Is the domain you are using still working?

Addresses here are built on domains, and domains change: people add new ones, registrations lapse, records get edited. So “which domains work” has no permanent answer — only a current one, and only for the domain you actually care about.

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Below are a few domains accepting mail right now, and a chart of how they come and go month by month. The full list is deliberately not here: it would be most useful to whoever compiles the block-lists that make sign-up forms refuse our addresses. The answer that stays reliable is still the one you get yourself — by checking your own domain.

Check the one you are using

The domain debugger takes the part of your address after the @ and asks DNS, live, what that domain says about its mail. It takes a couple of seconds and tells you one of three things: it works, it is pointed somewhere else, or it is not live at all.

What each of those means, and what you can do about it — worked through here.

Why a domain stops

Cause	How it looks from the sign-up form
Registration lapsed	the code simply never arrives
MX record removed or changed	the same — silence
The site refuses the domain	“invalid email”, immediately

The first two are the domain's problem and the check above finds them. The third is not a fault at all — it is a policy decision on the other side, and no DNS check can see it. Telling them apart matters, because waiting helps in one case and is pointless in the other.

If you would rather not depend on someone else's domain

Every shared domain is maintained by whoever added it: they pay the renewal, they decide when to stop, and they owe nobody an announcement. A domain of your own removes that dependency entirely — and nobody has had a chance to put it on a list yet.

Attaching one is a single MX record, and the check above will confirm it took effect.

Thanks to everyone who has added a domain over the years — each one is another option for somebody else.

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