I am trying out a free Ghost account right now that may replace an old Joomla 1.5 website that is currently hosted on SiteGround. Before I take the plunge and upgrade, I’m concerned that I will no longer have the ability to create POP or IMAP email accounts for my domain name. Is this true? Or does Ghost offer this ability somewhere?
Using Ghost won’t affect your ability to create emails from your domain name, so there’s no worry there. If you share a bit more about which services you’re using to create/run your email accounts, the community might be able to provide additional details.
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I’m guessing that you have a plan with SiteGround that includes some email inboxes. It sounds like you’ve got some sort of package with them. Maybe they host your website, and they also host your email. They might also have registered your domain name for you.
If you’re hosting with Ghost Pro, Ghost Pro will provide the web hosting. It’ll also provide outbound email (only), for your newsletter and for sending magic links.
You will need to arrange email for your domain. POP3 is pretty rare these days, but fortunately, you can shop for it wherever you like – it doesn’t impact what you do with your website at all. An easy fix for email is to set up a gmail account and use email forwarding (if your domain registrar supports it).
You /may/ also need to check on the ownership of your domain name itself. If SiteGround is currently including it as part of a package, you may want or need to transfer the domain.
If SiteGround currently hosts your email and your website, be careful when adjusting your DNS. You need A and CNAME records that point your website at Ghost’s servers, but you ALSO need MX records that tell the world where your email should be delivered. If you don’t see any MX records for your domain but you receive email for you@yourdomain.com, then don’t move the DNS until you get that resolved, or else you’ll break your email.
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In the past I have just used cPanel or SiteGround’s own control panel for setting up email accounts, FTP accounts, etc. With Ghost, I assume I have no SSH access to the server to install something like Postfix or Dovecot, right? What do most Ghost users do? Surely I’m not the only one who wants a support@example.com to use along with my website.
So there’s Ghost, the blogging software package, that anyone can install anywhere (well, that meets the specs), and there’s Ghost Pro, available through ghost.org and with user sites at ghost.io.
Ghost Pro does not give you shell access, nor FTP. It’s managed blog hosting.
You can absolutely have support@example.com to go along with your Ghost blog that lives at example.com. You just aren’t going to get it through the Ghost Pro team.
But what do most Ghost users do? Have a Contact Us page that says, “You can reach me at myblog@gmail.com”? And I thought upgrading to Ghost Pro would allow me to use my own domain, and not be limited to ghost.io. Did I misunderstand this?
Yep, you can use your own domain with Ghost Pro. (Well, I’m not sure about the starter plan.) Sorry, I didn’t mean to confuse you - there are other hosts besides Ghost Pro folks, and I was trying to clarify. :)
To say it another way: Email hosting is entirely a separate item from web hosting. Your existing host happens to provide both, but they’re not the same thing.