I am apparently not lord of all my domain

Post date: 2022-01-19 13:25:24

This past weekend I planned to change my MX records to Fastmail but it didn't go well. This is purely a current best practices question, previous AskMeFi posts were pretty old.

So I purchased my current .net domain in 2001 with Domain People. In 2014 I switched my MX records to point to Gmail after previously hosting both Web and Mail at a couple of previous hosting providers. I even saved screen captures of how I did it for future reference.

This past weekend I tried doing it again on the same Domain People screen. Everything seems to have worked (?) but after 21 hours nobody saw the new MX records, not Fastmail's configuration wizard, not mxtoolbox. So I opened a ticket with Fastmail asking if they often had trouble with Domain People or if switching from Gmail was harder for some reason. They answered today that nope, as far as they can see the screen capture I showed and what they see on the Web suggests Domain People didn't actually make the change.

Now I know you're going to wonder why I don't just pursue the issue with them. But after 20 years I'm willing to switch to a new home for my domain, especially after this waste of time.

So it just boils down to 3 pure advice questions:
- how hard would it be to switch the home of my .net domain (I'm willing to "eat" the remaining 10 months)?
- what new home would you suggest (namecheap, domain.com, other?)
- any wisdom on how to make the move of the domain go smoothly?

Oh, and I do realize I could just surrender the domain and send change of emails to everyone, but I thought I'd ask for advice first.

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