PAID EMAIL: That’s one thing I hate in this FREE world of Internet!!!!
I am a heavy mail user, since the last 3-4 years, with traffic of at least 50 legitimate mails to and fro mail messages per day.
Although I am privileged to have my official account with a 500 Mb mailbox ;), but for personal mails I have gone for the sturdy, available, and secure paid email service of USA.net. The primary reason was that I wanted my email service to be accountable and reliable.
Standard features available:
Address book, Folders, Signatures, Profiles, Change password, scheduler/reminder, Spam Blocker, Filter, Rule based delivery, Vacation replies & Auto responders etc etc.
Best & Worst Features.. and their catch?
Mail Access allowed: Web based interface, POP……..The Catch is there is no IMAP access;)
No advertising on the web based interface……..The catch is 30$ per year subscription;)
Anti Spam: The feature is present……..but the anti spam techniques are not too effective. I still get 50% junk mails!!
Languages available: English, Spanish, and Portuguese……..The catch is that the interface changes to these languages, and you are not allowed to enter data from a Portuguese /Spanish keyboard. So its not truly Mulitilingual.
Moreover both are quite identical language. So effectively its 2 language only;)
Online help: Means Help available on the NET. Catch is It does not mean there is someone sitting at other end answering your queries.
You can download messages to your favorite client but the catch is you cannot send messages through thru a client as there is No SMTP Relay allowed by Netaddress
The look and feel is soothing purple with high readability of text….. The catch is that you cannot change this color to your favorite ones..:D
Composing feature: This opens up the compose window in a sperate browser. It means that you have 2 windows open at the same time. The catch is there is no formatting available to enhance your text display in the compose window. You send it as a plain vanilla message.
Customer Service People: Never needed them till now the catch is the customer service desk is not in India, so you will be calling on international long distance for your query resolution or will have to wait till evening, so it is dawn in US, as support is looked from US
Others:)
Standard Space: 10 Mb……..The good things is that they do not count the space occupied in your trash folder. More space could be had with more money.;)
Speed: The speed is decent. Considering the mail servers are not locally hosted, they are fast!
Service Uptimes: 99.98% and they actually achieve that. That translates into 17 hours downtime in one year, which in industry parlance is very good!!
Penalties for failed uptimes: Not offered!!
History: This one is neat; very few service providers provide this. Kudos to this!! This gives you a historical summary of your messages. This is wonderful!!!
The Layout: The placement of the buttons is well thought of and the menu is predictable and easy to use.
Pricing: The biggest problem is the price attached to this service. 2 Years @$69.99, 1 Year @$39.99, Monthly @$05.95.
Security:
Secure login through https:// so your login/passwords are safely transmitted on the net
Expires Page Views for Better security if user is on a public terminal.
Cookies/ Session id based logins for preferential access from terminals
Virus scanning: is available for downloading the files. Whether they scan for outgoing files is not my headache! I cud not figure any catch in here.
Use of back browser is allowed for convenience of use from one view to another.
Overall I feel down coz of:
The price I am paying for this account
No text formatting in composing the mail
The R & D effort at Netaddress.com. Changes are too slow, as compared to Yahoo or Indiatimes mail.
Should try:
Yahoo: For speed, Features, integration, single sign-on, Rich text editor, Look and feel etc;
Indiatimes: Speed, Features, whopping 30+10 Mb Disk storage, Rich text editor Multilingual, audio/video mail
MSN: For the features, interface and hotmale account;) but MSN is damn slow!!!
Rediff: For the no fuss plain vanilla email, but Rediff guys have been blocking sites of job /matrimonies/education/travel email subscribed by the Rediff users.
If you take the price out... I think then this email service will be worth recommending to all!!! But…I gotta opine now.!!!!!