Free or Low Cost POP Email?

[petey]

i don't want to spend $50/yr and then $100/yr for .Mac. so i'm looking for a free or low cost POP email account.

preferably, this would be with a stable company, so the email address would remain valid for several years.

any suggestions?

[Craig R. Arko]

Remind me; what's a stable company?

I don't think IBM sells POP accounts (anymore). :p

I know people who like Pobox.com (http://www.pobox.com/), and it's been around a while.

PS - I'm going to slide this over to the Coat Room, since it's not an OS X specific topic, and you may get a little more action there.

[dsk]

Scroll down to my last post in the thread located at

http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=20495

I mentioned the service Namezero provides (www.namezero.com). Not free, but free is, as Steve Jobs said, harder to find these days.

David

[mule]

www.gmx.net
www.gmx.de
www.gmx.at

their none professional accounts are still free and do offer pop.

[sbur]

I'm just curious ... people who used the free email addresses like yahoo and hotmail....what did they use for an ISP? I'm still associated with colleges, so I have "free" dial-up through the university. I don't even know what the ISP landscape looks like anymore, but don't most service providers provide a couple of email accounts (pop for sure, but some IMAP)?

[dsk]

Yes, sbur, my ISP (Verizon) provides POP e-mail. However, I do not wish to be dependent on my ISP for my e-mail--mainly, because of the not remote possibility that I will get another provider. I think the attraction to mac.com e-mail for a lot of people was that it had the quality of service associated with good ISP mail, but the permanence that results from not being tied to a service which might be replaced.

David

[petey]

Yahoo offers a POP email account for $30/yr.

this strikes me as a bit overpriced, but significantly better than the the $50 then $100 of .Mac.

and i imagine a yahoo email address will be about as permanent as a .mac one.

---

anyone have any positive or negative experiences with yahoo pop email?

(i tried to find a pop option with hotmail, but couldn't find any.)

[vertigo]

I've had great luck with myrealbox.com (http://www.myrealbox.com/). They offer web mail, 10MB storage, and forwarding. And it's Free to boot!

Can't beat that with a stick.

[dsk]

Vertigo, I agree that free POP mail is tempting. But I think Steve Jobs was right--free services are on the way out. I want a permanent e-mail address, and the only way I feel I can insure that at this point is with my own domain name. Yesterday I registered with Namezero.com for two years service at about $30. That gives me POP access. What would .Mac cost? $150. I realize that .Mac offers many other services, but I was mainly concerned with the e-mail address anyway, and used the iDisk rarely.

Just my two cents, anyway.

David

[jasonxz]

HotPop.com offers free POP3 & SMTP; they also have about a half-dozen domain names to choose from (although some are lame and embarrassing, such as sexmagnet.com). They offer an ad-free service for $10/year.

Unlike Mac.com, however, HotPop's email servers aren't quick and responsive.

Also wanted to add this link of highly rated free email services: http://email.about.com/cs/freeemailreviews/tp/free_email.htm

[kerim]

I use Luxsci.com - mainly because they have one of the only good low-cost IMAP servers, but they do also support POP as well. I have been so happy with the customer service over there that I recently discussed the .mac issue with them and suggested that they offer a discount to people switching from .mac. Here is the result:

http://luxsci.com/extranet/ads/mac-com.html

Full disclosure: I don't work for them, but I will get a credit to my account if you mention my name (kerim) when you sign up! :)

[peepster]

Check out spymac.com.

Their free (no ads either) email service is excellent. Only current problem is that it doesn't work with OSX Mail (although you can auto forward) but we have been assured that this is being fixed as we speak. 20MB mail space. No plans to charge.. ever. Excellent Web Mail Interface. POP3. It really is very good.

[vickishome]

Originally posted by dsk
But I think Steve Jobs was right--free services are on the way out. I want a permanent e-mail address, and the only way I feel I can insure that at this point is with my own domain name.

I fully agree with David here. I've watched quite a few free services either fail or start charging. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a service remain for free indefinitely. It cost money to keep those services running, and someone has to pay those bills. Sooner or later, the service will either fail or start charging. There really isn't any way around it.

The only way to ensure that you have a truly permanent email address is to register your own domain. I registered my domain a couple of years ago, and it's been wonderful to not have to worry about my email address changing, even as we changed ISPs. I pay $25/month for that luxury and for my webspace (I wanted an ad-free webspace and was willing to pay for it -- one of the reasons I appreciate macoxhints add-free environemnt and sent in my $10 registration to help keep it that way -- ad-free is highly important to me).

I think you have to decide what your priorities are. Free or permanent? This is an area in which I believe you truly get what you pay for. I also think Apple's rates for iDisk/.mac are reasonsable, considering all that you receive. It would be even better if you could pay a lower rate to just get .mac email service alone as it appears many people have that need.

Just my 2¢ which won't pay for much of anything. :)

[simX]

Originally posted by peepster
Check out spymac.com.

Their free (no ads either) email service is excellent. Only current problem is that it doesn't work with OSX Mail (although you can auto forward) but we have been assured that this is being fixed as we speak. 20MB mail space. No plans to charge.. ever. Excellent Web Mail Interface. POP3. It really is very good.

No way would I be caught dead with a Spymac.com e-mail address. No way in hell. After that iWalk stuff, SpyMac is just crap in my mind.

[Jacques]

SpyMac.com actually have a long history of spoofs, I thought they did a nice job on iWalk! it's all a parady on rumour sites, seems to me - they sure seem to work hard at putting together some of those fakes!

Every seen Acorn's website and their fake Mac mock-ups? I don't recall their website..

[mervTormel]

new service powered by OSX Server...

http://www.forwardmyemail.com/

[Jacques]

Here's a recent article (http://www.lowendmac.com/misc/03/0609.html) from Low End mac on a slew of free POP / SMTP services, very informative and helpful!