Reliable POP3 Email Advice Please

[gallapunk]

Does anybody please know of any free and reliable email account providers that will allow me to send and receive emails via Outlook rather than having to log onto the provider's website? I've tried several, but most of them seem to be a bit hit and miss.

[currob]

i use bluebottle.com log onto www.bluebottle.com and select the free pop3 email account - very reliable no problems with spam or junk mail

[Ethel]

I use gmail - it acts as a pop3 and collects all my emails from my blueyonder and other gmail accounts all in place.

Web based, so all my emails can be accessed from any pc in the world:

http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?h l=en&answer=21288

[Buenchico]

GMail is by far the most frequently recommended free, e-mail service here on AB. However, some people don't like the way that it scans all mail, so that it can append advertising material:
http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/GmailLetter.ht m

My own preference is to use Gawab. Details of how to set up an ad-free e-mail account with Gawab, which can be accessed via POP3 or through the web, can be found in paragraph 3, et seq, of my post here:
http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Technology/Inte rnet/Question407429.html

Chris

[rojash]

Can someone explain for me, please?

As far as I know, every ISP offers free pop3 and smtp mail when you sign up. Most people access the internet through their ISP, so why do they need to find some other means of sending and receiving e-mail?

[Tichfield]

It can be useful if:

You change ISP then you don't have to tell everybody you have a new email address

If your ISP's mail server goes down you have an alternative for sending messages.

[Ethel]

Rojash - not everyone has an ISP.

Some change ISP's frequently and want to keep one email address for continuity.

Some, like me, have many different email addresses for different things and it would be difficult to remember the passwords and sign in details for all of them when using a different pc.

I do use my blueyonder email addresses (3) but find it far more convenient to access all my email in one place.

GMail does it for me.

[rojash]

Nice to see you back, Ethel :-)

[markysngc]

Tichfield, although I agree that having another mail account can be useful for many reasons the question was regarding outlook and pop3 based accounts, if using outlook you will be using a SMTP server to send mail and you can only use the SMTP server of the ISP you are connecting through (unless it supports SMTP authentication) so having another account to send mail using outlook will probably not work if your ISP's mail server goes down.

gallapunk keep that in mind, if you do decide on another POP3 service other than the one that your ISP offers when setting it up in outlook you will still need to put your ISP's SMTP mail server in the outgoing mail server field in outlook.

P.S. IMHO imap is the way to go rather than POP3

[Buenchico]

Sory, but Markysngc is wrong about needing to route outgoing POP3/SMTP mail via your ISP's SMTP server.

Gawab (which was recommended in my post) allows direct access to its own SMTP server from any IP address. (It wouldn't matter if your own ISP didn't even provide email services; you could still use Gawab).

Chris

[markysngc]

Buenchico, Hi, sorry I didn't make it clear... yes you can use other SMTP servers, but only if that server allows SMTP authentication (i.e. you can login to the SMTP server using a username and password, which is normally not required) otherwise it would be known as an "open relay" and would get blocked by virtually every other mail server on the internet within hours (open relays are spammers best friends when they find them) also some ISP's (like AOL) route all traffic on TCP port 25 (the SMTP port) to their own servers regardless of where you are tryinig to send the traffic.

I checked Gawab's site and they will indeed offer a SMTP service from any ISP but the server will require logging with user name and password (just like a POP3 server)

I have not used Gawab's service so am unable to comment on reliabilty but from the details on their site it would seem to fit the bill for the gallapunk

I thank you for pointing out my lack of clairity.

Mark

[gallapunk]

Thanks everyone for your input and I am going to try them out.

marcysngc: have a window open and am reading up on imap as I type, thank you.