Is €25/year too much for pop3 email?

Mad Mike · 18-09-2006 07:15PM #1

I am old enough to
a) Still use email as my primary means of electronic communication.
b) Prefer to use my own POP3 email client rather than webmail.
c) Like to download and keep old mail on my PC rather than on a web server.

For the last few years I have been well served by online.ie's free pop3 email service. Commercial reality is setting in however and now Online.ie's free service is going webmail only. If I want to continue using POP3 I have to sign up to their premium service which costs €25/year. Details here: http://www.online.ie/Email/Renew.aspx

€25 is not a whole lot and in principle I am not against paying for an email service that meets my needs plus there is the hassle of changing email address and getting everybody to use the new one. I just wanted to check that this is a reasonable cost for pop3 email. The 50Mb storage limit seems very low ( doesn't gmail give 1GB?) but its not a deal breaker because I won't be storing mail on the server anyway.

Khannie · 18-09-2006 08:18PM

gmail offer pop3 for free afaik.

25 euro a year for 50MB storage is a total rip IMO.

deadl0ck · 18-09-2006 08:24PM

Why not just use GMail - it has POP3 access also, so you can use your favourite email client and store your mails as normal.
Plus, of course, it's free.

See here for POP access for GMail

PowerHouseDan · 18-09-2006 08:29PM

http://www.hosting365.com/email.php

Mad Mike · 18-09-2006 09:22PM

Hmmm sounds like online.ie are trying to rip me off.

Pity - I really amn't looking forward to the hassle of changing email addresses.

I didn't realise that google offered POP3. I am still biased against gmail though. Partly because of the whole privacy / ads thing, Partly because of the stupid invite sign-up system and mainly because Google is the new evil empire.

Hosting 365 - now there's an idea. It looks like I can have my own domain name and up to 25 email addresses for only €9.95 per annum. I will investigate further.

Edit - on further investigation the 9.95 doesn't include a domain name but a .net domain name only costs another €10 per year.

el Bastardo · 18-09-2006 09:50PM

You could also try AOL or AIM; They offer both IMAP and HTTP facility with 2 GB storage.

RangeR · 18-09-2006 10:42PM

Mad Mike wrote:

I am old enough to
a) Still use email as my primary means of electronic communication.
b) Prefer to use my own POP3 email client rather than webmail.
c) Like to download and keep old mail on my PC rather than on a web server.

For the last few years I have been well served by online.ie's free pop3 email service. Commercial reality is setting in however and now Online.ie's free service is going webmail only. If I want to continue using POP3 I have to sign up to their premium service which costs €25/year. Details here: http://www.online.ie/Email/Renew.aspx

€25 is not a whole lot and in principle I am not against paying for an email service that meets my needs plus there is the hassle of changing email address and getting everybody to use the new one. I just wanted to check that this is a reasonable cost for pop3 email. The 50Mb storage limit seems very low ( doesn't gmail give 1GB?) but its not a deal breaker because I won't be storing mail on the server anyway.

If you are willing to pay €25 AND you are willing to lose your existing email address you may be better off just regisering your own domain name and getting a hosting company to host it for you. It costs about €30 to €40 a year, depending on the hosting provider and for all intents and purposes, you get unlimited pop3 accounts. More importantly, you get to pick the email address[es] that you want, once it's @yourdomain.xxx

You don't even need to host a website but it will be there for you aswell if you want.

Mad Mike · 18-09-2006 10:53PM

Yup - I've just signed up for my very own .net domain name and email - all in it will cost less than €25 per year and I can get email addresses for all the family. Oddly a .ie domain was going to cost much much more. It seems the irish property price bubble even extends to cyberspace.

Bye Bye online.ie

Orion · 19-09-2006 12:51AM

PowerHouseDan wrote:

http://www.hosting365.com/email.php

Can anyone explain why Linux hosting costs more on Hosting365 than Windows hosting?

Orion · 19-09-2006 12:53AM

MadMike: Wherever you host it - make sure that you can add a webmail module as well - if on your own space then something like Squirrelmail would be good. That way you can check webmail on the move but also store locally with POP3.

tbh though I don't know why you'd want to use POP3. IMAP is much better. You use the same client but everything is stored on the server. From a user perspective there's no difference.

rogue-entity · 19-09-2006 02:47AM

Macros42, I dont think there is much of a difference, from the user side.
IMAP behaves like Webmail even if you use a client programme. Mails are not downloaded to the client until the users goes to open them, saving bandwidth. Mails are not removed from the server untill the user deletes them.
POP3, regular email, mails are downloaded to client upon connect and removed from the server, saving server space, clients can be set to download headers only and not delete from server until removed from the inbox (replicating IMAP behaviour).
Gmail is handy in that, you get POP3 access, but, even if you delete your emails from the mail client, Gmail keeps a copy in your archive, so if you login, its still there until you delete it form the webmail system. Very handy if you delete an email by mistake.

RangeR · 19-09-2006 09:23AM

Macros42 wrote:

MadMike: Wherever you host it - make sure that you can add a webmail module as well - if on your own space then something like Squirrelmail would be good. That way you can check webmail on the move but also store locally with POP3.

Not a major concern. Check mail2web.com

Khannie · 19-09-2006 12:39PM

Macros42 wrote:

Can anyone explain why Linux hosting costs more on Hosting365 than Windows hosting?

Always found this one a bit confusing myself. I've seen it elsewhere too. You can do more with a linux server remotely though. Maybe that's what they're charging for.

DemonOfTheFall · 19-09-2006 02:34PM

I think it's cos they have some promotion with Microsoft at the moment ? Think I saw some ads for it somewhere

Mad Mike · 19-09-2006 02:57PM

Well for better or for worse I have set up my own private email domain with addresses for all the family. I went with hosting 365 - the price seemed reasonable and they appear to know what they are at. Their service includes a web email facility although its a bit hard to find the webmail portal.

I have used IMAP but I really don't like it. I find it non intuitive - simple operations like deleting a mail are far more complicated than they should be. Also I prefer not to leave a copy of mail on a server. I like to download it all and store it locally - I know you can do that with IMAP but it takes a bit of setting up. With POP3 that is the default behaviour.

One thing I don't understand though is the relationship between internet domains and email domains. If you own the ooglywoogly.com internet domain do you automatically own the ooglywoogly.com email domain also?

RangeR · 19-09-2006 03:14PM

Mad Mike wrote:

One thing I don't understand though is the relationship between internet domains and email domains. If you own the ooglywoogly.com internet domain do you automatically own the ooglywoogly.com email domain also?

They are the same thing, just different protocols. If you want... You own both of them. You own anything@ooglywoogly.com

Capt'n Midnight · 19-09-2006 07:56PM

Mad Mike wrote:

Oddly a .ie domain was going to cost much much more. It seems the irish property price bubble even extends to cyberspace.

it's not odd at all, it's just a total rip off by the registrar

AFAIK .ie is the most expensive tld on the planet.

It helps the eEconomy as much as taxing credit and debit cards

mloc · 19-09-2006 08:27PM

Been using Hosting365 for a while myself, they're pretty good and reasonable too. Been meaning to change one of my domains across from Network Solutions to H365 but NS aren't making it easy!

Is €25/year too much for pop3 email?

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