31 replies to this topic

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Hello folks.

I'm soliciting for suggestions on a POP or IMAP enabled free email service to replace my Gmail. Any suggestions above and beyond the obvious... Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.?

Thanks in advance for your input.

[goretsky]

Hello,

Have you looked at GMX?

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Tushman]

Hello folks.

I'm soliciting for suggestions on a POP or IMAP enabled free email service to replace my Gmail. Any suggestions above and beyond the obvious... Hotmail, Yahoo, etc.?

Thanks in advance for your input.

Eric, I've completely switched over to Juno's webmail service.  I was using GMX for a short while but there were a few occasions where I felt I was not getting my mail on a timely basis.  So I switched.  Truth be told, I'm not too thrilled with Juno either.  In the past 3-4 months, I have been getting quite a bit of spam.  By that I mean atleast 2 per day.  It may only be 2 or 3, but when one is used to seeing ZERO/NADA in gmail.... it's more than what I'm accustomed to seeing.  Most of the spam is from Juno's so called "targeted" ads.  The first time I got one, I marked it as spam.  Juno then said:

"sorry but messages from Juno cannot be marked as spam".  Great..... thank you very much.

Seems as though you can't win for nothing.  If you want to escape Gmail (privacy issues) you gotta suffer through something else.

Since both Juno & GMX have been turning sour, there was yet a 3rd one I was looking at.   I actually tried to sign up for their service several weeks ago but their website said that they had closed off registration for new members.  I'll have to see if I can remember it (URL) as they may have re-opened the registration site.

Edited by Tushman, 27 January 2012 - 02:47 AM.

[zlim]

I was looking for a replacement for yahoo when they started forcing everyone to move to a new look, which I hate.
I have an account with GMX but things like file sharing have not worked properly for US people for a few years and they seem unwilling or unable to fix it so I'm not sold on GMX either. I'd rather put up a file and give a friend access to it than try and email a large file or snail mail a CD.
Juno severely limits the file size attachment so if I want to send several pictures (as I did during 2011's disasters), I had to use another email account to do it. And as Tushman pointed out, you get ads from them in your inbox and you can't put them into the spam folder automatically.
MochaMail was a possibility but the notice they will re-open signups soon has been up for over a year. I've given up checking after seeing this notice for so long.
and here it is http://www.mochamail.com/account/signup.aspx

I finally signed up at fastmail.fm (thanks to frapper who suggested it when I complained about the webmail I used getting weirder and weirder)  https://www.fastmail.fm/mail/personal.html
for the free account.

Edited by zlim, 27 January 2012 - 12:01 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yes...

@ Aryeh... I went to GMX's site yesterday. It looked interesting. My worry, when it comes to email providers, is their permanence. I don't want to have to be changing addresses in a few months when they go out of business or change the email offerings. I'm looking for stability, which is probably just going to lead me back to Yahoo or Hotmail.

@ Tushman... HAHA! I have a Juno account that's about 12 years old. It was one of the first ISPs (free dial-up account) that I had when I first came online.

@ Liz... I don't really mind Yahoo's new web look, but I don't use it much really. I access ALL my mail via Thunderbird. Even though I don't have a paid Yahoo account, I can still access it via Thunderbird by using the wonderful Webmail extension for Yahoo. I've been using it for years. Works like a charm 99.9% of the time. Whenever there is a bug or issue of some sort the Webmail dev fixes it VERY fast.

About Fastmail... I considered them also. They've been around for a long while. I think I can IMAP with their free account, if I'm not mistaken. Well, another to consider along with GMX, Zohomail, etc., I guess.

Thanks for the replies, folks.

[Corrine]

I know that Temmu had a problem recovering his Hotmail account of many years and never did get a reply when I attempted to contact someone on the Hotmail team.  That said, when I created a Hotmail account in 2001 because it was needed to access a particular sit for work, even though the account was hardly ever used, it was a spam magnet.  When the opportunity arose to create a "live" account, I gave Hotmail another look.  

My current Hotmail address has been my primary personal e-mail address for the pat five years.  I have found it to be the most versatile, almost spam-free e-mail account I've ever used -- and that includes Juno, Yahoo, MyWay, G-Mail, and a host of others I've tried.

No, IMAP with Hotmail (info on POP3 with links to various Hotmail security features:  Use Hotmail to Manage All Your E-Mail Accounts), however the tutorial at Hotmail IMAP Settings purports to

show you how to use Hotmail as an IMAP account, even without having Windows Live Hotmail IMAP settings available at this time.

IzyMail provides IMAP access and has a free trial but the subscription cost is $1.49/mo.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Hi Corrine...

Yes, I have a Hotmail account. It's actually one of my oldest email accounts. I've never had any issues with them. I currently access it via Thunderbird (POP). I may have been grandfathered in, though. I don't remember. Does Hotmail free allow POP these days?

[securitybreach]

Amazing, I just signed into my hotmail account that I have not used in 10 years and it was still active. No mail though?? They must of deleted all of my old mail.

[Tushman]

Does Hotmail free allow POP these days?

I think they do.  I know that Windows Live Mail will retrieve your Hotmail messages.

@Josh - I'm amazed that your hotmail account is still active.  Has it truly been 10 years?  I know that they deactivate accounts if you do not log in once in a while.  I don't know what the expiration period is... 3 yrs? 4 yrs....?  whatever it is these days, 10 years is pretty amazing.  I'm willing to bet that you had logged in at some point prior to that.

Edit:

Eric - just to confirm what i said above, Windows Live Mail does retrieve POP3 messages (Hotmail).

Edited by Tushman, 27 January 2012 - 05:01 PM.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Amazing, I just signed into my hotmail account that I have not used in 10 years and it was still active. No mail though?? They must of deleted all of my old mail.

Awww, man. That means all those eCards I've sent you over the years are gone, huh?  

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Eric - just to confirm what i said above, Windows Live Mail does retrieve POP3 messages (Hotmail).

Most webmail accounts will retrieve POP emails. I need to know if I can retrieve Hotmail with a stand-alone client like Thunderbird. I'll go there now and check it out. If it does, I can just fire up two or three new Hotmail accounts to replace the ones that I'm now using at Gmail.

Thanks!

[V.T. Eric Layton]

OK, evidently Hotmail does still allow POP access via stand-alone clients --> http://windowslivehelp.com/solution.aspx?s...1b-118e45a7cf1b

YAY! That might be the way I go, then. We'll see.

[ross549]

Hot mail will clear out your old data if it is inactive long enough. Yahoo does the same. I think Yahoo and Gmail both have a policy of 90 days.

I know this only because I have extremely limited internet access while on a deployment. Since a normal deployment is 6 months, I just needed to make sure I logged in twice to each of the service when I was out in order to not lose any data.

Here is another thing you can do to never have to worry about this. Register your own domain!

Plenty of registrars let you set up your custom e-mail and forward it to where ever you need to go. I do this with my website. My personal e-mail address forwards to my gmail, and Gmail is set yo send e-mail as my personal address.

Works like a champ!

Adam

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Irony = Eric, a Penguinista Extraordinaire using Microsoft's Hotmail for his Linux Tech Blog.





@ Adam... One day, when the $$$ situation gets a bit better, I intend to do the private domain/server provider route. Right now, though, that ain't in the cards.

[ross549]

https://www.hover.com/pricing

35.00 per year.....

Adam

[V.T. Eric Layton]

OK, new Nocturnal Slacker email is now LIVE!

[ross549]

No longer Memorex?

Adam

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Nope. Ran out of wine glasses.

[amenditman]

Eric,

I don't use it much, but there is an email site with the correct name in it. Don't even know if it will fit your pre-conditions, but check for yourself.

linuxmail.org   It's part of mail.com, they do allow you to mark their promotions emails as spam.

Mine is amenditman@linuxmail.org, imagine that.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Yup. I've had Mail.com accounts in the past. Unfortunately, they do not allow POP/IMAP access for free accounts.

[zlim]

Article stolen from Freedomlist. Sorry I could not get the link to work because it is old and probably removed.
mail.com is owned by gmx

LOS ANGELES, CA. September 20th, 2010 - MMC, the leading publisher and digital media company that owns content properties such as OnCars.com, Deadline.com, HollywoodLife.com, Movieline.com, BGR.com, YHAwards.com, HollyBaby.com, Fan.com, India.com and others, today announced a strategic transaction related to its Mail.com asset with Europe’s largest Internet company, United Internet Group. The Germany based United Internet, a multi-billion dollar publicly listed communications leader, plans to leverage their pioneering e-mail subsidiary GMX to continue the success that Mail.com experienced under the MMC umbrella, while dramatically building the e-mail service internationally.

Under the terms of the agreement, the United Internet Group has acquired the Mail.com e-mail business from MMC, but MMC will remain the primary global content provider for the Mail.com portal.

[V.T. Eric Layton]

Well, how 'bout that.

[goretsky]

Hello,

GMX has been around since 1997, according to Wikipedia.  The service started (or was at least popular) in Germany, which is where I have seen the most users of the service.

You could also try Yandex, which is a Russian service.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[frapper]

You could also try Yandex, which is a Russian service.

Interesting.  

Spam-free
Your mailbox is protected by our "Spamoborona" technology

   Go for it, Eric.

[zlim]

Looks like they even have a search portal
http://www.yandex.com/
Interesting.