Moving to a less intrusive email service

obit

New Email
Hi,

I have decided that if possible I would like to have an email service
that is somewhat immune from commercial interests that large email
services usually have. For example, Gmail picks up on a regular basis
the words from email and then it advertises what it believes to be of interest
to the sender/receiver. In addition, this service collects email.

Is there a service that one can use with Verizon as an isp that is relatively
easy to use? I am thinking of opera.

Thanks.
 

foggy

Valued Member
Hi, obit

Welcome to the forums !

Just about any move away from the Big 3 (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo) and AOL is going to mean you must either be content with fewer bells and whistles or be content with paying a modest price for the service. I say "just about" because there are a few exceptions, myopera, which you mentioned, being one of them. 1 GB storage. Free POP/IMAP access. Nice, fast interface. Ad-free. It's my preferred service at the moment. Even though it's still in beta, it's very pleasant to use. They'll be adding new features in the coming weeks as mentioned here.

There are some other free services, but they will either have low storage, nag screens (to get you to sign up for a premium level), or will lack features you might find important. E.g.

OpenMail.cc (nice, one person company; Roundcube interface; 500 mb storage; aliases; no ads. But tech support may be delayed until the owner has time to get to any problem, which he does as soon as possible. Nice for a back-up service, but you'd have to try it to see if you like it as a primary one.)

Hushmail.com (small storage for free accounts (25mb), but a reputable Canadian service; new beta interface; helpful tech support. But there's a new nag banner at the top -- which can be manually closed each session -- advertising their premium levels.

FastMail.com (great company, though it has had some small outages of late; same people behind the new myopera mail service; they have a very inexpensive 'ad-free' level ($5/yr) with 100 mb storage and POP/IMAP access, a few aliases, "personalities" (i.e. sending mail 'as' one of your other addresses without necessarily using the other servers). And the FM forums over at the EMD site are a wealth of information, including very knowledgeable users of the service (in case you'd find FM tech support slow in getting back to you).)

Some like GMX.com. Some hate it.

Some like Zoho.com. A suite of services, like Gmail, but with some interesting options and (some say) much better/more responsive support. I don't know much else about it.

If your main concern is ads, you could always use a Hotmail account and simply use a webmail adblocker extension to remove the annoying right-side ad. (I do.)

I hope that's of some help.
 
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