Is E-Mail Worth Paying For?

Most of you out there already pay for e-mail and probably aren’t even aware of it. If you are the primary account holder for your internet service (meaning the service is in your name and you pay each bill as it comes due), your ISP does include e-mail service. E-Mail is part of the package so yes, you do pay for it.

What is the single largest difference between using a free webmail account from a provider (such as Yahoo, Microsoft or Google) and your included from-ISP e-mail? The difference is that your ISP has an obligation to keep the e-mail service running whereas the free providers do not.

Somewhere in your ISP Terms Of Service (abbreviated TOS) agreement is a blurb or two stating that the e-mail they provide to you the customer must work. You are paying for internet access; e-mail is provided with this access; it must be working. If for any reason the e-mail provided by your ISP does not work, you the customer can demand a refund for a breach of TOS.

However if you’re using a freebie mail provider, that provider doesn’t owe you anything if the mail service fails – including the e-mails you lost from any outage.

Do the “big three” of free webmail providers have paid accounts to give you the same level of service commitment the ISP does? Yes.

With Gmail, there is Google Apps Premier Edition. It costs $50 yearly. (Important note: It’s only a matter of time before Google will offer a paid version of Gmail without the need to be a Google Apps customer, and it will be cheaper per year – but they haven’t quite gotten around to it just yet.)

With Hotmail there is Windows Live Hotmail Plus. It costs $19.95 yearly.

With Yahoo there is Yahoo Mail! Plus. It costs $19.99 yearly.

What are the perks?

Google’s biggest perks are the 99.9% uptime guarantee and phone support. This is what you get when you “go corporate”, so to speak. The uptime is a big, big deal because regular Gmail has no uptime guarantee at all.

Hotmail has quite a few perks when you pay for it. It starts off with a 10GB inbox, no ads, 20MB file attachments (it’s limited to 10MB in regular Hotmail) and the biggie: Integration with Outlook. As in the Microsoft Office Outlook. The availability of synchronization of Hotmail with Outlook is a very big deal for those who swear by that software.

Yahoo Mail’s perks are somewhat different but still quite useful. It’s similar to the paid Hotmail version but you get a few extras such as “Disposable addresses”. In Yahoo’s words: “Create disposable email addresses to use when you don’t want to give out your primary address. Messages sent to your disposable addresses will be delivered to your inbox or to any personal folder you designate.” Very cool. You also (finally) get POP access.

From my personal experience

I have paid for Yahoo Mail Plus in the past and recently forked over some cash for Hotmail Plus (yes I admit it, I did). I have also used Gmail and ISP-based mail.

What I can say about each is this:

Gmail

Unfortunately there isn’t (at present) a paid Gmail available. Some would ask “Why would I want to pay for it?” To that I say consider the fact that some actually do tap the 7GB limit of the inbox as crazy as that sounds.

Google could easily offer a paid 25GB version with no ads anywhere and better integration with some of their services.

And you know they’ve got the space. People would totally go for this. And I’m betting Google could get away with only charging $17.95 a year instead of $19.95/99 like the other guys do.

Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail

I lump these both into the same category because no matter which you use, you do so because you like the service. Both offer roughly the same level of performance.

I prefer Hotmail over Yahoo because of the Windows Live Mail client. It is the only webmail service I know of that has a client that synchronizes both mail and contacts seamlessly and that’s why I went with it. (Yes, I’m stuck on using mail clients, I know this. Personal preference.)

The paid versions of both mail services are outstanding. In addition, both offer very clear easy-to-read verbiage on REFUNDS in case you’re not happy with what you get.

ISP E-Mail

I’m not going to lie to you – this is the best e-mail there is. Seriously. It’s the fastest. It doesn’t have ads. It’s extremely reliable.

But there are two major drawbacks:

The first is that there’s no way to access the mail via IMAP. POP only. Very few ISPs offer IMAP e-mail service. The only way to keep mail on the ISP’s servers is to use their webmail interface; you usually have no other option.

The second is that the mail isn’t portable. If you decide to switch ISPs, you lose your e-mail address. ISP-assigned e-mail addresses are not like phone numbers that you can transfer from one provider to another. When you switch, you lose it.

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Steve Stone
ISP provided e-mail, at least from my ISP, is very unstable and restrictive. It goes down too often. Residential service subscribers get only 25mb of server space (up from 10mb a few years ago). Their spam filter controls at the server level stink. If you volunteer in your community and try to send a batch e-mail to more than qty 50, fellow volunteer addresses at once they bounce the message as outgoing spam. If you send out more than 100 e-mails over an hour they suspend your outbound message service for an hour.

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
How good ISP e-mail is does greatly depend on the ISP. Generally speaking it’s supposed to be more reliable due to the fact the servers don’t command nearly as much traffic as Google/Microsoft/Yahoo do.
The send-out limit is very common across all ISPs and with webmail providers as well. Generally speaking if you send a mail with more than 25 recipients using any type of e-mail, at least half of your recipients will have it flagged as spam.
If you need to send mails to more than 25 people at a time I strongly suggest using a newsletter service instead to avoid those limitations or yes, your mail will fail or simply be blocked at a server level.

http://www.perkster.net Perkster
What about the emails you get on your own domain or paying for email from some web host, they provide webmail and pop access too and not linked to any ISP and if you prefer to use your ISP email, then have your own domain email forward all emails to that, then when you switch ISP, change change the forwarding address to your new ISp address, but to your friends and contacts your email address never changes.

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
Domain mail is a good alternative (I used it for years) but for most people this is not a good option just for e-mail. There is a domain reg cost and hosting costs so it’s not exactly cost effective.
Even if you go as cheap as a $9.00 domain reg fee and $5/mo hosting that still equals almost $70 yearly.

http://www.trendlessrecords.com trendless
a couple things:
You can leave your mail on the ISP’s server with POP (OE and full Outlook, as well as any other client I’ve ever seen have a “leave messages on server” option). Read status and sorting won’t replicate back as POP is a 1-way protocol and just like with webmail services they have mail account size limits, which are usually VASTLY smaller than gmail/hotmail/yahoo offers even in their free services.
As for custom domain email, really it’s the cost of a domain/year, since you can get Google Apps for My Domain for free and you can configure it to work exactly like a regular ISP pop account (or better, IMAP) if you so desire. I’ve recently started using this service and have yet to experience any downtime issues; I guess time will tell.
Chris
My favorite of email is live by hotmail. Since having this email (3months) I haven’t had one count, not one piece of spam mail. I also like the fact that it downloads right to my desk top, and I don’t see any adds and it is free.. I usually don’t keep my emails long just enough time to read then delete. I also have Yahoo, and by far is the worst I have ever had.. I constantly get spam even when the spam filter is on high or whatever you call it..I have but never use my email from Road Runner, and don’t plan on it..Also I personally don’t believe in paying for it, because I’m not a business person, and don’t have a lot of mail that comes to me that are considered important.
http://www.darknet-fusion.co.cc Vertimyst™
I use Gmail, and probably will continue to do so for a long time. I don’t like Hotmail’s webmail interface, and my ISP’s service sucks. With them, I got about 100 spam messages /per day/. Yes, you read that correctly.
With Gmail I’m lucky if I get 1. I usually do get 1 every couple months, though.
I did have a Yahoo account, but again, it was spam hell. Also, I don’t get a lot of email per day, so paying isn’t really worth it for me.
Personally, I think the only people who really need to pay for email are those who work in tech support, or sales. Usually, though, the companies provide the email to their employees, so even then, paying isn’t needed.
Drew
Firstly, in answer to the question: No, I don’t believe it’s worth paying for. I’d have a hard time saying that in the 10 years I’ve been using Hotmail/Live I’ve had more than a half dozen occasions where the service died and I had no access.
Secondly, in reference to the perk of synchronizing Hotmail with Outlook, you don’t need to be a paid subscriber to do this. I have the MS Office Outlook Connector and it allows me to access/manage my ‘free’ Hotmail email account via Outlook. (Actually it allows me to access more than one account.) So long as Outlook is validated, it works fine.
As per a previous post, I also have RoadRunner via Brighthouse, and while I don’t use it, I’ve also never paid for an email service in my life – nor do I have plans to do so.
shanedr
I do not know of any ISP who gives you the option of not having email at a reduced price. As your email is therefore free with your ISP, I fail to see the purpose of this article.
Chris
In reality, we do pay for email service. It is called internet service..
http://www.tophostingreviews.org Shaun
Thanks for sharing. That was EXACTLY what I had in mind.
http://www.surfnexus.com mr. traffic
Traffic exchange is an example of a way to get noticed also. Not sure how many people use them but they still work.