020.co.uk

I do believe that I may have found the best, but least heard of, free email service in the land.

I found it while searching through some free stuff pages, and it was hidden away in a list of what seemed like hundreds of these sites.

Signing up for the service is not done through the normal ways. Instead of filling in all your details there and having instant access to your new account, you fill in very few (your name ...
...can also tell them your preferred login name), and then you have to wait for about a week (well I did anyway) for them to open the account for you. I may sound like a really stupid feature, but for them, it is necessary because they can only host 20,000 active accounts at any one time. So this waiting period obviously depends on their other users activities.

When the time comes, they will open the account for you, and notify you via ... more

I do believe that I may have found the best, but least heard of, free email service in the land.

I found it while searching through some free stuff pages, and it was hidden away in a list of what seemed like hundreds of these sites.

Signing up for the service is not done through the normal ways. Instead of filling in all your details there and having instant access to your new account, you fill in very few (your name and current Email address are the only requirements. You can also tell them your preferred login name), and then you have to wait for about a week (well I did anyway) for them to open the account for you. I may sound like a really stupid feature, but for them, it is necessary because they can only host 20,000 active accounts at any one time. So this waiting period obviously depends on their other users activities.

When the time comes, they will open the account for you, and notify you via an email to your current account (which you can keep open, as I have). They give you the username and password, and you’re free to use their service.

When you’re in, I promise you’ll never want to go back. This service is actually much like a pay-for one. To support them, each time you visit the site, they expect you to click on one of their sponsors’ banners. This is also a slight letdown to the site, but it is up to you whether you actually do it or not. That’s kind of good though because instead of the users paying them, sponsors pay them 100%.

What first attracted me to them when I saw this huge list, were the features they boasted about having. Now I have my account up and running I totally believe all of their statements.

The best way for me to do this is probably in list-form.

# Unlimited POP collection. I now know a little more about this after reading bits about it on the site. They will automatically sort your mail from a number of different mailservers or POP servers, and have it sent straight in to your 020 inbox (if you want). Unlimited addresses!!

# Unlimited incoming message filtering. This is very easy. I only started setting mine up properly today. You do not have to enter whole addresses for the system to deliver them in to different folders. You could just enter part of an address (e.g. part of a name), and then click on the ‘CONTAINING’ box. This then means that if you have a friend with more than 1 address, but with both containing the same name (e.g. bjeee@1…... or bjeee@2…..), then both could be sent to the same folder. Very useful!! The options with this setting are endless. It doesn’t have to be ‘containing’, you can also have ‘starting with’ or ‘ending with’ etc. etc. The number of filters is also unlimited here – unlike some others, which do set a limit of perhaps 12 (another.com).

# Email alert - Instant messaging. This is something that I haven’t really got around to playing with yet. However, it works like this: As its title suggests, it will alert you with a little thing on your desktop. It uses the ICQ network. This, is a desktop message alert program which when combined with 020 will alert you to messages received without you having to have a browser with 020 open. Sounds great and I’m pretty sure it will work. I had a similar thing to this at university last year.

# Unlimited folder set up – Not exactly a unique feature of the site, but with it being unlimited, it is definitely another brownie point for the service.

# No added tagline to your outgoing messages – They promise not to add any extra 020 messages to your outgoing mail.

# Selectable outgoing email addresses - If you are collecting mail from a number of different mail accounts with their POP service, you may also want to send your mail from different email addresses. When composing outgoing messages, all your email addresses are selectable so the mail can appear to have come from any of your addresses. Another excellent feature which will surely be helpful to some people.

As an email service (which I rate as the best), they obviously have all of the normal features too.
Attachment handling
Signatures – make your own and send them as normal with your outgoing mail.

Address book (contacts) – again unlimited. This one is very easy to use, and for me is especially likeable because they don’t have all of that rubbish space (which I know some people will find useful) about home / work addresses, phone numbers etc. Just their name, email address, and maybe a nickname. It provides an excellent shortcut to writing in full addresses. All set out very well.

Customisable interface – as with most of the others, everything here can be set out exactly as you want it. One of my favourite things about this site is the way in which you can set your inbox to show you the top few lines of your mail, before you’ve even opened it. If you have a list, you can then judge which ones you want to read first.

Draft message storage – if you’re writing a long message, you can save and update separate drafts as often as you want, just by accessing the folder supplied for them.

The site runs very fast, and I have always found my mail has been sent on time and has never failed to reach its destination.

 

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