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Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous Share your opinion of the email service you're using. Post general email questions and discussions that don't fit elsewhere.

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Old 2 Dec 2006, 06:20 AM   #1
Tsunami
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Inbox: few short questions

I am tempted to give inbox.com a try, their high storage amounts seem very handy for storage of files and bigger mails.
Few questions:

1. what is their expiry policy? Is it something short like Hotmail's 30days, or do they have something longer like Yahoo and Gmail?

2. as I would mainly use the account to send emails to from my work address... Can the service be used without a problem mainly for email correspondance coming from another account of myself? How can I avoid that mails would end up in the spam folder?
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Old 2 Dec 2006, 06:58 PM   #2
janusz
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Ad 1. Here is a reply I got from inbox.com's support:
Quote:
Account will be completely removed from our systems after 3 months of the last login to the account or after 2 months following account registration if there have been no logins to the account. Removing account includes removal of all messages, attachments and stored data.
Ad 2. I see no problem here, as (a) there is no way to determine whether messages come from another account of yours (b) there are various spam filter options, including 'no filter' and 'accept only from approved addresses'.
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Old 9 Dec 2006, 10:47 PM   #3
Tsunami
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OK. Thanks for the reply. 3 months is a good rule, as long as it's not very short like Hotmail (expires after 30 days without signing in) it's okay

The service of inbox.com is stable and reliable enough that mails should all arrive without problems and be stored safely? (note: I don't mind the mails arriving a bit slower than usual, as long as they arrive in the end)
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Old 9 Dec 2006, 10:59 PM   #4
janusz
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IMHO of course: stable=yes, reliable=yes.
But you may wish to consider that daily backups are not included in the free version. To quote:Data in free webmail are secured by redundant hardware. Plans with backups include both redundant hardware & daily backups stored in another location. Personally, I'm not bothered.
As to speed, I cannot comment. I use it for a low-priority communications and login there once a day. All I can say is that emails arrive the day they are sent, which is all I need in this case.
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Old 9 Dec 2006, 11:01 PM   #5
Tsunami
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Quote:
Originally posted by janusz
IMHO of course: stable=yes, reliable=yes.
But you may wish to consider that daily backups are not included in the free version. To quote:Data in free webmail are secured by redundant hardware. Plans with backups include both redundant hardware & daily backups stored in another location. Personally, I'm not bothered.
As to speed, I cannot comment. I use it for a low-priority communications and login there once a day. All I can say is that emails arrive the day they are sent, which is all I need in this case.
That text in italics actually seems like they do back-up... Anyway, I don't know of ANY free mail service making back-ups frequently, so in that way I guess it wouldn't make a difference for me if inbox.com don't do it.
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Old 9 Dec 2006, 11:33 PM   #6
janusz
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Quote:
Originally posted by Tsunami
That text in italics actually seems like they do back-up...
I read the text in italics as: There is some redundancy on-site (RAID disks or suchlike), but if you pay, your messages will also be stored elsewhere, just in case our machine room goes up in smoke.
Fell free to disagree
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Old 10 Dec 2006, 04:20 AM   #7
Mechant Loup
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I'm new to posting on this forum, though I've been reading it regularly for quite some time. I'd like to share some comments on this one, since I happened to sign up for inbox.com not that long ago. This probably contains more than the topic here, i.e. also some general observations about the service, in case they be of interest to any one.

Quote:
Originally posted by Tsunami
OK. Thanks for the reply. 3 months is a good rule, as long as it's not very short like Hotmail (expires after 30 days without signing in) it's okay

The service of inbox.com is stable and reliable enough that mails should all arrive without problems and be stored safely? (note: I don't mind the mails arriving a bit slower than usual, as long as they arrive in the end)
The service is very fast, at least for me: The interface is even more responsive than that of GMail, and email delivery is very very fast. It may take only 1 or 2 seconds for a message to appear, if sent to inbox.com from my university mail account. The same holds true for the speed of sending messages, even for the larger ones with attachments.

Reliability? I'm not so sure... First of all, not all messages appear to be delivered in the inbox. This is the same as with Hotmail: Some mail is simply not delivered, nor bounced back -- they just disappear in the thin air. This has only happened twice with 100'% certainty, though, and the source in one of those cases was an automatic responder for a mailing list subscription at openoffice.org. (which worked OK for all other services when tested, but still today not for inbox.com) But still, it leaves me wondering if the service can be trusted in the same way you can do with, say, Tuffmail or similar paid service. (I use Tuffmail personally, and will some day replace my main account with it. Now it only sees very light use.)

A bigger -- I'd say a major -- problem with inbox.com is their spam filter: It puts pretty much anything in the spam folder, even at the lowest level. On the other hand, it automatically whitelists when messages are moved into the inbox, and vice versa, but you can never trust in the spam filtering, and the spam folder needs to be checked for legit mail if there's something therein.

Also, it is worth mentioning that the service uses some kind of response scheme for spam handling by default. This has to be turned off in the settings if you don't want it.

I have sort of mixed feelings about this service: On one hand I like the UI for its speed and user friendliness, and for the automatic white/black listing. On the other hand, the spam filter is paranoid in what it does, and there is a small albeit annoying usability glitch that at least for me is a big issue: It is difficult to go to the next or previous message when viewing a message. You have to select the next/prev message in a list, rather than clicking on a simple arrow or link to go back/forth etc., making it difficult to follow a mailing list where you need to quickly go through a bunch of messages.

I also like the simple and usable calendar. It is quite OK.

The storage would be nice, but one cannot access it through FTP, and since I don't use Windows, and therefore can't use the software inbox.com provides, the web UI is the only way to up/download files, which renders the whole storage thing sort of useless for making quick, temporary backups of a folder or or a folder tree or similar.

I asked about this, and they said they are not planning on supporting FTP.

I have not tried how POP works here.

Before quitting, I'd like to specify that I talk about the UI based on my own accessibility needs, which include reversed white/black colour scheme, and bigger than standard font sizes. Coupled with Firefox set up like this, inbox.com works very well for me, save for the little aforementioned UI problem. That cannot be said of most web based services out there, and that is why I got interested in inbox.com. Heck, even the calendar can be used, unlike Google's, which doesn't respect my browser's colour settings but rather wants to draw white text on white background...
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Old 10 Dec 2006, 05:08 AM   #8
paul33
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inbox.com is great.
i would like to use it as my primarily account.
the only reason i do not is, that i fear they are going to be a pay service in near future.
it is a kind of strange feeling, but i got no evidence for that, just a feeling.
inbox.com is comparable with gmail.
but there are a couple of advantages,like skinable ui from inbox.com and so on.
has no taglines in sent mails, like it is in gmail.i hate taglines, looking unprofessional.live mail yahoo mail, they all have it.
mails delivered fast on inbox.com, only with hotmail there are problems, it takes 20-30 until mail arrives.
what is the future of inbox.com?reliability?
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Old 10 Dec 2006, 05:42 AM   #9
Mechant Loup
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Quote:
Originally posted by paul33
inbox.com is great.
i would like to use it as my primarily account.
the only reason i do not is, that i fear they are going to be a pay service in near future.
it is a kind of strange feeling, but i got no evidence for that, just a feeling.
inbox.com is comparable with gmail.
but there are a couple of advantages,like skinable ui from inbox.com and so on.
has no taglines in sent mails, like it is in gmail.i hate taglines, looking unprofessional.live mail yahoo mail, they all have it.
mails delivered fast on inbox.com, only with hotmail there are problems, it takes 20-30 until mail arrives.
what is the future of inbox.com?reliability?
That is what I've been wondering... how sustainable can the free, ad-free service be? Or do they believe in getting enough paying customers who want to upgrade... I sort of doubt that, considering how much the free version already provides.

But the ad-free environment is great, no question about it. And no ugly tag-lines in outgoing email. But who pays all this... and how many non-paying customers can they hold; even the for fee version is not expensive by any means, at least with the introductory prices.

I have a feeling there are things about this service that are bound to change in due time. They're already trying to have you commit your mail fully to them, and if I remember correclty some one said they don't allow POP downloads to remove the mail from the server, ala GMail, which also wants to have your mail "conveniently stored" for the rest of your life...
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Old 10 Dec 2006, 09:28 AM   #10
paul33
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it would be great if someone from inbox.com team could join this forum and speak about future plans, and could answer questions
perhaps someone should invite them to join here
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Old 11 Dec 2006, 05:23 AM   #11
chrisretusn
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Just a comment on Inbox.com's POP service. Some people I know are having no problems with Inbox.com, others have problems using POP. I happen to be in the latter category.

Some of the problems I have experienced is empty messages being downloaded to my client, there are valid messages in the Inbox.com inbox. On several occasions only one message will download to my client, while checking the server shows multiple messages in the Inbox. The server also does not honor DELE command as I have delete messages from server set in my client and messages are still there after checking. They have to be deleted via the web interface.

This behavior occurs in every email client I have tried.
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Old 11 Dec 2006, 08:36 AM   #12
Mechant Loup
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Today I sent some mails from inbox.com which have yet to arrive 6+ hours later. When the mails DO arrive they do so in mere seconds, which suggest that those messages I sent never made it.

My trust in this service isn't exactly going up...
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Old 11 Dec 2006, 09:08 PM   #13
bramhall
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Quote:
Originally posted by chrisretusn
Some of the problems I have experienced is empty messages being downloaded to my client, there are valid messages in the Inbox.com inbox. On several occasions only one message will download to my client, while checking the server shows multiple messages in the Inbox.
Could this (from POP3/SMTP help) be the reason: If you also want to download emails older than POP3 access activation, select the \"Allow POP3 access to older than POP3 access activation\" checkbox
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Old 11 Dec 2006, 10:08 PM   #14
paul33
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it is strange a little bit.
when you send from inbox.com mails, they arrive fast on some providers like gmx.de or yahoo.com, but when you send it to other providers like live mail it arrives 20 or 30 minutes later.
hmm, what is the reason for that?
i really want to use inbox.com, but not trust fully in that service.
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Old 11 Dec 2006, 10:12 PM   #15
janusz
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graylisting, implemented by some email providers, and not by other?
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