In April 2023 123 Reg, a British domain registrar, sent out a notification that they’d soon be discontinuing catch-all email forwarding as of May 2023, and that I’d have to buy a ‘mailbox’ for about £28 per year, and enable catch-all forwarding on the mailbox instead.
I’ve been using 123 Reg for 15-20 years, and it was a big surprise that they’d now start charging for something so basic, especially since I’d literally just renewed my main domain with them for another 10 years for £150.
It’s worth saying up front that my setup with 123 Reg is really simple.. I just have the domain + email forwarding with them. My (very limited) web hosting is with Free Hostia, which just needs a A record adding in Advanced DNS. Other than that I have no other 123 Reg services to migrate; your situation may be different.
Thankfully these days it’s easy to transfer to another domain registrar, and ChatGPT came in handy for giving me a shortlist of British-based registrars offering free catch-all email forwarding.
After taking a look at each one (obviously ChatGPT isn’t up-to-date on the news of 123 Reg now charging for forwarding), I decided to try Fasthosts, and followed their domain transfer instructions on a secondary domain I have.
Before I initiated the transfer I took screenshots of all my settings on 123 Reg, just in case I needed to refer back to anything.
The transfer didn’t quite work as I expected when I selected the ‘Keep this domain’s current nameservers’ option, and after a quick Live Chat session with Fasthosts tech support (who were super-responsive), that got resolved. When I transferred my main domain I chose the ‘Use Fasthosts Nameservers’ option.
Once the transfer has gone through, you’ll need to click on the ‘Add Forwarding’ button to add the free web & email forwarding package;
After that’s been added, you’ll be able to configure catch-all email forwarding;
If you need to configure the domain to point at your web hosting, then you just need to add the A record, just like you did on 123 Reg.
And that’s pretty much it.
Hopefully that was useful for anyone else in the same boat as me; and if other companies end up doing this, the same steps can be followed to transfer to wherever doesn’t charge for this service.
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Thank you Matt, I appreciate you posting this. I followed your same approach after finding that the catch all forwarding had been removed from my 123-reg domains and have completed the transfer of 2 of my domains so far. The only issue I had was that my Fasthosts account needed to have my full details and payment info on record before the transfer could be completed. The second time it went very smoothly.
So glad you found it useful and you were able to switch :) It was a bit of a faff, but I was glad there was another provider as good as Fasthosts to switch to.
I’ve only just discovered that catch all forwarding has been disabled, after noticing e-mails were not turning up! I’m pretty disgusted, actually.
If I transfer a domain name to Fasthosts, does the basic free forwarding that comes with a domain registration include catch all forwarding? Many thanks.
@jrawle Yes, you get catch-all forwarding as part of the basic free forwarding that comes with having your domain looked after by Fasthosts. Hope the transfer goes smoothly; it’s relatively straight forward & you’ll be back up and running in less than an hour.
Thanks a lot for your help!
A thanks also from me Matt for the guide, very useful step by step which took some of the pain out of the process.
However since migrating to Fasthosts I notice that I seem to be missing out on some emails that should be being picked up via the catch-all rule. These also seem unfortunately to be the more important emails e.g. mobile phone bill, email from bank, whilst the less useful newsletters / marketing emails get delivered without any problems.
Before I contact Fasthosts support, I was wondering if anyone else has experienced similar, I’ve done all the usual stuff of checking spam filters/folders and sending test emails. My email host (Zen) is set to accept everything sent to it, and worked flawlessly with 123-reg, which AFAIK didn’t do anything fancy like send re-writing.
It’s not even email address specific e.g. order confirmations/delivery notifications from amazon sent to amazon@mydomain.co.uk disappear in to the ether. Yet their product suggestions sent to the identical email address always get through!
@RufusA I’m not (as far as I know) having any problems receiving emails.. all the things I’m expecting to get have been arriving. You should definitely raise with Fasthosts to see what they say; I’d be really interested to know if there was a problem at their end, so I can look out for the same thing. With 123-reg there was an anti-spam setting in their admin pages, but I don’t remember seeing the same thing for Fasthosts.
Thanks @Matt. Just a follow-up, I’ve spoken with my ISP and email host (Zen) and also Fasthosts via chat.
From what I have found out Zen rejects any emails where there is an SPF record mismatch with sender.
Looking at past email headers, 123-Reg forwarded emails seem to have used SRS to rewrite the sender records when forwarding emails.
Fasthosts also seem to use SRS for forwarded emails (although chat support deny this) EXCEPT when the email is forwarded by the catch-all rule.
So if an email is sent to an address which I have an explicit forward rule associated with it, then the headers are wrapped in SRS goodness, and Zen accepts it.
If an email is sent to an address that is picked up by the catch-all rule, then the SRS doesn’t happen, and in most cases Zen rejects the email due to an SPF mismatch.
I’m not sure why the marketing / newsletter ones are getting through via the catch-all but it might be because of DKIM, or somehow their SPF records are very relaxed.
Ah interesting, thanks for the followup. I’m forwarding all mine to a GMail account, which I guess is why I’m not seeing the same issue. You could potentially do the same, then re-forward out of that to Zen?
It gets worse – you did well to leave, 123 Reg are actually removing all e-mail forwarding unless you pay for an e-mail package.
I noticed the catch all problem, but just changed the few addresses that used it. However, I can no longer access the page that allows me to manage the e-mail forwarders. Not the best customer service
Oh wow.. thanks for letting me know; I’m even more glad I made the effort to move. Since moving I’ve not had any issues, so can certainly still recommend the switch.
FWIW, they appear to have made a pig’s ear of the “migration”, and the standard login is missing all but one of my domains! There is a circuitous path you can take (which I forget) that does give an “if something is missing try the old page here” and that is where you have to go to access your old redirects.
Here is the direct link: https://www.123-reg.co.uk/secure/cpanel
Needless to say, over Christmas I’m getting wholly out of dodge.
Just been caught out with 123reg they reduced it to 50 free forwards thought I can deal with that logged in today and all gone no heads up just gone moved over to fasthosts all seems to gone through just waiting on email forwarding to work done as above and sent a couple of test emails but not coming through yet hopefully it sort itself out
Can I ask if 123-reg issue an auth code for co.uk domains? There is the option to unlock the domain and they also have a transfer option using the new IPS tag. So I get an auth code once I hit transfer? Fasthosts suggest I need an auth code to enter onto their system…
From what I remember, yes.. you get a code from 123-reg & can use that in the transfer process. Hope it goes smoothly for you!
Yeah, on the first domain I tried it with I messed something up, but I found Fasthosts are very helpful in sorting things out if there are problems. The second domain I learnt from my mistake & it went fine. The process I documented in my blog post was the one where it went smoothly :)
Hi Matt, thanks for the above. Just moved successfully. The process is a tad different than previously now that 123-reg have migrated to their new service, I had moved a previous domain while it was on their old setup.
So on their transfer page you still put in LIVEDOMAINS then click transfer. They have a few “scare” comments there, might be related to non UK ending domain names? Anyway, you hit transfer and that is all, no code is given.
Definitely worth checking your domain name contact details via 123-reg before you do this, mine were all wrong, you can change it via 123-reg.
Prior to all the above, make sure you have setup a Fasthosts account and popped in your payment method. Here is the link to their new guide on transfer of UK ending domains – https://help.fasthosts.co.uk/app/answers/detail/a_id/463
Other than that, all as you documented originally.
Something worth noting, seems Fasthosts pages don’t dynamically update, so just go back to the home page and then back to whichever screen you need to be in to check if the process has complete, rinse and repeat if necessary.
Took about 5 mins to fully transfer. Domain disappeared off 123-reg and no longer showed pending on Fasthosts.
Thanks again Matt for starting this post, really helpful. Merry Xmas
Brilliant; thank you for all the extra info, I’m sure others will find that useful! Have a great Christmas too!!
This is just the information I was looking for, thanks.
When you transferred away from 123 did they refund any of the £150 that you’d paid them in advance?
It doesn’t quite work like that, Mike, but it’s a good question. I’d essentially bought the domain for 10 years & that’s mine to keep; transferring it makes no difference.. I don’t need to pay again because I already own it for that time period.
NB To see existing forwarders you now need to access the legacy control panel (prior to them removing forwarders I think?) – https://www.123-reg.co.uk/secure/cpanel/cp/mailboxes/manage_email
That stopped working for me recently, there seems to have been another wave of “migrations” and most of my domains disappeared from the old view into the new one that has no mail forwarding.
Fortunately I’ve now managed to extract all my domains from them (had to contact support about a .com as their control panel *said* it had unlocked it for transfer but failed to do so).
What an utter mess.
It seems that my .uk.com domain is a ‘premium’ domain and cannot be transferred…. Grrrr
Brilliant, thanks Matt.
I had 2 .uk, and 1 .com to transfer.
This worked for me after some fiddling and a bit of help from 123-reg on the .com one.
Fasthosts seems really intuitive and easy to use too, with some great help screens.
Glad you found my post useful & you got transferred over ok. Yeah, I was quite impressed by the Fasthosts UI.. felt a lot more modern & less neglected than the one at 123-reg.
@Trevor there should be *no* Dobson that cannot be transferred (I see mention of .uk.com being transferable elsewhere) but the process will vary. So .co.uk transfers were free, but top level .com ones needed to have a duration extension purchased.
If 123-reg is simply refusing to let go, you may have to go through the .uk.com primary registrar whoever they are too raise it (like Nominet is for .uk). I had to use them to force some .uk domains out of Easily a while back as they had become as dysfunctional as 123, but it cost me a small fee for each.
Thanks @fnxweb, I spoke to 123 who said they ‘couldn’t see a problem their end’ and fasthosts said they couldn’t handle it.
Am contacting domains@uk.com for their advice.
Trevor