It seems that offering free email is a popular way to attract repeat visitors to your site these days.
However, don't you need a huge amount of storage space on your server to do this? Yahoo gives each person like 2 or 3 MB of storage space. If you had 1000 people, you're up to needing 2 or 3 GB of storage.
Yes I think the diskspace is your responsibility...but keep in mind most people don't use more than a tiny fraction of their allocated disk space...if your site is rather large it could be worth it, though...
I wouldn't offer free email unless you had some serious traffic going though...
If you're going to offer email using your own script, then you'll need to provide the disk space. However, if you go with everyone.net or bigmailbox.com, they provide everything.
We use everyone.net at wsresource.com, and it works great.
Or you could always sign up with Everyone.net. Unless you run a professional site, they're the perfect choice.
They let offer 6 meg free email (at your domain) accounts to your visitors. The space is on their server, all you need to do is change a DNS entry or two and it will be at your own domain.
The interface is real good (if you want a sample, go to http://mail.penguins.thinkhost.com/ and sign up for an account). That is what the general interface looks like. Keep in mind it can be customized to a much greater extent (I haven't had the time to make it look too nice yet ).
I'll tell you the downside. Everyone.net puts up its own banners roughly 50% of the time, the remaining time is free for you to put banners. The same goes for outgoing email signatures. There's also a "Powered by Everyone.net" button on each page.
That's more than good for most sites, including the one I'm currently developing. If you've got the cash though, there are other companies that will offer you pretty much the same deal, without the banners/buttons for cash. I don't know the name of one of those offhand though.
Most users only user 20-30% of their space. So you would need less then one gig. Microsoft does this for Hotmail and though they sometimes runs into problems with running out of space.
However, you can be guaranteed that 95% of users won't use all their space.
I also use everyone.net on two sites and think they are great. Not only are the services great but the support is outstanding! I would recomend them over bixmailbox.com
If you want to see how the services look you can see at my email site www.email.ky
With everyone.net do you have any control over what type of banner ads are shown during their 50%? I wouldn't want to have ads from companies that were not appropriate for my site.
There are other services such as ZZN, but I wouldn't reccomend them personally, they seem a little more interested in getting noticed than providing GOOD services, I personally would set up my own server and run it from there......I only have one question though, how could I set up my own computer to do this, I currently own a .co.uk website, hosted by freenetname.co.uk, is it possible still? and if so...how???
I suppose, If you were only interested in having a yourname@XXX (XX being who you hosted your e-mail address up with), then you could use namezero for that...It is possible, if you read the FAQ on their site, they offer unlimited e-mail aliases which could be forwarded to each individual e-mail subscriber...Infact, that's quite a good idea...It can be accessed through Outlook Express.
HellFire is dead-on about ZZN...when they first came out they were considered quite cool...I used them for a bit...and HellFire's right: it seems as if they try to put their company name and logo out there for everyone to see as much as possible to the point where no highly professional site can use them without losing a bit of dignity, IMO.
And besides, they have you put TWO buttons on your site...not just one...that seems like overkill to me...bad enough they've got their name IN the email address itself...they need ads on there, too?
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote/font><HR>I only have one question though, how could I set up my own computer to do this, I currently own a .co.uk website, hosted by freenetname.co.uk, is it possible still? and if so...how??? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Gossamer Threads ( http://www.gossamer-threads.com/ ) has an email program that you can run on your server to allow this. It's pretty pricey, but if you have lots of traffic to your site, I think it'd be worth it. It works by having a catch-all email alias that 'pipes' (much like how an autoresponder works) all the email that goes to a domain into the program to deliver to each user. You'll have to check to see if your host can provide this for you, or find another host for both your website and email or just for the email service (Gossamer Threads offers servers for this use as well). I think there are other server side applications that can do this too.
The Truth is, there are still no truly "FREE" service providers, the best ones to stick with are the ones which are low key, and provide good, but most importantly solid service, something which you can rely upon. In my opinion everyone.net is the best, the only downfall to this service is the banners, but if your looking for "FREE" e-mail services, that's your best option. Oh and one minor problem about freenetname.co.uk, they will only allow 1 e-mail alias, which for all of us people who are on that means, we have to stick with the banners until a better offer arrises.
Oh, by the way; I was on http://www.ffonline.com, and I noticed they use a ZZN account, they seem to have bipassed most of the "major" functions that ZZN's own e-mail area allows, and compiled this into their own version, whether or not other services such as BigMailbox or Everyone.net allows this too, is another question. What we need is a mix of the 3 hehe
BN3.com too good to be true!? I just found out about this service, they offer indescrete, no banner, yourname@yourname.com e-mail services, is this the perfect e-mail service, better than both everyone.net/bigmailbox??? it sounds too good to be true,
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/font><HR>I only have one question though, how could I set up my own computer to do this, I currently own a .co.uk website, hosted by freenetname.co.uk, is it possible still? and if so...how???
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