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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
One of my websites is hosted via Interland, which offers web-based access to email.
Can't say I recommend them, though - they've been dropping so much mail because of the recent virus attacks that I've had to set up my own mail server and use theirs only as a secondary. Their customer service is awful, too - the representative I talked to resorted to outright lying in order to avoid taking responsibility for the missing email.
Come to think of it, I'd avoid them like the plague.
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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.)
This is a personal opinion. Pick another host if you like, but pay for one. Much better than free.
With free software out there, it is cake to run a home IMAP or POP3 server and have your own webmail configured exactly how you want. Nothing to it.
I host my own email server on a dsl line. Currently I use phpgroupware for webmail access but its development has gone kind of stagnant lately. What other packages do people use? I'm upgrading the server OS and thought I might check out a few alternatives. I know I can do a freshmeat search but I want to know what is active and popular.
In Republican America phones tap you.
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
I've been using a .Mac address for a while now and I really like it. In addition to the webmail client, my address book and bookmarks are all available to me online thanks to iSync.
Works better than I expected, honestly.
It's nice to be able to store messages indefinitely.
.01% of their bandwidth and system resources to a friend. And unlike many of the services that I know will be mentioned here, that address will actually survive.
If you want to store messages indefinitely, or want a permanent e-mail address, don't rely on free services. When choosing a provider, ask why they will be around in 5 years. Yahoo will be around because they are drawing traffic to their larger site, and selling upgrades. Microsoft will be around because they are trying to leverage control of every aspect of computing to their advantage, and hotmail helps tie people to their passport system. But i-name? deathsdoor.com? Free mail boxes and forwarding services have folded rapidly as small hosting companies have realized that it takes a lot of bandwidth and effort to keep that extra box with 100,000K users up and running, especially with the things people use free mail accounts for (spam boxes and to side-step site registration restrictions).
If you really need a permanent e-mail box, or a permanent e-mail address, consider purchasing one. POBox.com has been around for several years, and charges roughly 15 dollars per year for mail forwarding for life that, unlike many of the other sites out there, might actually be in business that long.
If you are lothe to purchase a permanent address, get friendly with your local college administrator, ISP owner, or Colo guy at bigcompany.com. Most people who own a domain name have no problem giving out
The ______ Agenda
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.
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.
If you run your own mail server, I'd recommend installing SquirrelMail. All you basically need is an imap connection to the server that hosts the email, and your web server has to be able to run PHP scripts.
I know it has a funny name, but SquirrelMail is free, open sourced, and fairly easy to install. And it should do everything that you need it to do. (it may not have *all* the bells and whistles, but it gets the job done) And so long as you're running it on your mail server, you can firewall out imap to everyone but localhost.
I use this for my home server since I host my own email too. I use it for those rare times when I can't get an SSH connection to the server so that I can use pine instead. Oh, and the college that I work for went with using this for our web-based email that we use here for the students. While there may be better ones out there, the word "free" was very attractive, plus it did what we needed it to. So we host 4000+ email accounts with using this to access them. (though we changed the logos and graphics and things like that. It's fairly customizeable as well.) I'd say it was worth your time to check it out.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
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/
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.