Many of us are having problems with our FREE e-mail service.

In the past, when we were searching for a FREE e-mail service to use, we were only concerned with the "size" of the mailbox. Unfortunately, a mailboxe's size is no longer the issue. Today the main issue is "bandwidth use".

Most e-mail services, whether they are FREE or "pay" sites are designed for "text messages". They are not meant to be used for "trading large files" the way we use them. More and more of these e-mail services are realising how we are using them and can't possibly afford to continue adding bandwidth for FREE. Someone has to pay for it. Their income from ads alone, will never cover the costs involved.

For the past 2 weeks, other providers we use have been experiencing many problems. Whether we want to admit it or not, we are all at fault. As sites like Yahoo place more restrictions on what their users will be able to do, more people will be looking for more FREE e-mail services. Yahoo has already begun to charge for using their POP3 service. They are also charging for using their search engines now. Other sites are doing the same. Our problems are only going to get worse.

For a long time, I thought the answer to the problem would be simple: use a "pay" e-mail service. I soon found out it's not as simple as all that. What I found out was that even most of the "Pay" services are not geared up to handle the large volume of bandwidth we use and will not allow us to send large file attachements in the numbers we send them. If you think about it, they are right. 5% of the users will be using up 95% of their bandwidth. Unless they are geared up for that kind of useage, everyone will suffer greatly with response times as we are seeing now.

Most e-mail services I've checked out do not provide a way for those of us who are willing to pay for extra bandwidth to be able to use it without affecting all of their users adversely. Fastmail does. Yes, it's a "pay" service. They do have a "FREE" account but it's useless for what we do as are most other e-mail services. No, you DO NOT get unlimited bandwidth useage by paying. You are still limited. They have various levels of service which you pay for accordingly. Even their "best" service will not be enough to meet our needs. You will still have to pay for extra bandwidth to meet your needs. BUT, at least they plan for it and provide it!

To give you all an example of costs: I purchased an "Enhanced Account" at Fastmail, their highest level account. It costs me $39/year. For that I get a 150MB mailbox, both POP3 and IMAP useage, 25 MB of storage I can use for my own stuff, multiple aliases, my own domain name if I want it, and I can send and or receive 750MB of data per month. There are a bunch of other things I have with all that. If I want to buy additional bandwidth, it cost's me $8 per gig. If I don't use all of the 750MB of FREE bandwidth every month, I lose what I didn't use. In other words, the balance IS NOT carried over to the next month. It makes sense. They are providing for that much useage by all those who pay for it every month. If, however, I purchase additional bandwidth, that DOES carry over to succeeding months until I've used it all up.

Right now, I'm calculating that maybe I would use up no more than 2.75 gigs per month if I send and receive everything using Fastmail. That means I would have to buy 2 gigs per month at a cost of $16 x 12 = $192. Add that $192 to the $39 I pay per year and it comes to $231 per year. That means it will cost me $231 \ 12 = $19 a month to be able to use 2.75gigs a month without any hassle from anyone. Let me also ad that Fastmail is very quick and there are no ads of any kind whatsoever. Their support to date has been very good.

Here is a little info on Fastmail and their costs. http://www.fastmail.fm/pages/fastmail/docs/pricingtbl.html

This explains a little about Bandwidth & how Fastmail tracks your usage of it & why. http://www.fastmail.fm/docs/faqparts/ResourceUsage.htm#ResDetermineBW

I hope this info will help some of you.