Why would I want to use pobox.com?
 

I don't understand what problem their service solves. I used to use forwarders and disposables like sneakemail to hide my "real" address, and as spam control, back in the day when anti-spam wasn't so good. Now that many services have things like plus addressing, aliases, and subdomain addressing, along with passable anti-spam, I dropped my forwarders entirely and receive emails directly at my provider. Much simpler to manage one site rather than two, and I still hardly get any spam.

I'm currently asking myself the same question. I'm thinking of moving from Google Apps/Gmail to Polarismail, and thought about using Pobox.com as an intermediary service in case I wanted to move again. However I will be using my custom domain so could simply change my MX records over to the new email tool, so why pay for Pobox? Many people have said that they found Pobox useful when switching their ISP, but I fail to see what benefit Pobox would provide in that situation. Pobox does spam filtering, but so do most email providers these days.
Pobox has been profitable for 14 years, so surely there must be a use for it?

Unlike many companies (domain name registrars etc) Pobox's forwarding is dead solid perfect.

Though they now offer many other features (besides forwarding) they have advanced their forwarding technique to a level beyond what any other company has been able to offer. IMHO.

Pobox are not a flash in the pan either.

It's helpful for those who do not have their own domain and want the ability to change the recipient email service at will without changing their public facing email address.

I also don't think we have the need to use a pobox account in today.
If you have a domain, then google apps, live domains, zoho domains email are all free for you.
if you don't own a domain, then many free mails have the forwarding feature, i.e., gmail, hotmail, yahoo (in some countries), gmx, zoho and many others.

What do you mean by we jeffpan.

Surely folk are allowed to make their own decision on if to use Pobox or not.

There is perhaps less of a need for the pobox service now that many people control their own domains and can reconfigure mx servers quite easily. However, pobox forwarding (which allows for multiple redundant recipients) has been extra-ordinarily reliable over very many years and by surpasses that of any other email service I've ever come across. I'm sticking with them!

Yes, really it is very useful service.

Don't see it just as forwarding address only, it is your permanent address too.

Like I gave this address to my friend during my education. but I bought my domain later on.

than later I bought business domain.

but still old friends are using same email and no need to send reminder than my address is changes.

even it is good for newsletter subscription too.

it is not too costly, it is worth of money.

Though it's good but so many alternatives. Can't gmail's forwarding work for you?

gmail came very later only.

Nowhere near as reliable.

Really? ;)

Well, I don't have any statistics to back up what I've said. And the comparison would be unfair as gmail is a relative newcomer so hasn't had a chance to establish the track record of pobox.

I use pobox to forward to both fastmail and gmail currently. As far as I can tell pobox forwarding has never failed for any noticeable period since the mid 1990s. Both fastmail and gmail (and the other email services I've used previously) have gone down occasionally, but fortunately never at the same time, which means that I've never had any noticeable downtime in nearly 20 years.

pobox and AOL let people think the internet is old of age.:)

I haven't faced/heard massive gmail outage so far. Fastmail had gone through some of it though. I admire your seniority and experience with email service. Still not impressed. :)