Setting up email accounts (warning - I'm really thick with computers...)

[3littlebears]

We have one family email address, but as the kids get bigger and we all have phones etc, it would be best to have separate addresses. What I'd like is the format mum at bear family, dad at bear family, baby at bear family etc etc. Do I need to buy the domain name bear family online? And then how do I set up different accounts? Is this straightforward? anyone know where I can find an idiot's guide? Thanks very much techies!

Yes, you need to buy the domain name. Once you've bought it you can then set up the individual accounts. Whoever you buy it from will likely have a step by step guide to setting them up, or at the very least a helpline who will talk you through what you need to do.

When you are looking to buy the domain name, make sure you don't get talked into buying loads of extra things you don't need.

Yes you need to buy the domain name - should cost about £3.50 a year for bearfamily.co.uk (if it is available). There are then 4 options, in descending order of simplicity:

1. Buy email hosting from the people you get your domain from. You will probably have to pay about £1 per month per account, or quite a lot more if you want to push to iPhone or Blackberry. If you want to use Microsoft Outlook it could cost £10 a month each plus £5 for BlackBerry.

1. Buy email hosting from someone else - similar to 1.

1. Buy web hosting with incuded email accounts (it usually comes with at least 100) and use Google Mail to link to each one. From about £3 a month

1. Use Google Mail as your mail service. This is actually the cheapest and best (Google Mail provide up to 10 email accounts on the same domain free, push to iPhone etc. so all it would cost is £3.50 a year for the domain) but is not easy to set up.

Why not simply go for [email protected], MumAt.... etc for eg? Or it is really important to have the domain name?

The thing with free accounts is that if you aren't the paying customer then you are the product. I pay very little for a domain at www.virtualnames.co.uk and they have been very reliable. The spam filtering is good and I've found it easy to set up, but I am quite techie.