# Hot Mail Is No Longer Free?? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 1, 2002, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576 "2002-09-01T17:41:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/21 "2002-09-02T12:40:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Hodge \* > \*\*The service I always recommend (and use) is [MyRealBox](http://www.myrealbox.com/). It has free POP3 access, the spam filtering is excellent and downtime minimal. It’s head and shoulders above Yahoo and Hotmail who are, indeed, slowly and surely moving toward pay only services. \*\* You can’t sign up with a free email addy like yahoo or hotmail. You have to sign up with an ISP address. Good and bad, but I don’t want spam going to my work address as I’ve already got 20 spams a day coming in there at a new account… ---
**Author:** ![Crusoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/49beb7/32.png) [@Crusoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crusoe)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/22 "2002-09-02T12:42:45Z")
I registered with MyRealBox and was fairly impressed, but a little concerned that it seemed to be effectively a technology demonstrator (and therefore not a long-term commercial venture). ---
**Author:** ![FairyChatMom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fairychatmom/32/21906_2.png) [@FairyChatMom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FairyChatMom)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/23 "2002-09-02T14:53:50Z")
I’ve got a variety of freebie accounts for a variety of purposes - Hotmail, Yahoo, Netscape, and [mail.com](http://mail.com). Netscape is the most spammed, hotmail is fine if I put the highest filter category on it, yahoo seems to be the best of the 4 for me. Not that it matters - sometimes all I get is spam… \ ---
**Author:** ![Krisfer\_the\_Cat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Krisfer\_the\_Cat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Krisfer_the_Cat)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/24 "2002-09-02T15:13:55Z")
The only spam I ever get on hotmail is from Hotmail themselves!:eek: And I get stuff from an obscure message board called SDMB there! ---
**Author:** ![Hodge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Hodge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hodge)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/25 "2002-09-02T15:14:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by China Guy \* > \*\*You can’t sign up with a free email addy like yahoo or hotmail. You have to sign up with an ISP address. Good and bad, but I don’t want spam going to my work address as I’ve already got 20 spams a day coming in there at a new account… \*\* I understand your reluctance but, in my experience, they are very anti-spam and I saw no increase in the amount I received after registration. **Crusoe** , you’re right, the service is a testbed and demonstrator, but it is tied to a viable commercial product so I see no need to worry about it’s long-term existence. From their FAQ: > [@](#): > > MyRealBox is as an Engineering test site. The engineering team that programs the NetMail software uses MyRealBox as a testbed to try out new versions before releasing them as part of the NetMail product. This means that from time to time MyRealBox users will experience downtime due to installation of new software or due to the engineering team debugging a new feature. > > MyRealBox is a showcase for Novell NetMail. NetMail is a product available for sale to customers. MyRealBox has been a great tool for selling NetMail since it allows potential customers to see all of the features NetMail has to offer and it proves the scalability of the product. In the 6 months I’ve been using it I havent been able to connect 2 or 3 times and it was once closed down over a weekend for new software installation. This may be unacceptable for those who want 100% reliability but, for my purposes, the benefits far outweigh the occasional inconveniences. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 4:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/26 "2002-09-02T16:20:07Z")
I use [activatormail.com](http://activatormail.com) its free. But don’t use it if you like spam or ads cause they don’t have any… BTW, I setup Outlook Express to get all my mail from all of my email accounts on the web. Its so much easier to deal with incoming email with OE then using the web sites. ---
**Author:** ![Eats\_Crayons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/278dde/32.png) [@Eats\_Crayons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eats_Crayons)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/27 "2002-09-02T17:39:03Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Cartooniverse \* > **Charmain, please articulate upon the “suckiness” of HotMail? Since I just established an account, and was about to shift my e-mail link for SDMB to that name, enlighten me and save me some heartache? Should I go with Yahoo or Lycos instead?** Silentgoldfish already hit most of the points. Before, Hotmail was bought up by Microsoft, it was exactly what it was billed to be: A free e-mail account. No more, no less. Lotsa banner ads, but the whole set-up was quite marvelously simple. After Microsoft leeched onto it, started noticing “differences.” Not at the “sucky” point yet, but I didn’t like feeling that I was trapped in an MSN marketing test. There were a few glitches with their “marketing partners” and privacy issues. Nothing sucky yet, just annoying. I don’t know what changed, but over the last two years, my spam count has gone through the roof! (Though it’s still low by Hotmail standards). The suckiness has been steadily increasing over the past year. We all know about the “log in every 30 days or else!” rule. Right, okay. Fine. One MUST log in to one’s account once a month or all messages will be deleted, **new messages will bounce and the sender won’t be advised of the bounce and won’t know to re-send.** (important) If you pay for your account, you’re exempt from this. Okay, fine. If their resources are taxed to the point where they need to dump long-dormant accounts, that’s fine, I can log in once a month – but I don’t like the tactics. It feels like extortion with their terse “reminder bulletins:” They make your e-mail sound so threatened “one screw up and you’ll lose all your messages! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!” Every couple of months there seems to be a new policy that makes the free account that much more unusable. “Protect your e-mail over the summer!” – I started feeling that I’m being strong-armed by a schoolyard bully. Give him your lunch money so he’ll leave you alone and let you go back to your thing. But the **real suckiness** has been noticed lately (past couple of months). My business – using our own server, not Hotmail – has been having communication problems with our clients who use Hotmail addresses. Our messages don’t always get to them, but since we don’t always get an “undeliverable” notice, we don’t know that they didn’t get the message. We’ve also had complaints from Hotmail-using clients that messages sent to us bounce back as undeliverable. The addresses are correct, we don’t block out Hotmail addresses, and our server has been running smoothly, so there should have been no issues. We sent ourselves messages through our various Hotmail accounts, and sure enough, _some_ bounced back as undeliverable, some did not. Testing with Yahoo and Lycos? All went smoothly, no problems. That _really_ bothers me. I don’t like the idea that my e-mail could be so unreliable and that I don’t even know that messages are being lost! The communication glitches have been so bad that we have lost e-mail contact with a few important people (thank goodness for snail-mail!). It could be that our clients are so plagued with spam that they are hitting their storage quota and we’re not getting “undeliverable” notices. We have no idea why messages TO us would sometimes bounce. So that’s the “suckiness” alluded to in my last post. The unreliability that has cropped up. > [@](#): > > **Should I go with Yahoo or Lycos instead?** I’ve found that Lycos is routinely under “maintenance.” It isn’t off-line, but the services become temporarily restricted to sending and receiving mail only, and during these periods, incoming messages can be delayed. It isn’t that bad, but I think it’s weird that it happens so often. I have no complaints about Yahoo, but I’d expect they’ll eveuntually be going the same way as Hotmail (though they will be nicer in their execution.) ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2002, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576/28 "2002-09-02T20:32:12Z")
I’ve had myrealbox for over a year and it is far and away the best free email out there and rivals my isp’s (verizon’s) email. If they do go down for upgrading/ maintance they will let you know in advance and it doesn’t happen often. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hot-mail-is-no-longer-free/126576.md?page=1)