Polaris Mail
 

Just a quick note to dsay that I have signed up for a paid account with Polaris after a free trial.
The first thing I did was mess up my payment! I replied to George who ahd been kind enough to let me know there had been an isue and sorted it out.

I am writing this because my reasons for moving to a paid provider are as much to do with the performance of other providers as they are with the excellence of Polaris Mail.

I started using Gmail wayback when it was invitation only. Up until the middle of this year I have had little or no issues with them and could not see myself changing my main provider.

When I started to get ads placed in my inbox by Google themselves, I knew that my time with them was coming to an end.

I did not want to go to Yahoo as I never liked them. The huge picture ads taking up half my screen had a lot to do with that. I never gave them a second chance as too many other providers came along for me to bother looking back.

Then when I had decided to look at them again I started hearing about all the lost emails and their total disregard for their customers. Then it happens again!!

So I looked at the paid option for a main provider.

I had been using Gmail along side Outlook for my desktop client. The combination of Email, Calendar and tasks was so convinient I did not want to lose that.

I looked at Runbox, Fastmail but found that they did not even have a calendar, never mind one that would sync, so they were out. (Not saying anything against either, only that the feature set available did not suit my purposes).

I had looked at Polaris beofre and had had dificulties syncing the calendar to the Outlook desktop and at the time I decided to stick with Gmail. Now it was time to take another look.

As I had been on MACs for some years for most things I decided that I would get rid of my win 7 machine altogether. I looked at Outlook for MAC and found the price to be inflated well beyond its worth. So I checked out Thunderbird attatched a calendar opened a trial account with Polaris and synced up my contacts, email and calendar. It all worked and is continuing to work very well.

I am so pleased that I may end up talking to them about having my main email domain transfered to them directly if that is possible. I don't know. I have to look into that.

I still use Gmail and Outlook.com as back ups and of course I keep emails on the hard drive where they belong.

It is a long time since I have felt so comfortable with a company and I would strongly recomend anyone thinking of going paid to give Polaris Mail serious consideration.

Thunderbird is a great option on a Mac but also the default Mac applications (Mail, Calendar, and Address book) should sync nicely with Polarismail since they all support CARD/CAL-DAV as well :)

Let us know how things go. I've been thinking for a few years now about switching from Gmail to a paid provider. Just waiting for the right time.

Polaris Mail
 

There are things I can do with TB that are more cumbersome to do with Apple mail. Organising filters etc for me at least is quicker and easier with TB.

The main reason though is that I like my email, calendar and address book, tasks etc all in one application.
I also have TB portable which I carry on a memory stick. Makes life very easy.

Another reason for the choice of Polaris mail is the 25 gig of storage for £7.99/year!

Even if I find myself working with the webmail interface I don't find it unattractive.

So far very much enjoying my experience of both Polaris Mail and Thundrbird desktop as well as portable.

Postbox is also a very nice email client. It's not free, however.

I'm glad to hear both. Even though I made comments about Apple Mail, I too do prefer Thunderbird as well. But its nice to have options :) is how I always look at it.

Q & A
 

I too have been looking at PolarisMail recently, and am cautiously optimistic about them so far.

However, I have a few questions which seem not to be answered in the public part of their website.

Server locations ?

Their Privacy Policy only states where our personal info will be kept (Montreal), but not where our messages will be hosted.

Is that being done in Canada, USA, and/or elsewhere ?

Payment Methods are ? - Is PayPal one of them ?

Even though they are in Canada (and so am I), do they still wish to be paid in US funds ? - I run into this situation occasionally when buying on eBay, and it can cost me significant extra money sometimes.

They are not clear about this upfront (it seems that I must fill out forms and click thru to figure it out on-the-fly), but their FREE Trial period requires me to preauthorize a payment before I enter the trial, yes ?

And I must notify them before the trial period ends if I do not wish to continue, to stop them from processing the payment, correct ?

Hey, I'll answer the questions I know the answer to. But your best bet would be to email their sales form on their website. (There usually really speedy to respond, but I'd give it a little extra time right now because its a holiday in the USA & Canada)

Montreal, Canada. I believe their in the PEER 1 datacenter there.

I'd ask them that. That is a good question. If you talk with their sales team they may give you an option.

When I signed up for a trial a while back, yes. But they won't charge it until your trial is up was my understanding.

Thats what I did. They were nice about it, especially since my reasoning was they didn't offer a feature I needed (they offer it now though). There might be a way to cancel through the payment portal. But I can't remember.

Server locations are definitely in Montreal (personal communication from George).

I'm not aware they offer Paypal, but George or someone who works for him will be very responsive if you ask. They billed me through Paypro Global, which worked fine.

They billed me in Canadian dollars to my Canadian credit card with TD CanadaTrust, with my province's HST added (based on the home address I gave them no doubt).

I just googled it PayPro Global is a Canadian billing company if that helps :).

I signed up for an account 2 years ago, chose payment with PayPal.

It was a subscription, in that payment would be automatically taken every year - first payment had VAT added on.

I don't like this form of payment subscription - I prefer to pay for x years in advance.

Of course, in PayPal, you can cancel a recurring payment, which I did.

Thanks for all of the info, folks.

I think that I can piece together the accounting policies of Polaris from that.

However, the point, as I see it, is that I should not HAVE to.

Then again, if George hired someone to add a FAQ page to his website (including this stuff), he might have to raise his prices ;) , and they ARE quite reasonable for what he seems to be offering.

One other question for now :

If you use a Polaris domain for your account there, is there more than one from which to choose, or is it only @polarismail.net ?

According to their wiki site http://wiki.polarismail.com/display/Support/Home you have a choice between lovesemail.com or
polarismail.net

Thanks.

So there IS a FAQ ! (and I found the link to it also was on their website :cool: )

And in the Wiki, I noticed that there are some important topics covered, such as dealing with ALIASes.

Looks like the accounting stuff addressed in my earlier post could be added into a new section. ( Nudge, Wink, Hint :) :) :) )

Polaris Mail and TB
 

(New to emaildiscussions, hope I'm doing this OK...). I just posted a new thread under "Email Comments, Questions and Miscellaneous" Webmail for small business". I am seriously considering Polarismail, but am also looking at Zoho. I find your comment on Polarismail very helpful, and was wondering if you now are still happy with them, and how well the synchronization of TB Contacts and Lightning Calendar work. If you have Lists or Groups in your TB Addressbook, do these sync accordingly, or only into the main "Personal Address Book"?

My main reason for using Polaris mail and keeping TB on my desktop instead of only using webmail, is that I can personalize my emails to my customers in my TB Lists using the add-on Mail Merge, which is more professional looking than using bbc undisclosed recipient... Zoho offers the mail merge option with their Zoho Campaign, but reading forums and user comments, I am a little bit hesitant to go with Zoho. Don't find may reviews or comments on Polarismail but what I do find are good. I hope you don't mind me asking you about your comments on all this as well as your experience to date with PM.
Thank you, Mimi

Is the sync two-way? That is, if you add/change a contact in Address Book or add/change an appointment in iCal does that change get propagated to Polarismail?