Free E-mail..Is It For You
| Category: E-mail Marketing | Date: 2002-07-15 |
You already have some form of e-mail, presumably, or you wouldnt be reading this. So why should consider signing up for a free service that requires you to view ads and fill out a marketing questionnaire in return for sending and receiving email?
For one thing, such "freemail" gives you a backup when your primary service is unavailable (can anyone say "AOL"?). It can offer a personal address if you now share an email account, or an alternate address for less critical and personal messages (especially if personal e-mail is discouraged on your corporate server).
We tried several of the services recently, with mixed results. Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com) and MailExcite (http://www.mailexcite.com) are both browser-based, which means using them is similar to visiting a website (in fact, thats exactly what you do when you want to send or retrieve messages). The interface was a little cleaner with MailExcite; balancing this, Hotmail offers automatic delivery of a number of special interest "e-zines" ranging from literature to golf. Attaching files was a bit tricky: we had problems sending an attached JPEG file from both services using IE 4.0 for Macintosh; we then switched over to Netscape Navigator 3.01 and sent the file successfully (although it was delivered as ASCII text by Hotmail, requiring uuencoding by the recipient).
Juno (http://www.juno.com) takes a different approach because its a freestanding application, with no browser required. That probably means it will be a lot faster for sending and receiving messages than accessing a website just to get your mail. However, Juno is text-only and no attachments are permitted.
We also looked into hempseed (http://www.hempseed.com), a site dedicated to the promotion of the hemp plant (for legal purposes only, of course) that has offered a free email account with no questions to answer and no advertising to view, in return for your support in increasing visibility for the helpseed domain name. Alas, hempseed is not currently accepting new accounts.
Overall, we were underwhelmed. Wed expected "freemail" to be a much easier and carefree experience. We ended up feeling that you probably get what you pay for...and the email services bundled with those $19.95 a month Internet offers is probably a pretty good deal.
About the Author
Robert McKim
DBMarkets@aol.com
http://www.msdbm.com
For one thing, such "freemail" gives you a backup when your primary service is unavailable (can anyone say "AOL"?). It can offer a personal address if you now share an email account, or an alternate address for less critical and personal messages (especially if personal e-mail is discouraged on your corporate server).
We tried several of the services recently, with mixed results. Hotmail (http://www.hotmail.com) and MailExcite (http://www.mailexcite.com) are both browser-based, which means using them is similar to visiting a website (in fact, thats exactly what you do when you want to send or retrieve messages). The interface was a little cleaner with MailExcite; balancing this, Hotmail offers automatic delivery of a number of special interest "e-zines" ranging from literature to golf. Attaching files was a bit tricky: we had problems sending an attached JPEG file from both services using IE 4.0 for Macintosh; we then switched over to Netscape Navigator 3.01 and sent the file successfully (although it was delivered as ASCII text by Hotmail, requiring uuencoding by the recipient).
Juno (http://www.juno.com) takes a different approach because its a freestanding application, with no browser required. That probably means it will be a lot faster for sending and receiving messages than accessing a website just to get your mail. However, Juno is text-only and no attachments are permitted.
We also looked into hempseed (http://www.hempseed.com), a site dedicated to the promotion of the hemp plant (for legal purposes only, of course) that has offered a free email account with no questions to answer and no advertising to view, in return for your support in increasing visibility for the helpseed domain name. Alas, hempseed is not currently accepting new accounts.
Overall, we were underwhelmed. Wed expected "freemail" to be a much easier and carefree experience. We ended up feeling that you probably get what you pay for...and the email services bundled with those $19.95 a month Internet offers is probably a pretty good deal.
About the Author
Robert McKim
DBMarkets@aol.com
http://www.msdbm.com
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