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.

Comments

Simple: Pay for it

[camilita]

Its not that expensive. You can get a decent hosting for 5 bucks a month just for POP3 mail. Or for 10 bucks with IMAP. I have just settled (after trying jumpline, vservers and others over the years) with dreamhost.com, just because of webmail and specially IMAP, which many hosts tend to avoid.

This is a personal opinion. Pick another host if you like, but pay for one. Much better than free.

Re:Simple: Pay for it

[Go Aptran]

I agree. I have an account with mailsnare.net.

$19.95 a year for 50 megs of indefinite mail storage, 10 megs of file storage, and 5 "aliases" so you don't have to give out your real mail address and get unwanted spam.

No adverts, no spam after four months, and SSL/POP3/IMAP/WAP access.

There's also a $14 per year option with a few less features, but all of the above are standard.

Re:Roll your own....

[j-turkey]

For those of you who like to do your own thing, but still want the webmail then look no further than Squrrel Mail.

Why run Squirrel Mail over any of the other free/free webmail applications out there (sqWebMail, IMP, etc)?

Some of these do work better than others, depending on what other services you're running and how you need them integrated.

--Turkey

Re:Survival

[Fat Cow]

When I chose a permanent email a few years ago - this was my primary consideration - security. You don't want to be changing it every year or so.

I chose Yahoo because they're stable, free and had a POP3 interface at the time. The POP3 interface went away (kind of...see YahooPOPS) but all else remained as I'd hoped.

However, now I realize that what you really want to have control of is your address itself, which you can only get by having your own domain. You can always redirect the dns mail record thingy to point to yahoo after all, but you can't take your *@yahoo.com address with you if they wanting to start charging or something.

Re:How about IMAP and web mail for free?

[Malcolm Scott]

The fact that IMAP stores mail in folders on the server is a huge advantage. It means it's easy to read and organise your e-mail from different locations - desktop, laptop, webmail from some else's box - and you can get your present and past e-mail from anywhere.

Re:Interland...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I worked there for a while. When mail servers would get really bogged down due to people sending unauthorized mass-mailings, we would sometimes have to resort to flushing the spool. It's a horrible feeling.