I’ve 95% abandoned Yahoo e-mail (gradually over the last few years, actually) as each new update to their service is worse than before, to the point of being utterly obnoxious to use. (Current Pit thread.)
Now gmail has gone there too, and it’s time for me to go elsewhere. I’ve been thinking of quitting that too for several weeks at least (and for several years on the specific subject of their handling, or lack thereof, of attached files).
Can someone recommend to me, a free web-based e-mail service that isn’t continually jumping sharks? If it’s supported by advertising, I can live with that as long as it’s not too intrusive. (That was always a primary plus for gmail.)
I want a simple-minded e-mail service that can send and receive plain-text messages, or occasionally with enriched HTML text, that runs just fine without JavaScript, and lets me send and receive attachments (Yahoo does that part fine, gmail not so fine), and has reasonably good spam filtering. Bonus points if it supports custom filters and e-mail searching.
Have you considered collecting your mail via a POP client? I do this with Gmail and never have to visit the web interface except when I’m away from home for a while. And since it has so much storage I just keep a copy on the server and clean it out every so often.
I want web-based because, among other reasons, I use several different computers to get to my e-mail. I didn’t know that I have an option to download e-mail to a POP client, and still have it remain there on the web-based server. Also, I don’t think I want to fuss with installing POP on every one of my machines.
They are old machines with old browsers, that I don’t want to upgrade, for various reasons. I like them the way they are. Mostly.
Gmail is lately displaying messages that my old browser will be unsupported soon. I get that (and similar harassment about having JavaScript or cookies disabled) at lots of sites, but typically everything works. I get the feeling that Google may really mean it this time.
Lately, when I try to log in to gmail, I get a full-page nag screen with advice about upgrading sometimes. Usually, nag screens like this include a link I can click to bypass that screen to go to the regular log-in screen. Not so with the latest nag screen I am seeing when I try to log in to gmail. They really aren’t acting like they want my business.
POP is fine if you just use one computer, but for multiples you want to use IMAP. We use Google Apps for Education for our email, and I access it using Apple Mail at my desk, and on my iPad and on my Android phone. It all stays synced with the server, so once I’ve read a message it’s marked read on all my devices.
And I don’t have to worry about accepting cookies or enabling JavaScript. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to use a web mail interface when a real mail client is so much quicker and easier.
…the new look “hotmail” outlook.com works pretty nicely. A very clean interface, and does what it “says on the tin.” I quite like it: but I’m still using gmail as my primary interface at the moment.
Another vote for outlook.com. It’s clean, it’s simple, and it just works. Ads aren’t too intrusive, and I don’t expect them to ever be, since, unlike Google, ads aren’t Microsoft’s primary income source.