The Golden Age Of Free Email Is Coming To An End

It wasn't that long ago that free email accountsanything is
were so totallytaken for granted that everyoneI have used this service many times and have had
seemed to have several of them. Iremembergoodluck. Their free version is fast, easy to use and
personally owning dozens of Yahoo!, AltaVista,simple, althoughthey do charge extra for POP3
Mail.comand Hotmail accounts (among any others),access. I like their web based mailsystem, although
each with their ownspecial purpose.their free service does require advertisements.
Even the internet marketing books recommendedYou can eliminate these advertisements for less than
having several freeemail accounts for promotional$10 per yearif you so desire.
activities. You see, many "free"advertising-relatedEveryone.Net
activities require an email address so thatspam canPersonally, I love the service provided by
be sent. The exchange is you get a littleEveryone.net. Forabout $40 a year, you get your
freeadvertising and you agree to receive someown domain name and tenfull-featured POP3 email
useless, sillypromotional messages. You cannot justaccounts. You can use your own emailprogram
put in a fake email addressas this would be detected,(Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora or whatever you
so typically you would create a freeemail accountprefer)or you can read your messages on the web
just for the purpose. Who cares how manyusing a simple interface.
messagesget set to an account which will never beEveryone.Net also has a very simple filtering
read?capability, which
This, of course, violated the purpose of free emailI've found is great for getting rid of the spam. This
accounts,which is to display banner and otherservice isperfect for someone who needs a lot of
advertisements as peopleread their email messagesemail accounts without anyeffort, perhaps for a
(many of these free accounts also sendspamfamily or group of friends.
messages of their own to their subscribers as well).Purchase a Domain Name and Forward Your Email
Tons ofmail dumped into accounts which are neverJames S. Huggins wrote an article which explains in
read generate no moneyfor the email services.detail how topurchase a domain and forward email
Nonetheless, in the heyday of the free accounts thisfrom that domain to your
was a minorinconvenience. Ah, those were the days,ISP's account. The concept is as follows:
when businesses would paymajor dollars for banners!- You purchase a domain for about $9.00 a year
In fact, in an even greater perversion of thisfrom a registrarwhich allows for email forwarding.
phenomenon, a fewemail services popped up whichNameCheap is one of these.
actually paid for people to reademail messages. ILet's say you registered "johnsmith.com"
don't mean those "services" which paid to sendyou- Park the web site on their server. This presents a
email messages from advertisers; no, I mean you gotsingle pagewhich says the site is under construction.
paid asmall amount for every single message,- Use the NameCheap system to forward all email to
regardless of who it wasfrom, that you read in the"" to your own personal ISP emailaccount.
web-based email client. The conceptwas thatWhat is the advantage of this? Since everyone will
advertisers would pay for you to look at the bannerbe sendingemail to , you can change ISP's all
adsthat displayed at the same time as the messages.youwant. You don't have to worry about changing
It was even touted among the "experts" that theyour email address -you only have to change the one
free emailservices such as Hotmail was an incredibleforwarding address.
thing called viralmarketing. The concept here was thatPurchase web Hosting
every message you send usingthe service has a linkContrary to popular belief, paid web hosting is not
to join the service. This gives everysingle person whoveryexpensive. In fact, all but the very worst paid
reads a message a chance (and often manychances)hosting servicesprovide far superior service and
to join themselves. Millions (and perhaps tensfeatures than the best free host.
ofmillions) took advantage of these offers.One of the features that is provided with many paid
Of course all of this failed to take into account ahostingservices is a number of POP3 accounts. You
very basicfact: it really doesn't matter how manycan use these foryour own email account as well.
people use the service ifmoney is not being made. InOther Alternatives
fact this proved very true when theinternet bubbleBelieve me, I do understand that companies on the
burst; more users suddenly meant more moneyinternet needto make a profit. I also know that many
beinglost.companies which offeredfree services are struggling
The long overdue death of the banner ad as a viablewith what to do about the failure ofthe banner ad
means ofpromotion foreshadowed the failure ofand internet advertising in general.
many internet businesses.I firmly believe that the "advertising supported"
Those with exceptionally poor business models, suchconcept on theinternet is basically flawed, unethical
asand simply does not work.
AllAdvantage, fell fast. These were soon followed byPeople should pay for whatever services they use at
the merelyidiotic (such as TheVines), the grandiosea reasonablerate. The concept of having someone
(such as Kozmos andelse pay for the service inorder to display advertising
WebVan) and the merely poorly financed (most oftends to distance the user (the website or email
the internetcompanies).user) from the vendor (the free mail
The inevitable is finally catching up with the world ofprovider)because the customer is actually the
free emailservices. These days the announcementsadvertiser and not the user.
seem to be coming almostdaily from all of the majorThis results in poor service and oftentimes a
services: Yahoo, Hotmail, Mail.comand Altavista. Theycomplete lack ofresponsibility for the actual users of
are either attempting to force their usersinto paidthe services.
services or are closing down entirely.However, some of the larger, more traditional free
Many of these services are finding that they canemailproviders have habitually offered horrible (at
survive byproviding free basic accounts with extrabest) customerservice and have proven time and
charges for "special"features. The most commonagain that they could not careless about their users.
"extra feature" is POP3 access (meaningreading emailThese companies have come up with businessmodels
from your email client). The rationale is thethat simply did not work and built tremendous
freeservice cannot make money from POP3organizationson top of those models.
accounts as no advertisementsare shown. This is, ofBy purchasing the new pay services from these
course, a very weak argument because theservicescompanies, you willget the same horrible customer
do place ads in the email messages.service and lack of care (becausethese are the same
Another common "extra cost feature" is largeorganizations), only now you will be paying tobe
attachments. Thefree email services seem to believeabused.
that only a small percentageof people useThe final and perhaps most important argument
attachments of over, say, a few hundred kilobytesagainst givingmoney to these previously free services
toa few megabytes. They reason that if this isis they tend towards theextraordinarily expensive
desired the users canpay extra.side when compared with the alternatives.
The problem is, well, that most of these free emailThe only advantage to staying with one of these
services areworth exactly what they cost: nothing.free services (asfar as I can see) is you won't have
Free email services arefat, dumb and lazy. If youto change. And sometimes, myfriends, change is a
don't believe me, just try gettingcustomer support!good thing.
Their paid versions will almost certainly not beanyAdditional Reading
better, and it appears to me to be exceptionallyOwn Your Own Email Address
overpricedas well.An excellent article by James S. Huggins about how
So what are the alternatives?to purchase adomain name and create forwarding
One of the few free email services that is worthaddresses.