This article has been superceded by 8 free POP3 email options
published 2008.08.25.
New Services
Older Services
Low Cost Services
It's
been a couple of months since we reviewed what's available in free
POP3 email services, and that can be a long time in the free email
context. In the interval there have been some departures and new
arrivals.
21box.com, which looked
like a promising new service in our last update, turned out to be a
bit of a dud. Their website is still up, but I haven't been able to
log on to my 21box account with a POP3 client for weeks, so I've
removed 21box from our listing.
However, there are some new services to fill the vacancy and
then some.
There are, of course, dozens of free email services on the
Internet, but the vast majority of them are Web-based, which means
that you must access your mail with a browser. Web-based email can
be convenient if you travel a lot or need to access your mail from
computers you don't own, because you can use any computer, anywhere
in the world that has Internet access.
However, for regular home or office purposes, POP3 email, the
type of email account you access with client software like Eudora,
OS X Mail, Netscape Mail, or a wide selection of others, is
more convenient, especially if you are among the three-quarters
plus proportion of Internet users who don't have broadband
service.
Incoming messages are received by a remote server and stay there
until you download them to your own computer. With POP3, you can do
all your email work offline except for actually sending and
receiving messages, which cuts down immensely on online time used.
Since both outgoing and incoming messages are stored on your own
hard drive, it's always easy and convenient to access your
archives.
New POP3 Email Services
While the excellent German GMX email service has stopped
accepting new signups outside Europe, FireMail is another very
professional free email service from Germany where North Americans
can still get an account.
Features:
- 15 MB storage
- SMTP and POP3 support
- Spam filtering
- Webmail support
- Contacts stored with import and export in vcf
The signup information and procedure is entirely in German. I
have a little German and was able to sign up with little
difficulty, but you might want to enlist the aid of one of the
online translation services.
Note: Before you can use FireMail with a POP3 mail program, you
must activate your post-office box over a login under http://mail.firemail.de.
I've had a FireMail account for several weeks, and so far it's
been quick and reliable.
Cwazy, based in Selby, North Yorkshire, UK, was created in
September 2001 to provide good quality free email for the
webmaster's friends and& family. In early 2002, after quite a
number of "friends of friends" requested accounts, Cwazy began
offering accounts to the public.
Today Cwazy is approaching one thousand users and is accessed
from the UK, Brazil, Germany, Israel, and the US. Cwazy is a free
service and is provided without charge for the benefit of anyone
who would like to use it.
Currently Cwazy receives between 96,000 and 150,000 hits per
month and processes some 20,000 emails per day.
Services
- 10 MB mailbox
- Unlimited outgoing mail
- Advanced spam protection
- Filtering/sorting capabilities
- Message highlighting
- POP3 support
- Multilingual translation
Signup is very simple and quick. The account is created and
access details sent to the contact email address you have
provided.
This service seems to work well so far, but there is no SMTP
support for sending mail, so you have to use your ISP's SMTP server
for sending (if they allow it for third party email accounts --
mine doesn't).
This new email service based in Alexandria, Egypt, offers:
- POP/SMTP Support
- Protection from spam, viruses, and pornographic emails
- More than 50+ features (some for fee, but the basic service is
free)
- 15 Megabytes storage space.
- Message filters & rules
- Also supports Webmail so you can check your inbox with a
browser from any computer on the Internet
Signup is a bit time consuming and demands a lot of information,
but once the signup process is complete, the new account is created
instantly.
So far, this one has been fast and slick, both for checking and
sending mail.
Older Free POP3 Email Services
Besides the new services outlined above, free POP3 email
services include:
This is a German-based free email service, and like most things
technical and German, it is very well done.
You can get free POP3 and Webmail access (GMX FreeMail Classic),
with 10 MB of server storage space, anti-SPAM protection.
Features:
- 2 email addresses within an account
- 10 MB mailbox storage capacity
- POP3/SMTP (SMTP after POP)
- Attachments to 5 MB
- 30 days retention time for your emails
- directory
- anti-spam protection
- numerous files and filter functions
GMX is an excellent email service - fast and reliable.
Unfortunately, GMX has recently restricted new user signups to a
handful of German-speaking countries in Europe. :-(
HotPOP LLC is a privately held company based in Newton,
Massachusetts. Founded in 1998, HotPOP offers email accounts from
various domains with a combination of features not found with other
providers.
Features:
- POP Access. Use almost any mail client you wish
- SMTP Access. Send mail through the HotPOP server (you have to
check your email first). You may include up to 50 recipients on a
single message.
- Mail Forwarding. Have your mail resent to up to three
addresses.
- 10 MB Quota. Store thousands of messages
- Server-Side Filtering. Block mail and spam before it hits your
inbox
- For fee ad-free opt-out option.
There is also Web access to your HotPOP account. There is a
limit of 500 KB per message and a maximum of 1,000 incoming email
messages per day.
Signup is easy. Just fill out the form and survey, and you are
ready to go. An email will be sent to your current email address
with your password and some helpful information. If you are using a
POP account, you can log in right after you configure your
client.
HotPOP currently has seven domains to choose from and says they
constantly searching for new ones. Memo: keep looking, guys - most
of these are pretty lame.
- HotPOP.com
- ToughGuy.net
- PunkAss.com
- BonBon.net
- Phreaker.net
- SexMagnet.com
- GameBox.net
I've had a HotPOP account for well over a year now, and I've
been impressed with the service. Once in a while the server is a
bit sluggish about answering, but it always comes up. There is SMTP
support for outgoing mail, which requires checking your inbox
before sending, and I've found that aspect to be a bit cranky at
times, requiring two or three checks before the SMTP server will
respond.
HotPOP offers a combined POP3, forwarding, and web-based email
service. At the free level, HotPOP includes 10 MB of storage for
email messages and the ability to specify up to 3 destination
addresses to forward messages to.
Another one that has proved to have staying power, and it's been
reliable.
This one is a bit different in that you are required to provide
your valid home address and wait for HowlerMonkey to send you your
login and password info by snail mail. This is an anti-spam
strategy, and I suspect it works well. I've never received any spam
I can recall from the howlermonkey domain.
Both POP3 and outgoing SMTP services are offered (POP before
SMTP authentication), and you get 3 MB of disk space for
storing messages. The service places a text ad on the bottom of
every message passing through the system. If it's interesting, read
it, there is usually a link in it to click on if you want to visit
a web page to learn more. No interest? Drive on. Beats paying
bills. Only 10 recipients per email.
HowlerMonkey spam policy:
"We aggressively fight spam, and will do anything in our
power to make a spammer's life unhappy. if you are looking for
someone to help you to spam, you best look someplace else, we crave
your gonads as a neck tie. You are a parasite, and a public
nuisance, and usually refuse to pay the fees of a 'legitimate' mass
mailing firm."
Inbox.lv is the largest provider of free Web-based email in
Latvia and supports POP3 access with 8 MB of storage space.
The service also includes Kapersky antivirus scanning, which scans
all incoming and outgoing emails. There is a limit of 1 MB of
attachments per message.
If you do not sign in to your @inbox.lv account for 60 days, or
if you do not sign-in within the first 10 days, your account will
be marked "inactive." Stored email and addresses will be deleted,
and inbound mail will be refused. If your account stays "inactive"
for over a period of 90 days, it may be permanently deleted.
Inbox.lv can be viewed in a variety of languages. You can make
the language of a Inbox.lv session match the language of the Sign
In page used to begin that session. You currently have your choice
of English, Latvian, and Russian.
I've been using Inbox/lv for about a year now, and while I've
occasionally had trouble getting the server to answer (crowded
phone lines between North America and Latvia?), I've found it
generally good. No SMTP support, though. You have to send mail
through your ISP's server.
Although Apple discontinued their free mac.com email service,
you can still have a free POP3 email account with "mac" in it --
@macmail.com.
Alex Summersby of UK-based MacMail.com says:
"Thought your readers might like to know about another
alternative to Apple's .Mac if all you need is a Mac-friendly email
service that gives you an address that proclaims your allegiances:
MacMail.com.
"MacMail offers free-of-charge POP3 email accounts which you can
access via a Web browser or your preferred email client software.
It's based in the UK but offers a worldwide service. I should
mention also that the system is not based on an off-the-shelf
engine but has been custom-programmed to deliver a range of
features that most other such services won't match, including:
- customizable filters and user-defined spam blocking
- online mail management, custom folders and Address Book
- powerful search functions
I've had a MacMail account for about six months, and it's proved
a good service - fast and reliable, although the seem to be
experiencing some problems with their POP server at this writing.
The signup procedure was painless and configuration a breeze. The
downside is that there is no SMTP support, so you have to use your
ISPs' outgoing email server.
I'm an almost total POP3 user, and MacMail works fine with
Eudora and Nisus Email - the two email clients I use most, but the
MacMail Webmail interface is about as slick as I've seen - clean,
intuitive, and fast, and it's nice to have as a backup.
As with all Webmail services, you can access your MacMail
account, send and receive messages and attachments, from any
computer, anywhere in the world, so long as it has a working
connection to the Internet and browser software. All you need is
your MacMail User name and password.
MacMail basic services are free of charge. Additional MacMail
services or "Premium Services" cost a small monthly fee. You get
5 MB total server space with the free service, and if you need
more you can increase this by subscribing to the MacMail Premium
Services.
I've been using MyRealBox for several years, and except for a
few timeouts (Novell offers this service as a product testbed, and
warns that this will happen from time to time), it has proved quite
dependable and fast. MyRealBox also offers SMTP support for
outgoing mail.
MyRealBox does not allow advertising and supports any standards
based email client. Novell hosts this service to showcase its NIMS
product and to test NIMS in a real world environment. There are
currently over 150,000 users despite the fact that Novell has never
advertised the existence of the service. MRB currently runs on
three NetWare servers. NIMS also supports the Linux and Solaris
operating systems. However, MyRealBox will not accept any Yahoo!
Groups email messages.
MyRealBox offers free email with 10 MB of storage space and both
POP3 and IMAP-based access. Outgoing SMTP is also available with a
maximum of 15 recipients per outgoing email sent through the
MyRealBox system. You can set up the service so that it
automatically forwards all email to an external email account. Note
that the service is ad-free since it is in permanent beta test (see
below), but it comes with certain restrictions. For example,
MyRealBox refuses to accept any Yahoo! Groups email messages.
Not much else to say about this one. It works well, but there is
that occasional downtime. MyRealBox has been around for a while and
is likely to stick around.
SoftHome is a dedicated email service. I've had an account with
them for about five years. This one works well. There is also an
upgraded for-fee professional service available.
SoftHome pledges: "You'll get a free email address you can use
for the rest of your life. It won't go away when you change jobs;
it won't go away when you graduate; it won't go away when you
change Internet Service Providers. No matter what happens in your
life, your family and friends will always be able to reach you at
your SoftHome address."
Let's hope they are more sincere about this than Apple was.
Note that SoftHome recently downgraded their free Personal Email
accounts from 15 MB and 500 messages to 6 MB and 150 messages.
Likewise, the transfer limit was decreased from 45 MB/month to 10
MB/month. Since the downgrade, I've found that the server is
frequently slow to respond when you're checking mail, but the SMTP
server continues to work well. Messages stored in the system for a
period of time may also expire and be deleted. Messages can be sent
via SoftHome's SMTP service to a maximum of 10 recipients per
email. Web access is also available.
Another British free email service is bonnag.com email.
bonnag.com features include:
- no quota (within reason)
- no advertisements in a footer
- email can be accessed online
- email can be retrieved using POP3
- email can forward to another account if you choose
Note that there is a 24 to 48 hour interval after you sign up on
the bonnag.com website while your application is processed.
Low Cost POP3 Email Services
Two other services available at reasonable prices
TheMail.com offers free Webmail, but for 5¢ a day you can
add an additional 10 MB of email space and POP3 access, merge mail,
file manager, filters, and an autoresponder.
Features:
- Autoresponder
- Address book
- WebMail CheckIt! (check and send email right from your
desktop)
- Mail filters (unlimited filters)
- Auto forward (forward your mail)
- Extra 10 Meg disk space
- File manager (store files)
- Calendar/reminder service
- POP3 access (for use with Outlook, Netscape Mail, etc.)
- Vacation messages
- POP3 retrieval (to get your email from other server(s))
- WAP access (access your email from your cell phone)
- Merge mail (send personalized email to a list)
Select Mail offers free email with features that Yahoo! and
Hotmail charge extra for, plus you can choose your own custom email
address (e.g., you@yourchoice.com) as long as you select one
special offer (e.g., a $6.95 Video Professor trial).
Features include:
- Free custom email address (e.g. you@yourchoice.com)
- Free Web mail interface with no annoying advertising
- Free POP3 and SMTP access that works with Eudora, Netscape,
etc.
- Free 6 MB of storage space with large file attachment
support
- Free SpamShield that filters out junk email
- Free support
Select Mail says that by selecting just one special offer you
generate enough support for an entire year of ad-free Select Mail.
They also claim that Select Mail is more reliable than AOL,
Hotmail, or Yahoo! Mail because it's powered by the email experts
at Everyone.net, a reputable email service provider incorporated in
the State of California.
Regarding the custom domain name, you will be the domain
registrant, the possessor of the domain name. Additional fees apply
to transfer your domain name to a different registrar and/or modify
your domain name record. Your own custom .com, .net, or .org email
address. .biz and .info are available for an additional $9.99. You
can use Select Mail with a domain name that you already own.
To renew your account after the first year, you'll receive a
reminder before your anniversary to select another special offer
(if available). At that time, you will also have the option to pay
for Select Mail ($24.99 a year). Failure to renew Select Mail
either way will result in the loss of your domain name and email
service interruption. If you would subscribe to Select Mail without
fulfilling a special offer, Everyone.net has premium email services
starting at $34.99 a year.
Select Mail includes a single email address (e.g.
you@yourchoice.com). Additional email addresses (with 6 MB of
storage each) can be purchased in groups of 5 for $19.99 (US) a
year.
You can receive any size file attachment (up to 6 MB) so
long as it does not exceed the amount of unused space available.
You may upgrade to 25 MB of total storage space and 10 MB file
attachment handling for $19.99 (US) a year.
