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I've got a friend who has his email set up with a custom domain, registered through Earthlink. He wants to change domain registrars. Earthlink simply hosts the domain and MX records which point to servers owned by "carrierzone". I've found some Google results that suggest carrierzone is connected with Earthlink. And carrierzone's website seems to say they're primarily some kind of spam filtering service. My friend hasn't heard of carrierzone before. I'm assuming they provide email hosting / SMTP service.

I'm hoping that I can help him switch registrars and simply copy the MX records to the new DNS servers, then cancel the Earthlink account. If my assumption that carrierzone provides email hosting and is not connected to the Earthlink account is correct, then this shouldn't interrupt his email service. Is this a valid assumption? Does anyone have any experience directly with carrierzone?

Mr. Jefferson
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2 Answers2

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CarrierZone are probably the parent company of EarthLink. Maybe they bought them out some time, or their primary network trades under a different brand, and Earthlink is just a subsiduary company. This arrangement is not uncommon.

I would be very surprised if CarrierZone continue to provide email hosting and SMTP, if you cancel your Earthlink account.

Somewhere this service is being paid for, and if your friend has no recollection of paying CarrierZone, then its most likely tied to his EarthLink account.

Personally I would discourage you from getting involved since you dont seem to fully understand what the situation is, and you risk leaving your friend with brand new DNS and MX records, but nobody actually hosting his email

carpii
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While I haven't dealt directly with carrierzone most of these kind of services I've dealt with are used only for filtering and relaying messages and don't provide any kind of public facing storage and retrieval. If you pointed the MX records to this service without having an active subscription with them the messages would either go nowhere or end up bouncing back (depending on the setup).

My recommendation would be to set up a custom domain entry with Google or the like. It's relatively straight forward and provides some long term stability.

Tim Brigham
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  • Thanks. I have no problem with finding a new registrar / DNS host; I'm looking to confirm that changing registrars and copying MX records over to different DNS servers won't break email to the custom domain. – Mr. Jefferson Aug 13 '12 at 22:47
  • That's precisely what I'm saying. It most likely will unless you already have some kind of direct service with that vendor. From the sound of it that isn't the case. – Tim Brigham Aug 13 '12 at 23:01