As ZipperJJ said, you can cancel your AOL subscription and keep using your same email address.
If you’re curious to see how it works, from any computer with an Internet connection, go to mail.aol.com (without the www) and you’ll see where you can put in your screenname and password and read your email.
My family finally cancelled our AOL susbscription, and we still have our AOL email addresses and they’re working just fine.
Pretty much what Lynn Bodoni said.
It is still the fastest email peer to peer & IMO one of the easiest to set up groups and other email stuff. I do not run a business or anything like that.
I have Gmail and do not use AOHell for an ISP or anything like that, but they have the best spam filters I have yet seen and make the fewest mistakes with them.
YMMV
I got AOL back when choices for internet were either dial-up through the phone line using a modem, or high speed T1 lines that were only affordable by companies or government/universities. Before the internet became popular (which I consider to be 1992) AOL acted as a Bulletin Board, sort of a mini internet through which you could do internet like things but only on the AOL server and with other AOL members.
Even after DSL became affordable enough for me (1997ish) I kept AOL for awhile because that’s where my email was going to and also because it had decent chat rooms - the internet equivalent (IRC) tended to be less populous, have a much tighter demographic, and be less useful for location based chats. Eventually I gave it up entirely, mostly because I stopped paying for it, and the bother of figuring out how to use the now free “bring your own provider” option was too much of a bother compared to just using the internet equivalents.
My mom, who is very much not computer savvy, wanted internet at some point so I suggested that she get AOL, as it was cheaper than DSL and cable internet wasn’t available in our area yet, as well as the fact that it was an all-in-one application that was easier for her to learn. Recently she was given a shiny new mac and I set up her computer to do all the internet stuff without AOL (gmail, ichat, mail, safari, etc.) But she’s reluctant to give up AOL because it’s what she’s used to.
I’ll also note that it’s a major pain in the ass to transfer some things out of AOL (like bookmarks, contacts) and nearly impossible for other things (saved mail). With saved mail, you can’t even forward it! How silly is that?
So yeah… AOL is several things 1) A service provider - you can get cable or DSL or high speed phone line internet now, or dial-up providers other than AOL 2) An all-in-one internet application - this pretty much can only be done with separate apps nowadays, even Netscape which used to be a browser + email has split into separate apps and 3) A bulletin board - although AOL has repointed some of it’s AOL exclusive services to other internet sources, it still has some exclusive content and I believe the chatrooms are still AOL-only.
You are all right AOL is an ISP ( Internet Service Provider) but within the last few years they allow you to keep your account and email on AOL if you already have a faster ISP connection with your local carrier, like comcast, roadrunner, etc. If you call AOL you can now get it for “FREE” if you are already connected to the internet through a local ISP carrier. They don’t advertise it but just call them and switch over to the “free” service. The only drawback is if you go somewhere and they don’t have a local carrier and you try to access AOL you will be charged a per minute connection rate if they don’t have another local carrier.
As an example let’s say you goto a Hotel and they have internet service, you can connect to AOL by just going to it while your Hotel is already using and ISP within the hotel.
Like I said they don’t tell you this at AOL.
Yes, that was my point. I haven’t actually had aol software on my computer for many years, I just use webmail.
Right now, AOL is just an ISP. There’s no difference in using it than in using Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, etc.
One advantage, though, is that you can use it in more areas. My parents live on Long Island, but spend most of their winter in Florida. With AOL, they can pay one bill to one provider and be covered, and not have to turn off their account when they’re not using it. At the time they started doing this, they couldn’t do that with any other ISP. In addition, they signed up for AOL because at the time it was the only ISP that was local.
There’s a lot of residual dislike for AOL because it attracted a lot of newbies. But right now, there’s no reason for that, and if AOL is the best deal for you for an ISP, then you’d be a fool not to use it.
You can buy those little cell-phone network dongles that plug into a laptop now and get 3G internet for $30-40/month. That is more than AoL dialup costs, but it’s faster (there’s a reason most people have switched to broadband), and it works anywhere a cell phone does, not just when you can plug into a landline. That probably takes up a lot of the business that AoL might get from travelers.
AOL dialup service is $10 a month. You can spend up to $25 a month for the same service with extra abusive AOL software and insurance.
True, but lots of hotels don’t have modem ports on phones anymore, and lots also charge for local calls. Oddly inexpensive hotels all seem to have free wi-fi, high class ones who get mostly business travelers charge.
So, they don’t offer that AOL only stuff like the way the Dope started?