Suitable hosts?

For decades my ISP has been Plusnet. A year or so ago they ceased supporting mail redirection for clients owning their own domain names. My wife is a silversmith and I obtained the very appropriate domain name silverwraith.co.uk for her, and I host a very rudimentary website, http://silverwraith.co.uk, as a subdirectory of my Plusnet site. She would like to receive emails addressed to her at @silverwraith.co.uk. The Plusnet support person said that I would have to reregister silverwraith.co.uk with a different hosting company. There are some very cheap possibilities, Hostinger for example, but they all offer more than I need, which is a simple domain name redirection. I do not need a website – I already have one. My mental grasp of how domain name lookup works is rather shaky. I wondered if anyone more savvy than I could give advice or recommend how I should tackle this problem.

What I did with HeyRick.eu is register with OVH. They have a “basic service” with one mailbox (multiple aliases possible) and a 10MB hosting package thrown in.
I simply use their mail server (don’t touch the DNS MX records) and edited the DNS A records to change the IP address from the default OVH server to the virtual host on Rob’s server which is where HeyRick lives.
The 10MB hosting from OVH? Unused. Not necessary.

In your case, you want redirection rather than an IP. I think the DNS CNAME stuff does that. Try Googling? OVH, actually, has a pointy-clicky interface that can set up DNS to do various sorts of things.
They have some help info, maybe this might explain it better? https://docs.ovh.com/gb/en/domains/redirect-domain-name/

So, find the cheapest place you can to register your name. You say you only need domain name redirection. Wouldn’t you also need email facilities?

You say you only need domain name redirection.

Only for email.

Wouldn’t you also need email facilities?

I am not sure. At the moment Plusnet is the registrar for the silverwraith.co.uk domain, and http-requests from the domain are redirected to www.wra1th.plus.com/Silver/
which is fine. What I really need is for mailto-requests to xx@silverwraith.co.uk to be redirected to xx@wraithconf.f9.co.uk. That is the bit that Plusnet will no longer do. Does that sound like something OVH can oblige with?

Ah, I see.

That won’t work. Using DNS you can point your email anywhere you like. You can fiddle with the MX records to send anything to silverwraith.co.uk to instead go to wraithconf.f9.co.uk, however any messages that you receive will still be addressed to silverwraith.co.uk.

What you want is not only a DNS service for the silverwraith.co.uk domain, but also a mail redirection service that will fudge the headers of the email to forward it on to the correct place.
Which means allowing a third party unfettered access to those emails.

Wouldn’t it just be easier to set up and use mail facilities directly on silverwraith.co.uk without the redirection?

Wouldn’t it just be easier to set up and use mail facilities directly on silverwraith.co.uk without the redirection?

That is what I am coming round to think. It will mean reregistering the domain name and spending money. It may in the end not be worth the trouble. The silversmithing is a hobby, not a business, and my wife could probably not cater for many more clients.

I had the same problem with my domain(s). After a decade or more, the ISP decided not to accept forwarded emails.

Hosting one domain with the ISP solved the problem. They accept emails forwarded from a domain which they host (including emails forwarded from other domains via the one which they host!)