What's the most reliable email provider?

[papalangi]

Every provider has its downtimes. But who has the fewest?

[ankupan]

Hi,
I am very happy with Mailsnare.net and customer support is also excellent. and another one is pobox.com
Really Just I have subscribe this service and got relief from SPAM.

~ ankupan ~

[theog]

hmm.... I live on everyone.net email... I can't recall a downtime this year... or any issues. It is 6:10 in the am and I've been up all night, so one downtime may be slipping my mind... but I can't recall one.

Of course they have the maintenance times when your email is down at most 5 minutes... that happens, I think, once or twice a month... but is not really downtime.

After researching the email providers on this board, and elsewhere, I don't think I'm leaving everyone.net anytime soon.

[Shelded]

I think it's a fair thing to point some folks to the service. We don't all have to be so techie about it. It just works.

http://www.everyone.net/outsource-email-solutions.html

[KC7]

Originally posted by theog
hmm.... I live on everyone.net email... I can't recall a downtime this year... or any issues.

I noticed that their personal accounts come with only 25MB per email address (total of 5 email addresses per account). Is there an option to purchase more storage space?

[cheviot]

IMHO...everyone.net

The plan that I run on runs me about $36/yr and is currently 250mb. Up to 1gb plan is available.

I have been with them since November of 2000; have known them to be down twice in those five years...

[Ennis]

Mailsnare has very little downtime, but they have downtime. Webmail.us has no downtime. Not ever in the year I've been with them.

[Trip]

Originally posted by papalangi
Every provider has its downtimes. But who has the fewest

Hi papa, first, I think it's good to qualify the difference between uptime and accessibility, which is really a better thing to measure, imho. A service's uptime is measured by seeing whether the servers of that service are up or down, but its accessibility is measured by the ability to reach that service and see it functioning, as well. This also bring into account problems with that service's network, external router issues, etc. So I think accessibility is a better measure of a quality, overall.

With that in mind, I actually have some pretty valid data from Host-Tracker (so don't all hate on me at once!) when I say that, statistically speaking, Microsoft's Hotmail has had the best accessibility over the last 256 days I've been monitoring. By that I mean they have had the fewest access failures in attempting to reach a working webserver of the provider. Ironically, Inbox.com is second best (!!!), just a little better than Yahoo, which is ahead of Gmail (due to a 35-minute outage in April).

And these results are to be expected. You've got the biggest companies at the top, with the deepest network infrastructures (read: most redudant), so connectivity and realibility should be the best.

For the small premium providers, though, Webmail.us seems to be the most reliable, putting up numbers as good as Yahoo, although I haven't monitered them for the length that I have MailSnare, who seems more reliable than Fastmail, who in turn has been more reliable than Runbox (albeit the recent 2-day Fastmail disaster).

So there's a statistical look at things, at least monitored over HTTP. And numbers never lie, no matter how much you may like or hate Hotmail.

Trip

[Ennis]

You're right. Maisnare is pretty stable, but it does go down. As I said, Webmail.us has not gone down once, to my knowledge, in the year I've been with them. Because I'm so compulsive about email, I would have to say it hasn't gone down.

[Shelded]

Are you tracking Everyone.net? Can you tell us how it performs? Any of the other big plugin services?

(I've got 750MB accounts there.)

[PenPen]

Originally posted by papalangi
Every provider has its downtimes. But who has the fewest?

I've been monitoring POP and SMTP connectivity of MailSnare, FastMail.FM, Tuffmail and LuxSci for some months. From it in conjunction with what I've actually experienced with their services, I would say LuxSci is the most reliable - and the most expensive of the four.

I can't say much about the other services.

[Ennis]

Originally posted by PenPen
I've been monitoring POP and SMTP connectivity of MailSnare, FastMail.FM, Tuffmail and LuxSci for some months. From it and in conjunction with what I've actually experienced with their services, I would say LuxSci is the most reliable - and the most expensive.

...of the four re: connectivity. What about Webmail.us? They never go down.

[PenPen]

Originally posted by Ennis
...of the four re: connectivity. What about Webmail.us? They never go down.

They could be one of the best but I just haven't monitored them.

[Trip]

Originally posted by Shelded
Are you tracking Everyone.net? Can you tell us how it performs? Any of the other big plugin services?

I don't have them shelded, but if you can PM me a good URL ( preferably their main webmail server) to monitor, I will add them ASAP.

Originally posted by PenPen
...I would say LuxSci is the most reliable - and the most expensive of the four.

Well, at least these results once again prove that you get what you pay for. Although, I suspect most people here aren't ready to shell out $10/mo. for business-class email hosting; they can live with some backup accounts and make due.

Trip

[btn]

Originally posted by KC7
Is there an option to purchase more storage space?

Yes.