Praise For Myrealbox.com and Fastmail

scott2002 · 20 Mar 2002, 02:45 PM

Howdy,
I am just wondering why nobody mention myrealbox.com?
I have used it for a couple of months. It's fast, reliable, free,imap and pop3 access and 10mb of space? What more could u people want.

All I see on this site is people raving on about how good fastmail.fm is. I know it's good but has too many limitations. Like bandwidth space and no pop3 access for free account.

I'm saying that these things should be their eg pop3 and not a limit on bandwidth space but allowing people to use what they want.

I'd also like to say that your average person (my self included) would never go over 40mb a month but I don't like to take that risk or pay for more.

For me personally I've registered my own domain name, got free e-mail forwarding through mydomain.com and all e-mail getting sent to myrealbox. I think this option is much better that "paying" for fastmail.

My Two Cents,
Take Care,
Scott

***Edwin*** · 20 Mar 2002, 04:39 PM

Actually, a quick "Search" will show that this subject has come up many times already.

MyRealbox.com seems to provide a pretty good service, but the key thing to remember that it is provided by Novell as a *demonstration* of one of their software products, rather than as a commercial service. In other words, the day they decide that the demonstration has run its course, or they fundamentally change or discontinue the underlying software, is the day that MyRealbox could face the corporate axe.

In other words there is far less incentive for MyRealbox to keep running than an commercial provider. Many people don't like the potential uncertainty this introduces.

Jeremy Howard · 20 Mar 2002, 05:09 PM

Using MyDomain, your own domain, and myrealbox is a very good solution. It neatly avoids the problem that Edwin mentioned that Myrealbox's future will always be dependent on the generosity of a corporate parent. You can move your email to another provider in the event of problems.

Given the choice between ten bucks a year for your own domain and a myrealbox account, and a one-off fee of ten bucks for a FastMail.FM membership, it's a pretty close contest. Of course, many people find name registration and forwarding complex, and the day or two this can take to learn quickly outweighs ten dollars here or there, assuming that your time is worth anything...

You've already mentioned the main downsides of FastMail.FM membership--the $9.60 setup fee, the bandwidth limit (only reached by a tiny proportion of users as you mention, but we still suggest leaving an extra $5 worth of bandwidth in your account just in case), and IMAP rather than POP access (not an issue for most people, but there are some who need POP instead of IMAP).

The downsides on Myrealbox are its incomplete IMAP implementation which means that powerful clients like Mulberry and Pine are severely restricted, its unreliable mail delivery which sometimes takes a few hours, its unreliable POP checkers which sometimes only check external accounts once a day, occassional software glitches (like the time it turned on 'delete from server' for my external FastMail.FM account behind my back and deleted my entire inbox!), and its relatively limited feature set. Of course, it's also slower (only really noticable for modem users) and doesn't provide support. And Myrealbox doesn't provide an upgrade path if you want more space, or direct hosting of your own domain, etc...

Overall, both systems have many happy customers. If you're happy with Myrealbox then there's no major reason to change. I don't think the level of support for FastMail.FM on these forums implies any disappointment with Myrealbox.

***Edwin*** · 20 Mar 2002, 05:21 PM

Just a quick additional comment: every single problem Jeremy mentions concerning MyRealBox.com has already been discussed previously on this Forum. I strongly encourage you to make use of the "Search" facility which you can access by clicking on the little blue "search" button at the very top of any Forum page.

If you search for MyRealbox you'll find 104 mentions of the service in the Forum archives.

Hope this helps!

pin · 21 Mar 2002, 02:43 AM

I have been using MyRealBox for many months and am happy enough with the service not to bother with the hassle of changing for a while yet

The amount of posts about a particular email provider depends on how many board members actually use that service. The discussion forums for Fastmail and Runbox's are housed at emailaddresses.com so there are more users of these two services using the board.

However, this doesn't mean there arn't any users of other services hanging around!

Jeremy Howard · 21 Mar 2002, 06:48 AM

Actually, FastMail.FM and Runbox got forums here because a lot of people were talking about them. So the causality is at least partly in the other direction!

Liz · 21 Mar 2002, 11:24 PM

Yep, it works both ways... If another service becomes hot here, and some people from there started getting involved also, then I'm sure Edwin wouldn't rule out a third provider specific forum?

Liz

***Edwin*** · 21 Mar 2002, 11:39 PM

There would have to be ALL 4 of these elements present:

A) A clear willingness for representatives from the service to be ACTIVE and ONGOING participants in the forum

B) A demonstrated ability for representatives of the service to look beyond their own service, at least some of the time, when providing answers (i.e. our way may be good, but it's not ALWAYS the best way...)

C) A clear "mandate from the people" i.e. a service that is constantly being talked about (and by more than just a handful of users i.e. no boosterism allowed

)

D) The indefinable "something special" that is my prerogative (e.g. even if a million people were talking about it, I'd never give an Everyone.net powered service its own forum... likewise the biggies such as Yahoo! and Hotmail) - I have to feel that the service "merits" its own forum.

Let me be up front on this point: right now this minute, Fastmail.fm and Runbox are the only two providers that make the grade according to the particular criteria above! But who knows what tomorrow will bring...

**munchkin** · 22 Mar 2002, 02:18 AM

Wow, I went to www.myrealbox.com and now, after refreshing the page I see that there were 80+ new registrations within the last hour. Only about 90, 100 yesterday. Guess I was bored but its interesting to see, heh

**Shelded** · 5 Apr 2002, 02:21 PM

It's realistic to say that many of the regulars on this forum have an account at MyRealBox. I still have it in my client but I've switched its delivery to POP because it just doesn't do IMAP as well as Mochamail or Fastmail.fm

My main beef with MRB is that it is slow and goes down a lot, causing my client to hang and wait for it. But the price is right.

I think the puny 10MB they give you is not enough and although Mochamail only gives 6MB their system is nicer and faster.

None of these accounts gets spam. Something nice about getting oneself off the bullseyes at Hotamale and Yahooey.

steve.nz · 6 Apr 2002, 06:15 AM

My biggest pet hate for an e mail account is tags - and Myrealbox is one of the few free accounts that doesn't have them. I have used Myrealbox for quite a while now with no problems whatsoever and will continue to have an account as long as they keep doing it. Other free e mails such as Eurosport give you a pretty reasonable deal as well - but with this those nasty tag lines.

So - figured I would never sign up to a pay service ever, but have just given in to the great features Fastmail is offering. Just goes to prove if something is done well it is worth paying for.

And by the way - I still have by spam ridden hotmail account just because I had that for many years. But it really is a dog, so how do people ever rate this as the best e mail to have, they just have to work for you know who!!!!!

Get yourself a Fastmail and Myrealbox - and if you've got a bit of dough, then Runbox comes in third place in my book.

mlibbey · 7 Apr 2002, 03:12 AM

After seeing all the praise for fastmail here, I just signed up for an account and was amazed at how easy it is for users to forge emails. In the preferences all you do is add a 'Send From Addresses' -- no verification required! Even better, they set the reply-to address the same as the mail-from. I'm amazed at the abuse potential of this feature. How can they do this?

Nektar1973 · 7 Apr 2002, 04:45 AM

Maybe Rob or Jeremy can answer the "how", but I just wanted to mention to watch out pretending to be from Hotmail. Last week I sent email as a Hotmail user(not spam, this Hotmail account name was really mine) from my Fastmail account, and the GMX.net server "refused emails from Hotmail from foreign servers".
This is probably GMX protecting their users from Hotmail spam.

I do believe that if Fastmail gets so huge that that feature will become useless if it`s abused.

steve.nz · 7 Apr 2002, 05:50 AM

I use Fastmail to reply from my work e mail address while actually at home - I thought this was one of the best features. You can't forge an e mail really though as it is not difficult to trace where e mail really comes from if anyone was being malicious. So lighten up there, as no one is really going to believe they got that e mail from Bill Gates !!!

**psalzer** · 7 Apr 2002, 06:11 AM

Actually there's really no potential for real abuse, and the potential for mild mischief is small. As was stated, to anyone who wants to know, the real mail path is there in the headers, and can be traced right back to a specific account.

You can't send spam from Fastmail. They've made sure of that with bandwidth limitations and with messages per hour limitations.

And..the Reply To being the same as the From guarantees that if you want to send an e-mail puporting to be from someone else, you'll be found out in no time, because the replies will go to the address it's supposed to be sent from.

Real forgery can happen but this doesn't actually make it easier to do.

20 Mar 2002, 02:45 PM	#1
scott2002 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: South Australia Posts: 151	Praise For Myrealbox.com and Fastmail Howdy, I am just wondering why nobody mention myrealbox.com? I have used it for a couple of months. It's fast, reliable, free,imap and pop3 access and 10mb of space? What more could u people want. All I see on this site is people raving on about how good fastmail.fm is. I know it's good but has too many limitations. Like bandwidth space and no pop3 access for free account. I'm saying that these things should be their eg pop3 and not a limit on bandwidth space but allowing people to use what they want. I'd also like to say that your average person (my self included) would never go over 40mb a month but I don't like to take that risk or pay for more. For me personally I've registered my own domain name, got free e-mail forwarding through mydomain.com and all e-mail getting sent to myrealbox. I think this option is much better that "paying" for fastmail. My Two Cents, Take Care, Scott

6 Apr 2002, 06:15 AM	#11
steve.nz Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Wellington New Zealand Posts: 24	Fastmail, MyRealbox, Runbox and Hotmail My biggest pet hate for an e mail account is tags - and Myrealbox is one of the few free accounts that doesn't have them. I have used Myrealbox for quite a while now with no problems whatsoever and will continue to have an account as long as they keep doing it. Other free e mails such as Eurosport give you a pretty reasonable deal as well - but with this those nasty tag lines. So - figured I would never sign up to a pay service ever, but have just given in to the great features Fastmail is offering. Just goes to prove if something is done well it is worth paying for. And by the way - I still have by spam ridden hotmail account just because I had that for many years. But it really is a dog, so how do people ever rate this as the best e mail to have, they just have to work for you know who!!!!! Get yourself a Fastmail and Myrealbox - and if you've got a bit of dough, then Runbox comes in third place in my book.

7 Apr 2002, 03:12 AM	#12
mlibbey Senior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: SF bay area Posts: 171	Fastmail makes it easy to forge messages?! After seeing all the praise for fastmail here, I just signed up for an account and was amazed at how easy it is for users to forge emails. In the preferences all you do is add a 'Send From Addresses' -- no verification required! Even better, they set the reply-to address the same as the mail-from. I'm amazed at the abuse potential of this feature. How can they do this?

7 Apr 2002, 05:50 AM	#14
steve.nz Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2002 Location: Wellington New Zealand Posts: 24	Forging Messages I use Fastmail to reply from my work e mail address while actually at home - I thought this was one of the best features. You can't forge an e mail really though as it is not difficult to trace where e mail really comes from if anyone was being malicious. So lighten up there, as no one is really going to believe they got that e mail from Bill Gates !!!

20 Mar 2002, 04:39 PM	#2
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: UK Posts: 3,118	Actually, a quick "Search" will show that this subject has come up many times already. MyRealbox.com seems to provide a pretty good service, but the key thing to remember that it is provided by Novell as a demonstration of one of their software products, rather than as a commercial service. In other words, the day they decide that the demonstration has run its course, or they fundamentally change or discontinue the underlying software, is the day that MyRealbox could face the corporate axe. In other words there is far less incentive for MyRealbox to keep running than an commercial provider. Many people don't like the potential uncertainty this introduces.

20 Mar 2002, 05:09 PM	#3
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	Using MyDomain, your own domain, and myrealbox is a very good solution. It neatly avoids the problem that Edwin mentioned that Myrealbox's future will always be dependent on the generosity of a corporate parent. You can move your email to another provider in the event of problems. Given the choice between ten bucks a year for your own domain and a myrealbox account, and a one-off fee of ten bucks for a FastMail.FM membership, it's a pretty close contest. Of course, many people find name registration and forwarding complex, and the day or two this can take to learn quickly outweighs ten dollars here or there, assuming that your time is worth anything... You've already mentioned the main downsides of FastMail.FM membership--the $9.60 setup fee, the bandwidth limit (only reached by a tiny proportion of users as you mention, but we still suggest leaving an extra $5 worth of bandwidth in your account just in case), and IMAP rather than POP access (not an issue for most people, but there are some who need POP instead of IMAP). The downsides on Myrealbox are its incomplete IMAP implementation which means that powerful clients like Mulberry and Pine are severely restricted, its unreliable mail delivery which sometimes takes a few hours, its unreliable POP checkers which sometimes only check external accounts once a day, occassional software glitches (like the time it turned on 'delete from server' for my external FastMail.FM account behind my back and deleted my entire inbox!), and its relatively limited feature set. Of course, it's also slower (only really noticable for modem users) and doesn't provide support. And Myrealbox doesn't provide an upgrade path if you want more space, or direct hosting of your own domain, etc... Overall, both systems have many happy customers. If you're happy with Myrealbox then there's no major reason to change. I don't think the level of support for FastMail.FM on these forums implies any disappointment with Myrealbox.

20 Mar 2002, 05:21 PM	#4
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: UK Posts: 3,118	Just a quick additional comment: every single problem Jeremy mentions concerning MyRealBox.com has already been discussed previously on this Forum. I strongly encourage you to make use of the "Search" facility which you can access by clicking on the little blue "search" button at the very top of any Forum page. If you search for MyRealbox you'll find 104 mentions of the service in the Forum archives. Hope this helps!

21 Mar 2002, 02:43 AM	#5
pin Essential Contributor Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Warrington, UK Posts: 233	I have been using MyRealBox for many months and am happy enough with the service not to bother with the hassle of changing for a while yet The amount of posts about a particular email provider depends on how many board members actually use that service. The discussion forums for Fastmail and Runbox's are housed at emailaddresses.com so there are more users of these two services using the board. However, this doesn't mean there arn't any users of other services hanging around!

21 Mar 2002, 06:48 AM	#6
Jeremy Howard Ultimate Contributor Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Australia Posts: 11,501	Actually, FastMail.FM and Runbox got forums here because a lot of people were talking about them. So the causality is at least partly in the other direction!

21 Mar 2002, 11:24 PM	#7
Liz The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Los Angeles,CA Posts: 4,652 Representative of: Runbox.com	Yep, it works both ways... If another service becomes hot here, and some people from there started getting involved also, then I'm sure Edwin wouldn't rule out a third provider specific forum? Liz

21 Mar 2002, 11:39 PM	#8
*Edwin* Administrator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: UK Posts: 3,118	There would have to be ALL 4 of these elements present: A) A clear willingness for representatives from the service to be ACTIVE and ONGOING participants in the forum B) A demonstrated ability for representatives of the service to look beyond their own service, at least some of the time, when providing answers (i.e. our way may be good, but it's not ALWAYS the best way...) C) A clear "mandate from the people" i.e. a service that is constantly being talked about (and by more than just a handful of users i.e. no boosterism allowed ) D) The indefinable "something special" that is my prerogative (e.g. even if a million people were talking about it, I'd never give an Everyone.net powered service its own forum... likewise the biggies such as Yahoo! and Hotmail) - I have to feel that the service "merits" its own forum. Let me be up front on this point: right now this minute, Fastmail.fm and Runbox are the only two providers that make the grade according to the particular criteria above! But who knows what tomorrow will bring...

22 Mar 2002, 02:18 AM	#9
munchkin Moderator Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Milliways Posts: 1,165	Wow, I went to www.myrealbox.com and now, after refreshing the page I see that there were 80+ new registrations within the last hour. Only about 90, 100 yesterday. Guess I was bored but its interesting to see, heh

5 Apr 2002, 02:21 PM	#10
Shelded Moderator Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: USA Northwest Posts: 3,849	It's realistic to say that many of the regulars on this forum have an account at MyRealBox. I still have it in my client but I've switched its delivery to POP because it just doesn't do IMAP as well as Mochamail or Fastmail.fm My main beef with MRB is that it is slow and goes down a lot, causing my client to hang and wait for it. But the price is right. I think the puny 10MB they give you is not enough and although Mochamail only gives 6MB their system is nicer and faster. None of these accounts gets spam. Something nice about getting oneself off the bullseyes at Hotamale and Yahooey.

7 Apr 2002, 04:45 AM	#13
Nektar1973 Essential Contributor Join Date: Dec 2001 Posts: 261	Maybe Rob or Jeremy can answer the "how", but I just wanted to mention to watch out pretending to be from Hotmail. Last week I sent email as a Hotmail user(not spam, this Hotmail account name was really mine) from my Fastmail account, and the GMX.net server "refused emails from Hotmail from foreign servers". This is probably GMX protecting their users from Hotmail spam. I do believe that if Fastmail gets so huge that that feature will become useless if it`s abused.

7 Apr 2002, 06:11 AM	#15
psalzer Moderator Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Long Island, NY Posts: 2,654	Actually there's really no potential for real abuse, and the potential for mild mischief is small. As was stated, to anyone who wants to know, the real mail path is there in the headers, and can be traced right back to a specific account. You can't send spam from Fastmail. They've made sure of that with bandwidth limitations and with messages per hour limitations. And..the Reply To being the same as the From guarantees that if you want to send an e-mail puporting to be from someone else, you'll be found out in no time, because the replies will go to the address it's supposed to be sent from. Real forgery can happen but this doesn't actually make it easier to do.