I am going to upgrade my existing Protonmail service with a subscription soon. I notice that one of the various offerings of all the upgrade levels is at least one custom domain. Custom domain? That's nice, but is a custom domain something I would have any practical use for, since I don't run a business or other professional organization? (I don't even have any need to upgrade, I just want to do my part to keep Protonmail's valuable service running.) For such a person, is a custom domain anything more than the equivalent of a vanity license plate? I'm actually asking: whether there's anything I could use it for that I haven't thought of.

(Oops, I meant to post this in non-NIX general. Moderators, please move it at your discretion.)

I think that depends on what you mean by "practical".
If you have nothing to put "out there" for the world to see, there's probably not much reason to have a domain name (note: I'm dropping "custom"...aren't all domain names "custom"?)

If, on the other hand, you have something to say or show, having a domain name can help get it said/shown, 'tho there is a lot to your "vanity plate" point as well.

Ehh, I don't even blog anymore, because as I got older, I felt less and less need to "express myself" to others.

I know bike mechanics who host their how to pictures and videos on their own servers instead of using on line sites like photobucket or youtube.

Maybe?

I like having a custom domain for my email firstname@firstlast.com. It depends what you want to do. The power here is customization. You could make something short and easy to remember, like rms@gnu.org. Nine letters short and sweet.

I have a domain so that I can choose any email address I wish when entering it into websites.

Hmmm. newbiesforever.com has not been registered yet. Tempting...

Interesting. Does that in theory provide added security (perhaps by making the e-mail address password somewhat harder to steal)? That would be the practical purpose I wanted to identify for a custom domain.

I keep that decade-old username (probably closer to fifteen years old, even) only because I don't care to waste Jeremy's time on a username change. That name I selected as my way of raising a finger at forum bullies, in particular one user whose snide remarks had crossed the line into flaming. (That user appears to be long gone.)

I do the same thing.
One main advantage is when I get email purporting to be from my bank that's not addressed to the email only the bank has, I know it's a phishing attempt.
Another is that if I give a custom email address on registration somewhere, then get spam to that address, I know the company/site I registered with has sold the address and can take appropriate action.

I too, have a 3-character domain. One can even go as short as a@abc.com. The owner of the data center I'm in uses m@hisdomain.com

That's awesome.

Help me out here. How does a "custom domain" differ from a regular domain. My website is on a domain name of my own choosing.

If there's no real difference, charging extra for a "custom domain" sounds to me almost like a bait-and-switch.

It's the same thing. What you're customising is your email service, by hosting it at ProtonMail.

https://protonmail.com/support/knowl...omain-support/

Dammit. It's hard to compete with $10/year. I get the standard $35/year for a domain name.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <General> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.