Bluebottle.com is shutting down

[Prognathous]

I just received this message from them:

It is with sadness that I write to you today to inform you that the Bluebottle's email service will be closing.

We had little choice other than to close the service after making the realisation that we simply did not have the necessary engineering or financial resources to ensure the service remained secure for our customers. We would have also needed to upgrade our antispam protection, as many customers also wanted us to protect their pending folders from spam.

The service will close on June 30 2016.

We would recommend that you transition to a new email service well before that date to ensure that you do not lose any of your stored email, as once the service is closed you will no longer be able to retrieve your email.

If you're looking for an alternative email service we would recommend that you try Fastmail (www.fastmail.com), as they provide a quality email service without advertising and therefore do not need to scan your personal emails to serve you ads.

Thank you for being a loyal Bluebottle customer.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Pickup
Founder & CEO

I'm sad to see them go. They were a very useful complementary solution for Fastmail (my main email service for the last 13 years).

[davy51]

Ive been using them as one of my main accounts
Im truly sorry for their troubles

[beeboy]

Sad news. They were around a long time supplying a quality service.

[jdtaylor]

What seems odd is their website says a new bluebottle is coming soon. Which doesn't make much sense if they are shutting down.

[David]

Originally Posted by jdtaylor

What seems odd is their website says a new bluebottle is coming soon. Which doesn't make much sense if they are shutting down.

Perhaps they will open a forum here at EMD

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by David

Perhaps they will open a forum here at EMD

You think so? They started a Bluebottle forum at EMD in 2004, then created their own forum (since closed), then about 10 years ago in 2006 their forum here at EMD was removed:

Bill

[Tsunami]

I remember back in time this service was amongst the highest praised of all providers. Seeing messages like this gives me a sad feeling that maybe indeed the ONLY way of being sure your email address won't vanish after X years, is sticking to the big providers (Hotmail/Outlook/Live, Yahoo, Gmail).

I know there is a lot of praise for services like Runbox, Fastmail, EUMX, Zoho, Yandex, ... too and it probably is unlikely any of those would disappear anytime soon. But few of us probably expected Bluebottle would disappear in the distant future ...

It would make one rather hesitant to consider an account outside of the big global players like Microsoft, Google or Yahoo...
(or a huge player inside a really big market ; mail.ru for example being not a global player but having such a popularity in a country with a huge market, that they're probably as likely to survive on the long haul as Yahoo, Hotmail or Gmail)

[David]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

I remember back in time this service was amongst the highest praised of all providers. Seeing messages like this gives me a sad feeling that maybe indeed the ONLY way of being sure your email address won't vanish after X years, is sticking to the big providers (Hotmail/Outlook/Live, Yahoo, Gmail).

What I remember most (about the old Bluebottle forums) is seeing page after page of user complaints, and not much else. I always figured that was the reason they wanted their forums removed..............

[beeboy]

Originally Posted by David

What I remember most (about the old Bluebottle forums) is seeing page after page of user complaints, and not much else. I always figured that was the reason they wanted their forums removed..............

True. There was a lot of bluebottle action here for a bit. I always liked the name.

[Csin]

Bluebottle was the only email provider I was willing to pay for. Very sad. I will probably be moving on to:
https://posteo.de/en
Tried fastmail.com, but they are still up to their old ways. Tried to send a test email with an active link, and was told I'd have to register a phone number to do that. I don't think so. If I wanted to give out a phone number I'd still be using Live.com, Yahoo, etc.

Edit: So I signed up for posteo account. Don't like their layout as much as bluebottle, but cheaper by a few bucks. Signup was at least painless, and they don't have a problem with links in emails (I tested).

[emoore]

Originally Posted by Csin

Tried fastmail.com, but they are still up to their old ways. Tried to send a test email with an active link, and was told I'd have to register a phone number to do that. I don't think so.

I've had a Fastmail account for over a decade and have never been asked to provide a phone number. But I never had a trial account. https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing.html states:

Before being able to send an email from a free trial account, we require your mobile phone number. This is an email abuse countermeasure: we use the number only to send an SMS verification code

[Csin]

Originally Posted by emoore

I've had a Fastmail account for over a decade and have never been asked to provide a phone number. But I never had a trial account. https://www.fastmail.com/help/ourservice/pricing.html states:

Before being able to send an email from a free trial account, we require your mobile phone number. This is an email abuse countermeasure: we use the number only to send an SMS verification code

Well, without knowing for 100% certain that they don't disable active links in email sent to me (I detest having to copy and paste if I don't have to) or in emails I send to contacts, they will get no money from me. I had an account with fastmail.fm for several years (back when it was free). Was a pain in the rump back then, and this so-called trial account has not improved my opinion. Glad I went with posteo, but still bemoan the loss of bluebottle!

[guiltmanager]

I received the same message from bluebottle and it's beyond sad, beyond horrific. I get 200 spam emails a day or there abouts, to my gmail and 4securemail.com addresses, my own fault as i gave out the email for lots of newsletters and things and not all the owners were scrupulous with my address. but bluebottle has been dealing with my emails for a couple years now and been great. I don't know what i'm going to do without it to be honest and am looking for an alternative that has the same ability to block people you don't want to see ever again with the click of a button from the pending folder.
incidentally bluebottle went down the night before last, uk time and is driving me mad as am expecting important emails ug!!

[Jacinto]

Originally Posted by Tsunami

. . . Seeing messages like this gives me a sad feeling that maybe indeed the ONLY way of being sure your email address won't vanish after X years, is sticking to the big providers (Hotmail/Outlook/Live, Yahoo, Gmail).

. . .

Or register your own domain with a registrar that offers complementary E-Mail services (there are many). No matter what happens to the registrar, your E-Mail address is yours to do with as you like.

If you choose your registrar carefully, it shouldn't set you back more than ten or fifteen USD annually.

--
Jacinto

[Tsunami]

Originally Posted by Jacinto

Or register your own domain with a registrar that offers complementary E-Mail services (there are many). No matter what happens to the registrar, your E-Mail address is yours to do with as you like.

If you choose your registrar carefully, it shouldn't set you back more than ten or fifteen USD annually.

--
Jacinto

If you have your own domain you can indeed retain the same email address for as long as you keep the domain, you can either change the forward-to email address if your mailbox vanishes, or you can host redirect your domain to another email server if your mailbox host goes down.

However, that way the outside world won't notice you changed email provider as your email address remains the same, but you will have lost all archived emails you had with that mail provider if the provider discontinues its services.