Is anyone using using a web e-mail service that isn’t slowly, inexorably moving towards costing money?
I’ve been using Hotmail for a while, but I’m getting fed up with all of the spam that’s building up–It’s getting in the range of 30-40 spams per day now, and that’s with the spam filter enabled, and the number of alternatives seems to be decreasing.
I haven’t had any complaints about Yahoo mail. Their spam filter isn’t great, but it’s not bad.
There’s www.mail.com, which I had somewhat good luck with. I don’t really get any spam from them, or a very small amount. A greater feature that they had for free that they began to charge for was email forwarding. You would think they would be happy to forward the mail and not keep it on their server, go figure.
Word of warning: smaller providers will inevitably be recommended in this thread, but be careful. You might get more features, a better choice of address and better service in the short term, but if you want an address that lasts for a long time don’t count on it – I’ve had two email accounts at smaller providers disappear as they ran out of cash.
That said, Yahoo!, MyRealBox and Postmaster (.co.uk) seem decent alternatives to Hotmail.
myrealbox IMHO surpasses all free mail services out there and competes pretty well with my isp’s mail.
Advantage over my isp’s email (verizon)
lets you choose between imap4,pop3, and web (V’s only has web and pop3)
Web mail is much faster and easier to get they V’s
is very antispam (v does do something about it but MYRB does far more that I can see)
Disadvantages
goes down more - that said they normally warn you ahead of time.
I’ve never had any complaints about the webmail offered by www.softhome.net
Web, pop3 access, dunno about filtering, uptime has been fine for the last year or so I’ve been using it.
You could also try www.sneakemail.com. Disposable, randomly named addresses, configurable with filtering rules. I use a different address for each website that asks for registration, so I never get more than one or two spams for any given address before I put some filters in place.
Take a look at some of the free Web-based e-mail services located outside the United States. Sure, you’ll have a funky .za or .nz address, but you’ll get far less spam than with Hotmail or Yahoo.
You can find a bunch of 'em through http://www.emailaddresses.com.
Here’s a few …
AussieMail - http://freemail.aussiemail.com.au
Exotic Australia e-mail address.
AnanziMail - http://mail.ananzi.co.za
Exotic South Africa e-mail address.
Start.no - http://epost.start.no
Exotic Norway e-mail address.
Ice.is - http://www.ice.is
Very exotic Iceland e-mail address.
Mongolia Online - http://mail.mol.mn
Outrageously exotic Mongolia e-mail address - Web-based and POP3.
Catholic Online - http://webmail.catholic.org
Say ten Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys, and click “SEND.”
IndiaTimes - http://email.indiatimes.com
Inviting you kind sir to be taking advantage of their free e-mail service very very much please.
MailPride - http://www.mailpride.com
How do you know you won’t like it if you haven’t tried it before?
Polbox - http://free.polbox.pl
Helps if you know Polish, though.
Subdimension - http://www.subdimension.com/freemail/
Free POP3 and Web-based e-mail
Thanks for all the suggestions.
I think I’ll go for Myrealbox–but I kinda like the idea of ‘ijgrieve IS’ as an address.
I’m in the range of about 130 a day using hotmail, with the filter on…it’s completly full in 2 days if I don’t delete.
check out www.fastmail.fm it’s very fast and has lots of features. they have paid and free memberships.
Eric