Loftmail to discontinue free accounts

[xmailer]

Yet another free service bites the dust (although they haven't allowed new free signups for quite a long time).

Dear Loftmail User,

From November 1st 2009 Loftmail will no longer provide free email
service.

There are two options:

1) Upgrade to a regular email account. This will give you access to
our business webmail (which has extra apps like Notes, Tasks, Memos, and
a nicer portal), and extra 100 MB of email space (200 MB total), for 8
per year.

2) Transfer your email to another free provider. Gmail provides free
IMAP access, and there might be others.

We tried very hard to keep the free accounts for as long as possible.
Should you decide to move, we are very grateful that you found our
service useful. Should you decide to stay, great, welcome aboard again.

Please email us at support <AT> loftmail.com and let us know your decision.
On November 1st 2009 we will delete all free accounts and all the
data.

Thank you.

The Loftmail Team

[xmailer]

Subject: Update: Loftmail Free Email Service

Dear Loftmail User,

There was a problem with the previous email we sent out with regards
to the price of email account upgrade. The amount is $18 / year.

Please email us at support <AT> Loftmail.com.

Thank you.

The Loftmail Team

Seems kind of careless for an "official" notification.

[sflorack]

$18/year for 200MB with a provider who uses totally open source software?

Also, their demo account doesn't let me logon.

Unable to login? This is probably due to abuse, please send blank email with subject "Loftmail Demo" and we will send you login information.

hahahaha.. "Please fix your demo account so that I can see if I want to pay you money.." I'll pass.

[Olfrygt]

There goes another of my free accounts. I liked Loftmail.
What with Icmail disappearing recently, if any more go, I may eventually have to pay for an email service ! Arrgh !!!!!

[cheviot]

Yep...I got both of those.

I kind of anticipated all this when the economy turned south. As far as Loftmail is concerned, they were one of the better free providers. Rarely had outages and when they did, they were still pretty good about passing along information. If storage space were to increase, I might consider maintaining this one (hint to any reps that may be monitoring).

[King Of Email]

Originally Posted by xmailer

Yet another free service bites the dust (although they haven't allowed new free signups for quite a long time).

xmailer, Loftmail also started playing hardball with required login periods, forever shutting out anyone who didn't log in during new shorter (and unannounced) periods. That's how I lost my years old account. Loftmail just should have come clean and admitted their intentions instead of playing BS games with users.

[cheviot]

I would agree w/ "The King", and usually do on most occasions. Loftmail was always good about letting me know about the new BS hoops that had to be jumped through to maintain the free service. Usually not an issue, as most all my accounts are logged at least once on a daily basis. However, they are certainly not the first to apply these scalding business practices. One individual who drew anger from me on a number of occasions (who is also banned from these forums) had a bad habit of not only creating services but taking over services, applying new rules, and eventually phasing out accounts and services, and the hoops that were jumped through eventually became ridiculous in every context. I fell for that once...only once, and saw it happen to four different accounts that I used.

One thing I will agree with is that indeed most likely this will be the beginning of the end...

[nooby]

Same here. And Loftmail was not the only one. Blue Bottle gone payed and many others.

Seems not easy to get income from free relying on ads only.

One need volume but volume cost traffic and bandwith and service and better hardware and ...

So not everybody can afford to give us free services.

[pyedka]

Loftmail is one of the best emails I've ever used. I've to switch again. So sad.