        When Google started killing free Google Apps, I changed the MX on my domain to forwardemail.net, Then I have a catchall that can forward all the mail back to a single gmail account (or any email that you want to expose to the world) that I set up for my domain. I just create filters for the destination addresses that I want to keep.

        I mostly use my domain to have mailboxes for each web site that demands I create an account. So many douchebag sites over the years that sell their email lists to spammers. The only place I have had a problem is GitLab. They didn't like my GitLab@<mydomain>.org They claimed my domain was listed as a spammer, but it's not. After a couple days their Customer Circus decided it was Ok and re-enabled my account. And by that time I didn't care.

        There has been a big advantage to moving away from Google Apps to ForwardEmail.net. With Apps I had to go in and create a mailbox for each new address. I don't do that anymore because EVERYTHING gets forwarded to my catchall email account. I put Twitch and NextDoor (geez what a bunch of Karens) into folders. Others I just leave in the inbox.

        Note that for a few days last year Google and ForwardEmail had a spat. Google stopped accepting forwarded email but things have worked smoothly since.

      2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

        Re: When it's better to say nothing at all...

        Yeah, point taken.

        I run forwarding services and it is indeed a pain when dominate services such as gmail write their own rules - a lot of the stuff forwarded to gmail users gets thrown into the gmail spam folder unless the address is whitelisted by the user.

        Still, google is just as likely to delegate the message as spam whether the original recipient is fred@myforwardingdomain.com or whether it's nosuchuser@myforwardingdomain.com

        I do sometimes get stuff stuck on my server in a bounce state - as you say, if google spam rejects something my server accepts, and the return address is fake, it sits in my mailqueue - and I can concede that that problem would probably be worse if I was forwarding "*" rather than a specific user...

        So, yeah, fair point. There can be consequences I didn't think about.

        Still, I think they can easily be mitigated - it shouldn't be an issue for a company providing email services, and it certainly doesn't justify their decision (which lets face it, hasn't been made for legitimate reasons)

  2. Peter X

    123-Reg still have customers?

    123-Reg seem to do something really stupid every year, so I'm surprised there's still customers left to upset.

    I've recently been moving domains from Gandi (who _used_ to be good) for similarly suddenly deciding to charge for email where previously they didn't albeit it's probably not quite as egregious as 123-Reg and to be fair, updating my IPS tag and moving away worked fine.*

    One of the linked Twitter threads mentions something about moving to Google Domains? Am I wrong in thinking that's recently been shut-down / scheduled for termination?

    * Gandi upset me because a .com domain that cost £14-something to renew last year, cost £23.99 this year. And *then* I noticed they were going to charge for email accounts (previously got 2 mail boxes for free I believe) and so it'd actually cost me ~£60 this year. So... nope... voted with my feet. In a complete coincidence, Gandi were acquired in March this year.

    1. wolfetone Silver badge

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      Google Domains has been bought out by Squarespace. So it's not shutting down, just all your domains belong to someone else now.

      I've got a few domains with 123-Reg, but who do you really go to that are good? GoDaddy are shite. Namescheap are OK but questionable sometimes. Google Domains are no more.

      Where do we go?!

      1. NightFox

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        I transferred all mine to Cloudflare last year. No transfer fees, no renewal fees till the original renewal was due (so you don't lose anything if you've just renewed with your current provider), and at-cost pricing.

        https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/products/registrar/

      2. timpea

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        I had the same issue with 123-reg. We had 7 domains with them, we didn't receive any notification email at all that it was going to happen. Only found out after 2 days of not receiving emails before noticing something was wrong.

        Moved all the domains across to CloudFlare.

      3. IGotOut Silver badge

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        @wolftone.

        Stablepoint. Rock solid for me, fantastic UK support when needed.

        Cloudflare as your registrar.

      4. Peter X

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket, so I've been using Mythic Beasts for ages, and have recently started using Krystal. Both appear to "have clue"... so that's good.

        1. sfranks

          Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

          Agree: Mythic Beasts get it right. Never had downtime or a problem, support is excellent, pricing is good.

          1. Vometia has insomnia. Again. Silver badge

            Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

            Another recommendation for Mythic Beasts here. You actually get to deal with real people who are helpful, knowledgeable and generally lovely.

        2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

          Mythical Beasts... Incredibly expensive.

          3X the price for many domains. (e.g. .cymru)

          Try https://porkbun.com/ - I moved 33 domains to them a year ago.

          1. Red~1

            Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

            Big fan of Porkbun too. Their customer support has been great every time I've needed it, and they have great IPv6 support and Passwordless Login via Security Key. Also domains only tend to be marked up ~$1 from their cost price usually.

      5. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        "GoDaddy are shite. Namescheap are OK but questionable sometimes. Google Domains are no more."

        GoDaddy are Indeed shite. Started using them years ago when they first introduced their domain privacy thingy. They were ok at the time, but their propensity for upselling and ever increasing prices pushed me to namecheap years ago.

        I don't have much to do with sites / domains these days, but for the few domains I still own or have advised on lately I haven't had any trouble with namecheap. Good to know there are reasonable alternatives around, though - I'll take a look at cloudflare and see what they have to offer when I have a min.

    2. TeeCee Gold badge
      Facepalm

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      What's more astonishing is that they apparently still have customers who read The Register. They must all be n00bs or they'd have got the hell out when one of the previous monumental ballsups by 123-Reg were reported. From memory; "we deleted all your data and then screwed up the recovery process for kicks and giggles" was a particular highlight.

      I've been with UK2 since the nineties and have never been given a reason to think about changing.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I've been with UK2 since the nineties

        Did you forget their email meltdown a few months ago? Took a few days for them to even start fixing it.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        "What's more astonishing is that they apparently still have customers who read The Register. They must all be n00bs or they'd have got the hell out when one of the previous monumental ballsups by 123-Reg were reported"

        Then goes in to name his provider only for an immediate response saying they failed as well.

        Your comment could actually be useful if it contained a list of decent providers! Assuming you know who those are!

        Remaining comments on this story mostly will follow the one of two ways:

        Mention a well known provider and immediately be told how crap they are.

        Mention an oddball name that few, if any, have ever heard of, so hardly a large sample set for how good they are.

        I set up domains and email with 123 a fair while back after reading lots of Register comments that made it sound ok (compared to all the rest). Up until this point they had functioned 100% for me. I have not been able to figure out from 123's emails and support pages if my email will go titsup when it gets migrated (followed their instructions to prevent this but have not much faith).

        So what are decent providers and should I just be resigned to changing providers every X months because they are all rubbish now?

        1. Ozzard
          Devil

          Good suppliers: find a small one, migrate when they sell up and get run for profit

          Unfortunately, there's only one way to find a decent supplier: use one of the small folks who are building their business and therefore trade on quality and service. When they get bought, as almost all do once the founders have built up the business and want to retire on the proceeds, then they become universally awful as they're being run for profit, not service (see icon). Move at that point.

          All my domains are with Mel at Herald Information Systems, for example, but I've known her for decades. Excellent on all counts, and for some reason I don't think she's interested in selling the business to Big Provider. If she did, I'd be out of there like a shot.

          This is the way the world works.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        You're surprised Reg readers don't use 123-Reg but you use UK2? I think I moved away from UK2 at least 15 years ago due to their general incompetence.

    3. doublelayer Silver badge

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      "Gandi upset me because a .com domain that cost £14-something to renew last year, cost £23.99 this year. And *then* I noticed they were going to charge for email accounts (previously got 2 mail boxes for free I believe) and so it'd actually cost me ~£60 this year. So... nope... voted with my feet."

      I have the same problem, and I have the downside that I've renewed for years in advance and the new mailbox prices will be charged later this year anyway. If you've found another registrar that offers a basic email hosting service, I'd be very interested to hear the recommendation. I may have to get a separate email host, but my needs are very small* for most domains, so I appreciated the included basic service.

      * In many cases, it would be a domain for a project or open source product with a mailbox for users to contact. I don't want to forward that to my personal email since anyone who enters something plausible in a contact form can get it and because I might add others to the mailbox so multiple people can see incoming messages. My storage usage is very low though. For now, my utilization of the 3 GB quota on the basic mailboxes runs from 0.00 to 0.03 GB, so I don't really want to buy expensive email hosting that will be used very little unless I can find no better options.

      1. Peter X

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        @doublelayer

        Not for the domain mentioned above, but on my own personal domain I was previously using Google Apps largely for their gmail integration... but Google started charging for that. To be fair, if you like gmail and particularly if you do make use of Google Apps, then that isn't the worst product so it may be worth you looking at. But I'm sick of Google having a product and then changing it!

        So, I'm now using Mythic Beats for my personal email... I think I'm on the basic £20 per year package (listed as Email only):

        https://www.mythic-beasts.com/hosting

        In the recent past I did start getting a bunch of spam to an old address at my domain and so I had to investigate Mythic Beasts own spam detection stuff; it's not quite as easy to use a Gmail but is doable! But everything works exactly as solidly and reliably as one would hope.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          https://www.mythic-beasts.com

          Thanks for that. I Just tried https://www.mythic-beasts.com and transferred a domain from 123reg.. it worked flawlessly. The uk domains seem to be half the price of 123reg. I use https://www.verygoodemail.com/contact/ for my email and works out cheaper if you are confident with MX records.

    4. Groodles

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      After checking my account, I can see my first invoice was from August 2005. So I've been a customer for just under 17 years and had zero problems, ever.

      However, I do only use them for Domain hosting. Names Servers, Web hosting, Email and everything else is hosted elsewhere.

    5. iComment

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      Another vote for Mythic Beasts for domains. Fair pricing and customer services has clue.

      I've been using Zoho for email. Tenner a year with catch-all support for multiple domains. No problems so far.

    6. adam.c

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      Upvote for Krystal.

      Moved to them when Easily started causing me issues. And was fed up with GoDaddy.

      Also been using Zoho for email.

      Both just work and Krystal tech support been very good with any requests around transfers etc

    7. zeltus

      Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

      Yeah, that's a me-too where Gandi is concerned. Only seems to affect UK domains - I control some EU ones that Gandi are continuing to forward FOC. But the writing is on the wall, now looking for an alternative. Google Domains is an option, IF it continues - Google do have a history of stopping useful services for no obvious reason.

      1. doublelayer Silver badge

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        The ship has already sailed on Google Domains. They have already shut down, so you will be shifted elsewhere as soon as they complete the process.

      2. Jamie Jones Silver badge

        Re: 123-Reg still have customers?

        Have you looked at https://porkbun.com/ ? i moved 33 domains there about a year ago.

  3. msage

    I left 123-reg a few years ago, I did move to OVH as I only need them as a registrar and I do the rest myself. However, I've just moved all my domains to porkbun, they are cheap and the support is great (although not in the UK, so there is a bit of lag at some points in the day!

    1. Captain Scarlet

      Nice name, I keep meaning to look elsewhere as I pay far to much using eNom.

      Added to the list when I will only remember after I renew and then whinge at price.

  4. Phones Sheridan Silver badge

    Speaking as someone who stopped using a catch-all email address, after receiving 56 gigabytes of email addressed with every combination from a@ to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz@, I'm surprised anyone still uses them, and more surprised that companies still offer it considering it's an easy way to fill your hard disk maliciously or by accident.. In my case it just filled up the exchange server over a weekend, which then died and had to have the database repaired, which took days.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      receiving 56 gigabytes of email

      That sounds like somebody targetted your specific domain. Just for nuisance value. Have you annoyed somebody?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      after receiving 56 gigabytes of email

      Set the catchall to a dedicated mailbox, with a quota.

      1. Phones Sheridan Silver badge

        It's easier to just having never used a catchall since.

        1. Lee D Silver badge

          Or not using Exchange and having some sensible limits on incoming email.

    3. Richard Cranium

      me too, came back from lunch to find 64,000 emails had just landed, which I took to be the limit on the mailbox as, having flushed it, more started to arrive. That was about 20 years ago I've never used catchall since and strongly advised my clients to avoid. I too am surprised that ISPs still offer the facility. I might even go so far as to say 123reg are (uncharacteristically) doing the right thing - just implementing the change too soon with inadequate notice. I ditched 123 many years ago (for too many reasons to list) although the task of migrating 200+ domains took a while.

      As for alternatives to 123, I've used several others, the only ones so far that have managed to be as poor as 123 have been others also taken over by godaddy so if you're looking to change just checking it's not a subsidiary of godaddy will save you some grief.

  5. Kane
    Devil

    improving our products and services

    "Whilst we understand this decision will be disappointing aggravating for some most customers, our catch-all email forwarding was not performing profiting to the level our customers shareholders need, or what we expect allow them to buy more boats and send Tiffany on an extra skiing holiday. So, we made the difficult decision to stop offering the service introduce a new paid tier service in order to be able to restore the functionality that you require."

    There, fixed that for you!

  6. anthonyhegedus Silver badge

    We use ICUK. They're reliable, the control panel is good, they have support from people with actual names who listen to what you are saying and very few problems in the last ten years. Having said that they don't allow forwarders on mailboxes. You can forward an address, or you can have a mailbox (including catchall). We've never had a requirement to forward a catchall.

  7. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    Doh!

    "In March 2023, 123 Reg made the decision to discontinue the free catch-all forwarders feature on mailboxes as part of our commitment to EOL'ing our products and services.

    Thats a lot better.

    Anyone who stays with them needs their heads lopping off and putting out of their misery.

  8. NiteDragon

    Was also got caught in this little own goal, warning email didn't arrive, I just got a mix of all my mails stopping and a lot of users (mail forwarding off to external mailboxes) suddenly getting mail not arriving. 123-reg not only killed off the catch-all, they also limited the amount of supported forwards, trimming back to the top 20 or so and converting them to 123 mailboxes.

    As some of the redirects were to site-blackhole I ended up with a mess to clean up.

    123-reg get some extra points for being super patronising to the trust pilot reviews from this. Always a great look.

    And yes, I moved my domain - it was all such an epic mess they created that it was actually easier to move elsewhere to fix it!

  9. FIA Silver badge

    I used 123-reg for SSL certs once.

    When it was due for renewal they sent me an invoice that stated I'd paid for another year.

    Week or so later the cert expires, I realise I've not been sent a new one.

    Turns out I'd not updated my credit card details, but unlike literally every other company I've dealt with they didn't send me a 'payment declined' reminder.

    Ended up just using Lets Encrypt instead, cheaper and better.

    (Actually, thinking about it, LE is much better, as when 123.reg sent me my cert the first time round they send the wrong files over so it didn't even work).

    1. Lee D Silver badge

      LetsEncrypt is making the entire SSL industry obsolete, at least for web certificates.

      Huge companies that I deal with, including ones who host content for you, are just pointing everything at LetsEncrypt and saving themselves a ton of hassle. My servers all use it, personally and professionally.

      Even via IIS (yuck, phut), it "just works". It's what SSL should always have been.

      Now if someone could just do the same for email, and kill off SMTP entirely, then I'll be a happy man.

      1. Danny 14

        yep, LE here too apart from the papercut server - that gets a proper cert because it is a pain going round to each printer and accepting the new thumbprint on LE every 75 days

      2. The Basis of everything is...
        Joke

        X400 do you? There's probably a few other users of it out there still. Somewhere. Maybe?

        Proof that doing it properly v a quick bodge is only ever going to end one way...

      3. Richard Cranium

        Some hosts don't provide LetsEncrypt, I had to help out a guy whose godaddy subsidiary had withdrawn LetsEncrypt from their cPanel interface with no notice just before xmas so his site was showing "insecure" 'till new-year. Tech support had a fix: just pay $50 extra p.a. for their commercial certificate. As it was $100p.a."budget" hosting, an extra $50p.a. was unwelcome. I showed him how to use certsage for a self install of LetsEncrypt, it does need quarterly renewal but once you know how it's a 5 minute job.

  10. Zuccster

    Retagging fails if your contact details are incomplete

    Found out by trial and error after some domains transferred OK and other failed.

  11. Lee D Silver badge

    Ah, the company that - what, 20 years ago? - insisted that I had deleted a client's entire website by FTP and told my client that. When. in fact. they'd lost all the files, didn't have backups, and didn't even keep any kind of FTP logs to corroborate any kind of activity anyway (it took a while but I eventually got them to admit that).

    Somehow the files just disappeared.

    "Must have been you" - why would I delete my own (long-term and well-paying) client's website randomly overnight (and not just a broken website, but an entirely empty FTP) and then have them phoning me up on a Saturday afternoon screaming at me because nothing was working? Also: I wasn't anywhere near a computer for that day and there's been no updates to the site necessary for several weeks. (Also, I reuploaded my backup within 10 minutes of being told, and everything started working again).

    "Must have been your client" - nope, they literally didn't have the password to it. They bought the service through me, and because they knew I wouldn't delete everything randomly and didn't want to disturb me first, they went straight to the supplier... who then tried to tell them that I'd deleted everything randomly.

    "Must have been hacked" - I'm literally the only person with the password, at all ever, in any way. It was 20+ characters long, randomly generated and written down only in one place (and I had to manually enter it each time because I don't trust password managers). And if that's true, you'll have logs of rogue logins, right, before you start telling my client that I deleted her website? Because in the same conversation I was told that I couldn't now reset the password - so can you tell me how I'm supposed to secure a site that I can't change a "suspected" compromised password for?

    Eventually, I got them to admit they'd had a backend storage failure but didn't think it had affected anyone, but boy did it take some pushing (and one of the few times I've ever recorded an MP3 of a conversation on a phone because I just didn't trust them not to tell my client something else).

    After that, we transferred all that client's - and my other's - domains away from 123Reg.

    Weirdly, my new employer uses them. Fortunately, they are literally just the domain host, so MX and A records are the only thing I care about them supplying.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, don't know why either but my boss is a big fan of 123-Reg and so that's where we hold all of our domains. Clearly hasn't heard the warnings of "stay away from anything godaddy at all costs". Saying that, my last employer used GoDaddy and that was even worse as when we tried to leave we had to call the South Africa support office to get any semblance of help to get the codes to transfer our domain away...

  12. andy the pessimist

    off topic, help would be appreciated

    I am using namesco for my email.

    They are reasonably good.

    I'm getting messages from office365/microsoft that I must use MFA.

    Can I keep MFA disabled?

    The microsoft authenticator may be problematic because all of my computers are linux.

    Advice would be appreciated.

    Thanks Andy

    1. yetanotheraoc Silver badge

      Re: off topic, help would be appreciated

      "Can I keep MFA disabled?" -- No.

      "The microsoft authenticator may be problematic because all of my computers are linux." -- You can use a different authenticator, Microsoft even says so. Search for "totp linux".

      "off topic, help would be appreciated" -- Not good form.

      1. Ken Hagan Gold badge

        Re: off topic, help would be appreciated

        Upvoted for answering anyway -- good form.

      2. andy the pessimist

        Re: off topic, help would be appreciated

        Thank you for the answer.

        Let me see what I can do.

        It was a polite question and an opportunity to share knowledge.

        Is sharing your knowledge so wrong.

        1. Jamie Jones Silver badge

          Re: off topic, help would be appreciated

          *shrug* It seemed an ok question to me - it's not as if you asked us who we thought would win the footy this saturday! (which has probably been done before - these forums tend to stray off topic - it's not like they're inundated with "me too" type replies!)

          Anyway, off-topic reply: I don't have an answer to your question, but may I just say that I hate sites that force MFA on us.

          Many have lost my business because of it. For one, I'm not glued to my mobile phone. I'm over my mums at the moment, my phone is in my flat. That means I can't use paypal.

          My mum has eyesight issues and difficulty with technology in general - whilst we can get her through online shopping, getting her to read a text or an email is out of the question - so Sainsburys don't get her online grocery orders. (the actual payment part is protected by the bank, so it seems that Sainsburys is either playing security theatre, or they are genuinely worried that someone may hack her account, and order stuff that THEY pay for, to be delivered to HER address...)

  13. Ilmarinen

    I too was a victim of 123-Reg...

    Just days after taking my hard-earned for a 3-year renewal, they announced they were "migrating" (sic) their email system. Buried in the announcement email was the bit about no longer supporting catch all emails. Which I used.

    Tried to query this with their passive-aggressive support creatures from Hell who first said no problem, then agreed "problem" - but no refund. All the while their documentation still says "Catch-all email forwarding is a great feature which comes with any 123 Reg domain name."

    So, after many years with 123-Reg, I moved the last domain I had with them to join its friends at TSOHost - cheaper, good support and with catch-all forwarding. Should have done so a long time ago. And I'm doing a credit card chargeback for the money they took, knowing they were about to break the product but not telling the customer.

    I was so miffed that I went to Trustpilot to give them a 1-star rating and I see that quite a few other long-time (now ex-) customers are doing the same. Strangely, there has been a rash of 5-star "invited" ratings, all saying stuff like "resolved my issue. There is as no problem at 123-Reg". So I guess that's OK then.

    123-Reg now appear to have done a reverse ferret on the catch all emails, but only if you pay them twenty-something quid a year for a mailbox. Good luck to them with that...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I too was a victim of 123-Reg...

      Sadly, like 123reg, I believe TSOhost is now yet another subsidiary of GoDaddy so my advice is start looking for an alternative as policy directives like this may come from above... (I switched to Krystal and so far, excellent).

  14. RiverRock

    They also stopped allowing forwarding to large groups of recipients. That just deleted the lists. That did this before their deadline on one of my accounts, leaving the other in place. I lost a group email list before I could extract the addresses.

    They lost a customer.

  15. andy-g0poy

    More on 123 reg catch-all forwarding

    Like many I was caught by the dreadful behaviour of 123 reg in removing the catch all forwarding.

    What has not been obviously pointed out is that 123 reg claimed to have notified users of a change to their email systems.

    While that is true, this was a specific email relating to 123's email offerings.

    Customers who just DNS host their domains with 123, DO NOT HAVE ANY 123 EMAIL PRODUCTS. So why should they even read such emails.

    I did, and I still determined that this was ONLY related to their email products. There was no mention of DNS only domains.

    To claim that notice was given is deceitful at best. The email was in relation to their email packages, not DNS hosting at all.

    No email was sent to DNS customers advising them of the issue.

    The ONLY reason I can see for this behaviour is a money grab nothing else.

    Like everyone else I will be moving the remaining domains I have away from 123.

    It took several days for my primary domain to get moved, fortunately the others are not nearly as heavily used.

    All this trouble is a pity as I've been a customer of 123 for a couple, of decades, and not had any real problems.

    Obviously 123 can no longer be trusted, so I will be advising anyone I know either not to use them or move elsewhere.

    A very good example of how to damage your business.

    Andy

  16. ezramus
    WTF?

    Not informed of the change

    I just got massively caught out by this change. The very first notification I received was an email 2 days ago, titled "Important: Upcoming change affecting your existing domain forwarder(s)". I checked all previous communications from 123-reg and there was NOTHING received about this before December 14th.

    The email did not clearly set out what the change actually was, simply stating that I need to set up a gen 2 mailbox to continue using forwarders. I'm a bit different from other users here as I never set up a catch all, instead I have several specific email addresses set up (company1@domain, company2@domain, personalmail@domain etc), forwarding to my mail mailbox. There is also no deadline date mentioned in the email.

    I immediately went to check my forwarders and discovered that 123-reg have removed the interface to manage "gen 1" forwarders from their website. Far WORSE, since at least mid October, WITHOUT ANY WARNING, some of my email forwarders have been silently dropped by 123-reg whilst others continued to work. The ones dropped got less traffic which is why I didn't notice, plus the fact that my main address does still work for now.

    This is a an absolute shambles. They've offered me a 1 year free subscription to their gen 2 mailbox, but I'm instead looking to switch ASAP to another domain registrar.

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