kittymail.com

One thing is for sure on the net - you can never have enough email accounts. Well OK, I suppose that depends on how you use the internet of course, but with every virtually website you register with asking for an email account to send their junk mail to its worth having more than one and pretty soon, worth leaving that one to its spam hell and finding a new one. Usually I opt for Hotmail, but occassionally you fancy a change don't you and go loooking ...
...Now I'll admit it, I'm not the biggest cat lover in the world. I do 'own' two cats, or rather they own me as cats tend to do, but I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt out an email account with a cat theme. On the other hand, I have a girlfriend who is cat crazy and ummm...well it was the perfect suck up opportunity! ;o)

So, it comes to the site and the first thing which greets you upon entering the addy "www.kittymail.com" ... more

One thing is for sure on the net - you can never have enough email accounts. Well OK, I suppose that depends on how you use the internet of course, but with every virtually website you register with asking for an email account to send their junk mail to its worth having more than one and pretty soon, worth leaving that one to its spam hell and finding a new one. Usually I opt for Hotmail, but occassionally you fancy a change don't you and go loooking elsewhere...which is how I found Kittymail.

Now I'll admit it, I'm not the biggest cat lover in the world. I do 'own' two cats, or rather they own me as cats tend to do, but I wouldn't go out of my way to hunt out an email account with a cat theme. On the other hand, I have a girlfriend who is cat crazy and ummm...well it was the perfect suck up opportunity! ;o)

So, it comes to the site and the first thing which greets you upon entering the addy "www.kittymail.com" is 4 cute little kittens huddled together on the front page. As suck up opportunities go, it was looking like a good-un. :o) Now there's a bunch of other stuff on the front page about pet communities and message boards but I wasn't interested in that and this is an email review so it was straight to the registration page - accessed by clicking on the kitties' food bowl.

Now, signing up for most email accounts isn't exactly a doddle despite what some comments here and elsewhere would have you believe. I can't say I've ever come across one which doesn't ask 101 questions, offer numerous junk mail 'services' and such like and this one is no different. Once again you are asked a bunch of personal details - name address, age and umm telephone number and household income which I find somewhat irrelevant so of course endeavoured to lie on all counts and an alternative email address to contact you on - so in other words, to have this email account you need to already have an email acount! Oh well, I'm sure you have hundreds...

Following the typically intrusive registration page you are offered some junk mail should you care to click the boxes or to be signed up to receive newsletter on such subjects as Sailormoon, Manga or umm not too surprisingly - CATS. If you want junk then be my guest, personally I left them blank as always...and thats it, you now have a kittymail acount and you'll be taken to the entry page. You won't be told you have created your account you'll just find yourself there so assume you have because you have. :o)

So, what does this account offer you - yes OK, it probably would have been prudent to look first rather than to sign up and THEN find out, but I'm not usually after bells and whistles from an email account but I just can't be bothered using them which is why Outlook Express was given pride of place in my trash can many moons ago. As it happens though this is quite feature packed, although I'm sure someone will tell me it doesn't have blah, blah or blah and therefore it stinks - lets just say its free and its better than most others I've tried and leave it at that. Its the most attractive email acount I've seen for a while anyway, with a deep green backdrop with two kittens playing on a rope on either side of the main 'business' side of the screen where all the action takes place. Buttons for accessing the various parts of your account are arranged down the side and other features along the top which include forums, chat, calendar and greetings card facilities - but more on those later.

Options available to you are:

~Check Mail~

...which will take you to your inbox none too surprisingly. From here you can opt to check your pop3 accounts(which you may or may not chose to set up) or regular mail at the click of a button. You can also move between the various mail folders - ie. Sent mail, inbox, trash and drafts and such like. Received mail can be deleted or moved to other folders here as well. The inbox it has to be said looks a little cramped with the "Move To" button overlapping one of the links which is a little untidy, but otherwise I haven't got any complaints.

~Compose~

Again, obviously the button to click if you want to write an email. Clicking this takes you to the 'simple' composition screen where you get to enter text in the text box, enter the address to send to etc. Attachments etc. can also be included here and its all very simple and neatly laid out. An interesting feature is the inclusion of 'expressions' as a clickable set of links on the left hand side of the text box. Clicking one of these expressions inserts it into the text which is useful for adding expressions and you can't remember what the symbols for them are - on the other hand these are the generic text expressions like :) :P or :* as opposed to their graphic equivalents which is a shame. If you want more control over how your email looks then clicking the "power editor" tab will bring up a more feature packed editor which allows you to control formatting, text colour, insert hyperlinks and a couple of other things.

~Folders~

Lists the 4 folders you have(Inbox, Sent, Trash and Draft) and their contents, whether read, unread and the size of these.

~Addresses~

Your address book. Here you can create personal contacts and group contacts to keep track of friends and family or message groups.

~Options~

This section allows you to customize your account for the way you like it. Here you can:

Enter pop3 mail accounts to check(upto 5)

Customize mail filters - selecting upto 12 words to filter out and organising your block list.

Alter preferences - things like time zone, default mail headers, whether trash is emptied on log out or only on command etc.

Email Organiser - here you can select upto 5 email addresses to be colour coded in your inbox to be instantly recognisable. Therefore if you want you attention draw to email from someone or somewhere important to you, then you can have them coloured so you don't accidentally miss them.

Auto Reply - this allows you to set up an automatic reply to any address which emails you - ie. anything which drops in your inbox will be sent this reply. I can't see the usefulness of this personally but there you go...

Signature Settings - Select upto 3 different signatures to be added to outgoing email, or opt for none at all

Password Change - change your password for added security

Personal Profile - update your personal info. in case you lied through your teeth when you signed up(ahem).

I quite like the way the options here are very easy to set up and use, and for a free email account I think there are quite a few extra facilities which others do not have.

~Newsletters~

Once again, just in case you didn't sign up for junk newsletters firt time around you are given the option again. Each to their own eh? I'll still be giving it a miss.

Those are your options from this account, not bad ones I must say. Speaking on actually using the account I would say that my experiences so far have been nothing but good. I signed up with them around 2 months ago and so far service has been faultess. Email is delivered quickly and arrives quickly and is easy to manage. As far as I know, no mail sent to me has bounced or been lost and certainly none sent by me from this account has. With a 10MB storage capacity its also a little more generous than many other freebie accounts. Maximum attachment size is 2MB which is again better than the more popular Hotmail type accounts as well. This is the basic service, although they do offer a Premium Service for $9.95 a year which include added features such as:

~~Additional 100 MB mailbox storage

~~POP3 support for external e-mail clients

~~Fully authenticated SMTP support for outgoing mails

~~Supports Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Messenger and many others

~~Premium customer service

~~Allows bigger incoming/outgoing attachments (via POP3 and SMTP)

~~Step-by-step user guide included

In all then I would say I was very happy with this account and as a secondary email account its certainly worth looking into, especially if you are a cat lover because its a nice gimmick. I did say there were message boards and a chatroom attached to this site but I'd recommend steering clear of these unless you are looking for intellectual chat about Pokemon or why 'Eastenders iz 4 gays' - sorry, that was my five minute experience of hovering inside the chat room and the message boards didn't look much better! The eCards are ok, some with a cat theme, the other a little scrappy, but its a nice additional extra if you suddenly find yourself needing a card and in a hurry...

I suppose the bottom line is whether you trust a smaller, unknown little company with your email account. Personally I'm sticking with Hotmail for my main online account - better the devil you know and all that, but this makes a nice additional account to have and of course its kinda cute to have kittens in your inbox as well! Anyway, now that I've used 'cute' twice(three times now) in one review I think its time to sign off before I get funny looks...check it out if it sounds appealing.
 

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