Back in the heady days of the dotcom boom, the Irish Times newspaper registered the domain Ireland.com and offered free email addresses within the domain to the masses. The internet has come of age since then but many people, private individuals and businesses alike, have continued to use their Ireland.com email addresses as a primary means of communication.

What is happening with the Ireland.com domain?

Now the Ireland.com domain has been bought by Tourism Ireland, and this has led to the recent announcement that they are to terminate their free email service beginning on November 7th 2012. After that date, all new incoming emails will be “bounced” and current users will lose all access to the service completely on December 7th 2012. Needless to say, this has come as a shock to many existing users.

I have an Ireland.com email address what do I do?

However, all is not lost – though you will have to get a new email address, facilities have been put in place to automatically respond to people who email you at your old Ireland.com email address. So although you won’t be able to read the emails coming in, at least you have the option of telling the sender where you’ve gone. For the moment, you can also forward mail coming to your Ireland.com account on to your new email address – but it isn’t clear whether that forwarding will cease on November 7th or not.

Where will I find an IT company to help me change over from Ireland.com and get my emails forwarded?

On the bright side, for many people this will be an opportunity to set up a new email address, possibly even a new domain name that more accurately reflects their business or interests. If you need help, that’s where we come in. There is a short window of opportunity here so if you’re an Ireland.com account holder, and you need to set up a new email, set up auto-response or save old emails for posterity –give the team at Eonvia a call.