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Which Webmail Service Do You Use?
worm eater asks: "I've been hosting my email with my web site host for some time, although a while back I used commercial services such as Yahoo! and Hotmail. I liked Yahoo!, but was disappointed to hear that they stopped offering free POP3 access. So I'm looking for a good, free webmail host for a friend of mine that supports POP3 -- because sometimes you don't want to have to deal with a web interface, no matter how well designed. And it's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely. What do you recommend?" This was last asked two years ago, but webmail is more prevalent now than it was then, so maybe better options are available. Readers interested in security with their webmail might find this discussion interesting, as well.
fetchyahoo
I've been using it for 2 years now with no hassel, IMAP and POP3 support, 10MB webspace and no adverts. :-)
Great service even if its is used for a test bed for Novels services
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
I started using GMX about two years ago. They have free POP3 and spam filtering and an assortment of other tools. They seem to be quite stable as well. The only drawback is that the site is all in german. None the less I find the web interface quite useable after I spent a week or so getting used to it. (I use a POP3 client most of the time but if I'm on vacation for example its nice to be able to get e-mail from the web.)
Works great for me ever since Yahoo went to pay only for POP3 service. Open source also. From their website:
Yahoo! Mail disabled free access to its POP3 service in April 2002. This resulted in many people (including myself) to look for alternative free POP3 services. But this exercise can be very difficult because of the fact that your Yahoo! Mail address could be with several people and informing all of them about your new email address could prove to be a nightmare.
And then one day, I stumbled across a Perl script called FetchYahoo, which almost did what I wanted! It downloaded emails from Yahoos website and presented them in a format such that email clients like Netscape and Pine could read them. But, the format in which it saved the emails is not supported by all email clients, including the one that I use. Also, making a layman install Perl and to get a Perl script to work could be a nightmare.
So, YahooPOPs! was born. YahooPOPs! is an open-source initiative to provide free POP3 and SMTP access to your Yahoo! Mail account. YahooPOPs! is available on the Windows and Unix platforms.
YahooPOPs! emulates a POP3/SMTP server and enables popular email clients like Outlook, Netscape, Eudora, Mozilla, IncrediMail, Calypso, etc., to download and send emails from Yahoo! accounts.
How do we do it you ask? Well, this application is more like a gateway. It provides a POP3/SMTP server interface at one end to talk to email clients and an HTTP client (browser) interface at the other which allows it to talk to Yahoo!
For those of you who like to do your own thing, but still want the webmail then look no further than Squrrel Mail.
Chock full of features and can be configured to your heart's content with the robust plugin system. I've been using it as my sole email client for over two years now without regret.
Find a cheap domain hosting provider that gives imap access and php support and your set.
I don't really mind double posts on
.Mac is awesome. The only downside being that you need a Mac to use it properly, but if you do, it's one of the best services available, 100megs hosting, iLife apps integration, great offers once and a while, a 15mb mailbox with webmail and imap access. What else could you ask for.
Go out and find a cheap web account with POP that only charges a few dollars a month. Then install a script-based email client. The end result will have no annoying advertising, and you'll have web space and your own domain to play with to boot.
http://www.imap.cc/ a.k.a. http://www.fastmail.fm/ is my favorite. They have POP3 and SMTP for a small fee. 10M of space is included.
Why not use the MUCH better protocol IMAP, instead? Why do people keep using and expecting POP3?!?!?
I looked for a good webmail system that also supported IMAP. I finally found it in www.fastmail.fm. It is a pay service but it is very reasonable if you want a reliable email system. I pay $20 a year for: 50 MB storage space 200 MB bw/month IMAP/POP/Web access SMTP for sending email Mail forwarding Virus checker Advanced SPAM filter 3 Aliases They have a FREE service as well as one tier of service lower and one higher than the one I chose. Check it out. I have been very pleased.
I highly recommend SDF. It's an OpenBSD powered, Non-Profit, unix shell account based service. They offer a webmail interface via Squirrelmail (see above posts)
/home disc storage (100MB for each!) 300MB total)
:)
$1 gets you a lifelong membership with 20MB email (inc. web, POP, IMAP spamfiltering) and 20MB webspace (http://yourname.freeshell.org), along with all major unix shells and common typical unix utilities(elm, pine, mailx, rmail, lynx, cgi/php4 etc. etc.)
However, if you want to financially support SDF, for a lifetime membership donation of $35, upgrade to ARPA membership and get additional web, email and
ARPA includes compiler access (GCC, ruby, python, perl, lisp etc) and additional internet access - telnet, ssh, ftp, ytalk, irc, snarf, ICQ etc.
Click here for more information - there's additional services available - MySQL, VPM, SSH-tunnelling, DNS, listservs, virtual hosting etc.
SDF is not a fly-by-night service, it's a thriving community that's been around for over 16 years with hundreds of members and a lively community (bbs)
For us European users, we've got a dedicated server at SDF-EU
Beats every other suggestion here into a cocked hat
These two services seem further ahead than HotPOP3 for downloading Hotmail Emails.
I personally use Hotwayd on my home linux box. Installation instructions were excellent and run w/o problems every since
Hotwayd: http://hotwayd.sourceforge.net/
Gotmail: http://www.nongnu.org/gotmail/