Good free email providers?

[Splash]

I bet there's a good free email service out there. I'll find it.

Be sure to post back when you do. If you can get what you're asking for without spending cash I'm sure people will be all over it

[pctech2012]

I use a company called Netcetera, costs me £11 a year for:

10 mailboxes.
Webmail that can support HTTPS
Greylisting that cuts down on spam.
They generally respond to tickets within 30 minutes or less and that's round the clock, 7 days a week. (don't think Google, MS or Yahoo even bother to do that, they just send you round and round scripted pages till you get bored and give up.) and they are based on the Isle of Man

[Behemoth]

Good luck finding a free service thats going to work the way you want it to. Thats why half of these services are free. Glad I have my web hosating package which costs me £3.50 a month which I primarily just use for e-mail anyway. Anything important goes to my domain e-mail address, anything I'm really not fussed about gets binned over to google etc.

I never actually use the e-mail address from my ISP, starting to think that might be a good idea actually.

[melon]

I use a company called Netcetera, costs me £11 a year for:

10 mailboxes.
Webmail that can support HTTPS
Greylisting that cuts down on spam.
They generally respond to tickets within 30 minutes or less and that's round the clock, 7 days a week. (don't think Google, MS or Yahoo even bother to do that, they just send you round and round scripted pages till you get bored and give up.) and they are based on the Isle of Man

looks good,pity there wasnt one with some more added features too though.

im going to try these guys on trial .

m

[Zak33]

I think that, long term... you need to buy a domain, pay yearly for that....and pay for email hosting monthly.

In 10 years when you're still using it, setting up email address for family on it, and you're in total control.. it will seem like good advice.

Looking at the long term importance of your communication with friends, family, work, banks, business's etc... it looks more and more viable.

[Splash]

looks good,pity there wasnt one with some more added features too though.

Features such as? Genuinely interested in what more you would want from an email provider.

[melon]

I think that, long term... you need to buy a domain, pay yearly for that....and pay for email hosting monthly.

In 10 years when you're still using it, setting up email address for family on it, and you're in total control.. it will seem like good advice.

Looking at the long term importance of your communication with friends, family, work, banks, business's etc... it looks more and more viable.

its very hard to look long term for me , but i know what you mean

right now its more for security and an alternative means of storing documents safely .
, possibly sql database,website , eshop in the future , and a blog would be nice.

Come to think of it i have missed blogging since Vox went down.

m

[cam1986]

Cant beat Google mate. Never had any issues with them myself and for free its great!

[melon]

Cant beat Google mate. Never had any issues with them myself and for free its great!

i dont trust google, even keywords I know are certain dont come up with anything half the time when searching for old emails .

too unreliable.

m

[pctech2012]

I did wonder myself before registering mine back in 2005 but it was one of the best decisions I ever made because at the time I was moving between ISPs in search of a good deal/good service so the address would change constantly which was a PITA.

It also looks better on things such as CVs.

[ZaO]

GMX apparently don't do any data mining which google, yahoo and msn/hotmail are so bad for. So I'm going to give them a try for now. They don't seem to have the conversation view for messages though which google and hotmail have. That is a big feature for me so I'm a bit gutted about losing that, but it's better than being spied on.

All of you people that keep recommending google only seem to be aware of the functionality of the email client and not so much what the providers do with your info. I mean I agree that the gmail client is awesome, but google are not. I block all their cookies in my browser and try to avoid their services as much as possible. Will be doing the same with yahoo once I manage to find my new home for email and fully switch over to it.

[Splash]

ZaO - you know that email sent plaintext (eg not PGP Encrypted) can be intercepted and read by anybody in transit, right? Your concerns about privacy are valid, but unless you're encrypting your mail then you should consider email no more secure than writing something on the back od a postcard. I accept the datamining based on this, and anything that needs to be sent using a secure method is sent in an alternative manner to plaintext email.

[ZaO]

ZaO - you know that email sent plaintext (eg not PGP Encrypted) can be intercepted and read by anybody in transit, right? Your concerns about privacy are valid, but unless you're encrypting your mail then you should consider email no more secure than writing something on the back od a postcard. I accept the datamining based on this, and anything that needs to be sent using a secure method is sent in an alternative manner to plaintext email.

Well I'm pretty sure that gmx mail is encrypted. If you go here: http://www.gmx.com/
It says "Keep Your Account Clean. Your privacy is guaranteed with our superior SSL encryption system. Say goodbye to SPAM and viruses. We will never scan your emails for advertising purposes."

Or are you talking about something different?

[watercooled]

Fastmail are very good IMO. The interface is far less bloated than the likes of Gmail and they just seem to do things properly IMO. The free option is somewhat limited, and includes taglines in outgoing emails, but the cheapest paid option at $4.95 per year gives you more storage space/features and removes ads/taglines. It's not free but it's hardly expensive, just check them out.

Edit: Email may be encrypted from client>server, but it's almost certainly NOT encrypted end-to-end i.e. the sending/receiving email providers will have the email stored in plaintext, and it's possibly sent between servers in plaintext. For end-to-end encryption you need something like GnuPG on a desktop email client.

[ZaO]

Well I'm quite happy to stay with gmx for now at least. Wasn't to sure about fastmail's privacy policy either. I don't require a lot from an email provider really. I'm just a casual email user I suppose. My email is mainly for registering on websites with the odd personal email and seller stuff on ebay. It's why I don't want to pay for it.

So what about that Firefox thunderbird thing? Can it do this type of encryption you guys are talking about? While I don't like the idea of random people snooping on my emails, my main concern was these sickening companies selling my personal info and scanning my email for marketing and analytics/database stuff. Because of this kind of thing I always avoid using my real name wherever possible. Privacy is going out the window these days. I still value it.

Fastmail are very good IMO. The interface is far less bloated than the likes of Gmail and they just seem to do things properly IMO. The free option is somewhat limited, and includes taglines in outgoing emails, but the cheapest paid option at $4.95 per year gives you more storage space/features and removes ads/taglines. It's not free but it's hardly expensive, just check them out.

Edit: Email may be encrypted from client>server, but it's almost certainly NOT encrypted end-to-end i.e. the sending/receiving email providers will have the email stored in plaintext, and it's possibly sent between servers in plaintext. For end-to-end encryption you need something like GnuPG on a desktop email client.

[Splash]

You use most (possibly even all) email providers with encrypted mail, which I guess is what you're looking for. Take a peek at http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-...pg-encryption/ - to secure your data it needs to be encrypted during transit otherwise it's completely insecure and should be treated as such. Also bear in mind that this will only encrypt email that you send - anything inbound is very likely to be sent unencrypted.