What Happened to Mailandnews/Shanjemail?

WackyP · 8 Jun 2006, 10:17 AM

Nothing at all comes up when trying to go to their website. I use mailandnews for contest entries, so if I win anything, I would never know about it. Any idea if they are due to return from the dead?

DrStrabismus · 9 Jun 2006, 10:03 AM

I certainly hope not. It's about time it stopped snaring people into its world of pain.

To be fair, it was a great service in the late 90's as a pioneer of free IMAP, but you are really five years too late for the "early-warning" forum. Things went wrong in about 2001 when it went down for two weeks. A few months later it got ditched by its original owner, and after another lengthy period of downtime it got picked-up by Shanjemail. By that time (mid 2002) it had really lost all credibility. Most of its serious users had found alternate services by then, Fastmail's IMAP made it the obvious candidate. I carried on picking-up my mail for some time until they lost most of the accounts.

They had some idea of turning it into a paid service, which made no sense at all. All they had was some unmaintained sofware, a spamtrap domain and a discredited brand.

jdtaylor · 10 Jun 2006, 07:55 PM

Hi,

I am not sure whether it's me but when they changed owners or something an old account I had seemed to disappear as well, so I don't know what is going on but I am just hoping they will get their act together soon.

xmailer · 10 Jun 2006, 10:51 PM

While of course anything's possible (theoretically anyway), having been in its death throes for some years now, as outlined by DrStrabismus above, I tend to have my doubts about the likelihood of seeing a resurrection of this service.

8 Jun 2006, 10:17 AM	#1
WackyP Junior Member Join Date: Mar 2004 Posts: 7	What Happened to Mailandnews/Shanjemail? Nothing at all comes up when trying to go to their website. I use mailandnews for contest entries, so if I win anything, I would never know about it. Any idea if they are due to return from the dead?

9 Jun 2006, 10:03 AM	#2
DrStrabismus The "e" in e-mail Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 2,804	I certainly hope not. It's about time it stopped snaring people into its world of pain. To be fair, it was a great service in the late 90's as a pioneer of free IMAP, but you are really five years too late for the "early-warning" forum. Things went wrong in about 2001 when it went down for two weeks. A few months later it got ditched by its original owner, and after another lengthy period of downtime it got picked-up by Shanjemail. By that time (mid 2002) it had really lost all credibility. Most of its serious users had found alternate services by then, Fastmail's IMAP made it the obvious candidate. I carried on picking-up my mail for some time until they lost most of the accounts. They had some idea of turning it into a paid service, which made no sense at all. All they had was some unmaintained sofware, a spamtrap domain and a discredited brand.

10 Jun 2006, 07:55 PM	#3
jdtaylor Master of the @ Join Date: Sep 2004 Posts: 1,693	Hi, I am not sure whether it's me but when they changed owners or something an old account I had seemed to disappear as well, so I don't know what is going on but I am just hoping they will get their act together soon.

10 Jun 2006, 10:51 PM	#4
xmailer Intergalactic Postmaster Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: USA Posts: 5,485	While of course anything's possible (theoretically anyway), having been in its death throes for some years now, as outlined by DrStrabismus above, I tend to have my doubts about the likelihood of seeing a resurrection of this service.