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Old 25 Nov 2015, 08:59 AM   #1
154thVS5
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Join Date: Nov 2015
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Are there any email services where accounts never expire?

I've been looking for email services which provide accounts that never expire. Are there any email services that are like that? I want to make an email account, but all email service providers I've come across have an expiration period, so if you don't use your account for a certain amount of time, it will be dormant and after some more time, it will expire.
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Old 25 Nov 2015, 09:40 AM   #2
Tsunami
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1) there used to be a few services without inactivity limits, announcing "an account for life". In my country for example, advalvas.be was one of those, in our neighbouring country the Netherlands there was ilse.nl . Within the year of opening an account there, the service ceased to exist.
Any provider that claims an account is "for life" should make the nuance, even if there is no inactivity limit, that this doesn't guarantee "for life" but "for as long as we keep our service running". No company can look into the future and see how long they'll be around. We don't even know how the internet itself will change within the next decade(s).

2) I am not sure whether there are some email services without expiry limits now, according to wikipedia's comparison of webmail providers there are. But Wikipedia is often incorrect.

3) If you have a paid email provider, your account will never expire even if you don't log in for years, as long as you keep paying your bills (and assuming the service doesn't cease to exist)

4) Some providers have quite long inactivity periods. For example Gmail has 9 months ; Outlook.com has 9 or 12 months (??) ; Safe-Mail has 6 months (unless this changed with the new relaunch) ; EUMX gift accounts have an inactivity limit of 12 months (which means signing in once within the year is OK to keep your account alive) ; Mail.be and ContactOffice.com have 7 months ...

If you open an email account, I assume you will use it now and then? And even if it is a backup email account rather than for daily communication, I guess signing in once every 6 or 9 months cannot be that hard?! I just named some of the few providers where one sign-in per year or per 9 months is sufficient to keep your account alive.

Even if your sole intention for the email account is to use it as a backup where you forward important emails to and store them there ; then indeed you don't need to open your account weekly or monthly or so, but once every half year cannot be such a burden?
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Old 25 Nov 2015, 12:25 PM   #3
beeboy
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Nothing is forever except a mother's love.

A more important question would be: "Are there any email services that will never close? ".

Your best bet would be the big players like gmail, hotmail, and yahoo.

I don't know what zoho's policy is but I had accounts I never signed into for a couple years and they were still intact. Zoho is a decent service actually.
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Old 25 Nov 2015, 02:23 PM   #4
David
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Quote:
Originally Posted by beeboy View Post
Nothing is forever except a mother's love.

A more important question would be: "Are there any email services that will never close? ".
That would be a less important question, imho
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Old 25 Nov 2015, 03:10 PM   #5
n5bb
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I see that you posted in three threads about this topic today, so it must be important to you. I agree with the comments by the various posters. You should always keep in mind the business case for something you obtain which is marketed as "free". There is no free lunch, and no truly free email account. If you are paying a direct payment for the account, the provider has another revernue stream to allow them to keep the email account open. Free email accounts have no direct support and often have few features. You get what you pay for.
  • They might be providing free accounts to encourage potential customers to try the service. There is no benefit to the provider unless you use the account (to get excited about the service), so such free accounts are usually terminated without frequent use.
  • Other companies provide advertising, so they are similar to commercial TV, commercial radio, or YouTube. GMail and Yahoo make money by directing advertising to you in various manners. If you aren't using the service your eyeballs aren't seeing their advertising, so they don't have any incentive to continue your account.
Bill
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Old 27 Nov 2015, 06:58 AM   #6
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by beeboy View Post
Nothing is forever except a mother's love. .
Even that isn't Always the case, sadly enough, but anyways, that's offtopic ...

Quote:
Originally Posted by beeboy View Post
A more important question would be: "Are there any email services that will never close? ".

Your best bet would be the big players like gmail, hotmail, and yahoo.

I don't know what zoho's policy is but I had accounts I never signed into for a couple years and they were still intact. Zoho is a decent service actually.
Indeed, the big players like Gmail, Yahoo and Outlook/Hotmail are the least likely to go out of business. Sadly enough this means relying on a big provider is sometimes better than trying very noble smaller providers where it's uncertain how long they'll manage to stay around.

More locally orientated services that have a very strong reach within their own community are also unlikely to cease operations (mail.ru for example is so big in Russia that they're as likely to stay around as Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail)

Of course, "nothing ever lasts forever" as Echo & The Bunnymen sing. No empire has lasted forever.
We can more or less say that the big players are likely to stay around as long as the internet in its current form exists. But with technology ever evolving, it is quite hard to predict how the internet will change in the next years, let alone the next decades. So even when talking about Hotmail or Gmail, we may not be talking about "forever" but about "as long as the internet exists as we know it"



When it comes to inactivity limits ... Several services have a 1 year inactivity limit, even some free ones. So logging in to your account 1x in a year is sufficient to keep your account alive. I think this cannot be such an impossible task that it's worth worrying about By this I don't mean your question is not legitimate, I would for example not sign up for a service with an inactivity limit of just 1 or 2 months.
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Old 7 Jun 2017, 05:48 AM   #7
Zach
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iCloud and Tutanota are the only services I'm aware of with email accounts that never expire. Yandex keeps accounts for two years before they become inactive.
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Old 7 Jun 2017, 05:54 AM   #8
Dutchie007
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all I can say is....YANDEX.

Nuff said.

And what is the problem to log in a service once every 3 months fe??

D
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Old 7 Jun 2017, 07:04 AM   #9
TenFour
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The thing is that even if they truly never expire, you have no way of knowing that unless you do log in once in awhile to check! Seriously, what use is a "for life" service if you don't use it and therefore have no way of knowing if it is still actively working. I am reminded of the $millions that have gone unclaimed in bank accounts that have apparently been abandoned. I'm sure at some point in the distant past a saver thought to himself "I'll put my money somewhere safe so I never have to worry about it." Then he forgets where he put it 20 years ago and never retrieves it. I suppose with email you can always have mail forwarded from that account and then have it filtered or starred or something so that once in awhile you get to notice if it is still working. I find it is useful to have some reliable newsletters and even advertising flow into seldom used accounts, just so the emails are forwarded, reminding me that the email account still exists.
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Old 10 Jun 2017, 01:36 AM   #10
popowich
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Representative of:
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Old 15 Mar 2022, 02:16 PM   #11
pastfuture777
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsunami View Post
4) Some providers have quite long inactivity periods. For example Gmail has 9 months ; Outlook.com has 9 or 12 months (??)......
Actually Gmail got even longer inactivity periods, I've got an account that hadn't been signed in for about 3 years, and it is still working.
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Old 20 Mar 2022, 07:09 AM   #12
jdtaylor
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I think vfemail.net is fine for long timeframe and Eumx
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Old 25 Mar 2022, 10:54 AM   #13
Csin
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsunami View Post
1) there used to be a few services without inactivity limits, announcing "an account for life". In my country for example, advalvas.be was one of those, in our neighbouring country the Netherlands there was ilse.nl . Within the year of opening an account there, the service ceased to exist.
Any provider that claims an account is "for life" should make the nuance, even if there is no inactivity limit, that this doesn't guarantee "for life" but "for as long as we keep our service running". No company can look into the future and see how long they'll be around. We don't even know how the internet itself will change within the next decade(s).

2) I am not sure whether there are some email services without expiry limits now, according to wikipedia's comparison of webmail providers there are. But Wikipedia is often incorrect.

3) If you have a paid email provider, your account will never expire even if you don't log in for years, as long as you keep paying your bills (and assuming the service doesn't cease to exist)

4) Some providers have quite long inactivity periods. For example Gmail has 9 months ; Outlook.com has 9 or 12 months (??) ; Safe-Mail has 6 months (unless this changed with the new relaunch) ; EUMX gift accounts have an inactivity limit of 12 months (which means signing in once within the year is OK to keep your account alive) ; Mail.be and ContactOffice.com have 7 months ...

If you open an email account, I assume you will use it now and then? And even if it is a backup email account rather than for daily communication, I guess signing in once every 6 or 9 months cannot be that hard?! I just named some of the few providers where one sign-in per year or per 9 months is sufficient to keep your account alive.

Even if your sole intention for the email account is to use it as a backup where you forward important emails to and store them there ; then indeed you don't need to open your account weekly or monthly or so, but once every half year cannot be such a burden?
"3) If you have a paid email provider, your account will never expire even if you don't log in for years, as long as you keep paying your bills (and assuming the service doesn't cease to exist)

Tell that to Tutanota, who closed my paid account at least 2-3 months prior to due date of the next bill for 'inactivity'.
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Old 31 Mar 2022, 09:40 PM   #14
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Csin View Post
"3) If you have a paid email provider, your account will never expire even if you don't log in for years, as long as you keep paying your bills (and assuming the service doesn't cease to exist)

Tell that to Tutanota, who closed my paid account at least 2-3 months prior to due date of the next bill for 'inactivity'.
That should never happen, sounds like an error. Have you contacted their support?

I'd not trust any provider that suspends inactive paid accounts. On the other hand, Tutanota gets excellent comments from many forum members, it may be a mistake that support can fix. Although I can understand the trust in them is broken for you.
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Old 16 Apr 2022, 10:46 PM   #15
ioneja
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tsunami View Post
That should never happen, sounds like an error. Have you contacted their support?

I'd not trust any provider that suspends inactive paid accounts. On the other hand, Tutanota gets excellent comments from many forum members, it may be a mistake that support can fix. Although I can understand the trust in them is broken for you.
I think I replied to Csin in some other thread, I think he should contact Tutanota as well. It could be a mistake or some other issue. I mentioned I had a paid account with > 6 months of inactivity in some other thread where I believe he brought this issue up, and I mentioned I had no problem logging in. I also had a friend confirm an inactive account was still fine too. I think something else happened with Csin's account. Tutanota has had some inconsistencies and growing pains IMO, so maybe something weird happened with his account, but in my case I didn't have his issue, and Tutanota has been responsive to my support queries too. So I think it's worth it if Csin contacts them and finds out what happened.
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