I thought that after I gave Hotmail – popular on the web, and very popular to write about on Ciao - a bit of a hammering, that it might be useful to offer up some opinions on some alternatives that I’ve tried. I’ve decided to start with Totalise, mainly because it’s been my workhorse, my main account, for the past three years or so. I signed up for the ISP, and I got the email account as part of the package – pretty standard. Up until recently I’ve exclusively used web mail, and their web based service worked for me, so I stuck with it. But – the big but – I’ve only given it two stars. So what went wrong…?
Okay, rather than just answering that question, I’ll try to give an unbiased and informative review of the whole service – this whole thing is only my opinion after all, but hopefully it’ll help you make your own mind up. Also, I’d like to mention that the whole Totalise thing is quite interesting as far as ISPs go, what with their free share offers and subsidiary shops and companies, but this is just supposed to be about the email, so I’ll stick to that. Maybe I’ll write another op about the rest some other time.
So, the service. I bet some of you are wondering why I used that title in particular – it’s the message they attach to the bottom of all your mails, minus the ‘not’ of course. I thought it was important to start with that, as it’s -probably- not true. They do have some pretty funky things which some people may find useful, but the service is pretty lacking in standard features.
First, accessing your email. This is one of the best parts. As with many email services nowadays, you can access it both through a client, such as Outlook or
Outlook Express using POP3 or IMAP4, or by logging onto their site (you can go directly to mail.totalise.co.uk and log in, or go through their main site, www.totalise.co.uk). Through ninety percent of my time on Totalise, I’ve only used the web mail system. This is fast – much faster than any other service I’ve tried. The POP3 server, however, is a little slower to download your mail than others. Both the web and POP3 mail systems can be used whether you’re connected through Totalise’s ISP or not (I know this isn’t true for services such as Freeserve).
They also offer a couple of other methods for accessing your mail, which I haven’t really seen elsewhere (maybe I haven’t been looking hard enough?). First, through a WAP phone (okay, I have seen that before), but also through Mini-Mail pagers and using an ordinary phone, using SpeechMail. I haven’t used any of these, so I don’t know how well they work, but they look pretty useful, especially for people on the move. They also have a service, collectmymail.com, which collects mail from any number of other email accounts that you specify at regular intervals and puts them in your Totalise account. Obviously, this is very handy if you have loads of accounts you want to check, or if you want to access your email using Totalise’s features. I know that several other providers allow you to check other POP3 accounts using their web mail system – for some this may be a better route than actually having them collected into one account. Also, I’m pretty sure collectmymail.com allows you to access both POP3 and web mail accounts, unlike other systems (I haven’t actually tried this, so I can’t say for sure). All these things are definite plus points, adding to the flexibility claim.
I signed up for the email system along with the ISP, including the free share offer, so the registration process was complex, and it was a long time ago, so I can’t remember details I’m afraid. I guess that if you sign up for the email alone, it’d be a lot easier. Also, I signed up near the beginning, so I got the name I wanted, and so did the rest of the people I knew who signed up for it. I don’t know how easy this would be now.
But once you’re in the site, what’s it like? As I mentioned before, the website itself is very fast. This is partly due to a good server set-up at the other end (it tells you what it is in the FAQ, but I won’t bore you with any more detail than I already have), and partly due to the fact that the site itself is very clean and hassle free. There are banner ads on the login page and inside the site – however, these are kept to one per page, so no real problem. They’re normally for other Totalise services or companies such as Thomas Cook, none of your ‘YOU HAVE ONE MESSAGE WAITING!’ rubbish. The banners are usually the slowest part of the site to load.
Another of the good things about the site is that fact that you can choose from a range of looks (fifteen of them to be exact), from text only (bannerless), to a windows-look kind of thing. The range includes templates with extra large buttons etc for people who need enhanced accessibility. The rest of the options are unfortunately rather limited, and include a signature, number of mails to display per page (default twenty, which works fine for me) and the number of days to retain messages in your different folders.
Speaking of folders, the system allows you to set up different folders and move messages between them, but there is no filter system – all incoming mail ends up in your inbox. In my opinion, this is poor, and a real problem if you’re on any high volume mailing lists or get a lot of spam. If you want to use filters, you have no option but to use a remote client such as Outlook Express.
On the plus side, I’ve found the service almost completely spam free. Totalise send maybe one or two a week, advertising their other services such as their mobile phone shop, but this isn’t a real problem. The only other spam I’ve got is stuff I’ve let myself in for, and as I only gave out this address to trusted people, that was pretty much nil. Wins one over Hotmail then. Wins another in that they give you a whopping 50Mb of storage space, unlike Hotmail’s measly 2.
The site itself is clearly laid out. You go straight into your inbox, displayed as pretty standard list, with a row of buttons along the top. You can sort your list according to new, date, subject, etc. New messages are displayed in bold, and have an unopened letter icon next to them. Unfortunately, there’s no icon for ‘replied’ – bit lacking if you ask me. On this first page, there’s the facility to create a mail (where you have an address book, spell checker and a draft tool), a search function (where you can search any folders between any dates for whatever), refresh the page (it does this every two minutes anyway), log out, get help, etc.
All sounds pretty good so far. It seems to provide a fair few features you can only normally use with something such as Outlook Express, and although it misses a few important ones (lack of options, no filtering), it’s not too crippling. I’ve used it for three years, after all, and I’m usually pretty picky. It even looks nice, plus it’s fast. So why the long face?
Basically, it don’t work no more. Okay, so why am I even bothering to review it? … Because they claim it does. Let me explain. According to Totalise, the whole system is working fine. They normally warn you if there is going to be or was any downtime due to a system change or crash, which is very professional, but recently, they seem to have gone to pot. They did warn about a bit of downtime recently, but the trouble is, it’s been down everyday, for hours at a time. When trying to log in through Outlook Express, or through the web, it just doesn’t work. This wouldn’t be too bad, especially as these periods are usually during the middle of the night (I’m a night person, so I’ve experienced it on a daily basis), but the trouble is, during these periods, and I suspect many others, it’s not receiving any emails.
I’m sure many of you have experienced the phenomenon of the bounced email, where your mail gets returned with an error. I tested Totalise using some other email addresses, and found that it doesn’t even bounce many of them – they just disappear, the person who sent them doesn’t know that they didn’t get through to you. I know I don’t need to spell out the trouble this could cause, especially for business users. Perhaps even worse, I’ve also found that it doesn’t send all your mail – you press ‘send,’ and off it goes – but no sign of it at the other end. I’ve tried sending and receiving at loads of different places, so I know the problem’s with Totalise.
The worrying thing about all of this is that their technical support, usually very useful (you get replies from actual people, not automated responses), are playing dumb. I sent them two emails, one asking if there had been any problems, and one saying that I had experienced problems and what they were, but I have never received a response. Not even one saying that they don’t know what I’m talking about… I didn’t try the phone, not wanting to experience the run around at fifty pence per minute.
In light of all this, I’ve got a different main address now (a nice swanky one on my own server space). I don’t know, maybe I’m the only one who experienced these difficulties, but I find that unlikely. If they sorted out their problems (admitting they existed would be a good first step), I’d be happy to recommend them, but at the moment it’s just not safe if you rely on email to communicate with some people. It’s such as shame, because the service is good otherwise, definitely one of the better ones out there. To people who already have an account there, I’d say check it out, make sure it’s working properly – if it is, then all well and good. I was first alerted to the difficulties when people started asking why I hadn’t emailed them when I said I would, but in some cases, that might not happen – a business client could just go somewhere else, waiting for a mail to arrive that you’d sent weeks ago…
Anyway, I hope this has been useful (and not too boring). I’ll review some other (and hopefully better) email services in the near future…
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
Wow...so much detail! I've been looking for an alternative to Hotmail since the account size there is so paltry but so far I haven't found a...well, flexible enough replacement!
Weez 07.08.2002 02:12
Blimmin'eck, you leave nothing out atall, do you?! Absolutely great!
BubbleCat 09.05.2002 04:12
If you're experiencing slow downloads into Outlook Express (or whatever), you may have to make an adjustment. Under the properties you will have to tick a box that states "My Server Requires Authentication". They changed something a while back but Totalise still isn't much cop, not very flexable as you rightly say. Marty :)
Jul 29th, 2001
(Feb 22nd, 2002)
very helpful by (100%):
