cloaking or stealth email forwarding

question

[Sandy]

I am new to this so if I've done this wrong, I'm sorry. I have my own newsletter which requires bulk mailing twice a week - currently 1620, in four groups of 500. My isp gives me full permission to do this but I also have my own domain name. I can use that to cloak my url but I want to be able to use it for my newsletter address, too - and I have no idea how to do it. Currently, I use the actual email address for my newsletter but I'd like to keep that and the url uniform and use the domain name as my email address. The only people who will allow me to do it won't allow bulk mailing, even though I can prove it's legit and even though my isp is happy to write that they gave permission. Can anyone help, please? Thanks.

[Air]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld Sandy.

This is an opt in newsletter? I don't see why you even need permission for an opt in newsletter. Now if it was unsolicited (or overly large) then I could see a problem. Your current ISP could offer you mail using your registered domain if they were so inclined.

Anyway there are lot's of services that will offer you mail using your chosen registered domain name if your current web host does not. There is no need to cloak anything from what I can see.

Searching for "email forwarding" at your fav search engine should give you some choices.

[Sandy]

Hi Air.

Thanks for your kind welcome and for your reply. My email newsletter is considered as large with 1610 being sent twice a week and I send in groups of 500 at a time and that's why I asked permission from my isp - so they wouldn't accuse me of spam. I don't want to have to go through topica or any of those, if I can help it. It is an opt-in, opt-out newsletter but I just wanted to be able to cloak the address for convenience. It isn't for search engine placement or anything like that. You said in your reply that my isp could do it? Any ideas on how? I know that sounds funny but I've been through this with them before and they didn't know how since they are reasonably new. No excuse I know but, if you can tell me how to do it so I can tell them, you'd have a friend for life ha ha.

Thanks. Sandy.

[Air]

In general, your ISP would have to add your domain to the list of hosts their e-mail server (transfer agent) will accept and send mail for. In addition they need to add an MX record to their DNS so that other mail servers know where to send mail for your domain. I am assuming that they are running e-mail servers and DNS, in which case it is basically duplicating what they have done for their own domain.

I can't tell you exactly what they should do, the exact steps depend somewhat on their configuration and choice of software. They may as well look into how to do it, IMO they'll get asked often for this feature.

[Sandy]

Hi again Air.

Thanks for the reply. We started with this isp at the same time they started so, in between setting themselves up, they were setting a lot of us newbies up, too - newbie to their service, anyway. They do advertise an alias service, which is basically what I wanted but trying to get it set up was another story. They are in a country town with the HQ three hours away in our capital city and it's those at the hq who do the settings etc. My newsletter is namethatmovie and I have tried time and again to explain to them that you can't put an alias on an alias and that's where I think the problem is - not that I'm any expert. They gave me an account name ie [e-mail], for example, then gave me [e-mail] and I wanted [e-mail] - my domain name. They can't do it but I've been trying to tell them that since we have to have the initial account name as is, they should be deleting the [e-mail] and changing it to the domain name addy. Would that be right? Thanks again for your help - much appreciated and, if anyone else here has any suggestions or comments, I'd love to hear them too :-) Sandy.