Charging Does Help Yahoo Make A Profit 251
Meshach writes "The globe and mail has an article about how yahoo is starting to charge for their email service. Payment is not mandatory but if you don't pay you have many restrictions on your accont. It says that while many are angry about the change enough people are paying that it is helping Yahoo rebound from their slump. This seems like a recent trend in e-business." The conventional wisdom around web stuff that's been free, but converts to pay is that "they die off, no one wants to use it anymore etc etc", but I think what people fail to realize is that for many businesses, less people is *just fine*, if those people are paying.
This Is a FLAME not a TROLL (Score:0, Informative)
Misleading Post (Score:5, Informative)
Once again, another overreacting FUD piece on Slashdot. If you read the article you will see that all they are doing is raising the price of their ALREADY pay per use "Yahoo Mail Plus" service, or whatever the name, from 19.95 to 29.95. They are also adding some new features to it like the ability to send email for different domains. They are not "taking away" anything from the standard Yahoo mail service, even though the article tries to paint it that way, by saying that "customers are restricted to 4MB in their inbox", etc. There has always been that restriction on inbox size, and nearly ever WebMail provider has a simmilar restriction. If they didn't then they'd all just become free warez repositories!
Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail (Score:5, Informative)
The last one is why I choose to go with Yahoo!. My college email account will one day go away. I don't want to use (can't really) my work email for personal correspondence. I'm likely to move around the next couple of years, so my ISP will probably change (so there goes my ISP email account). There are other free email services, but none are as established as Hotmail or Yahoo!. And that's what it came down to. I wanted an email address that I could give out and not worry about it changing in a couple months, or even a couple years. If I decided to move to anywhere in the world, I would still have my Yahoo! email account. None of my other accounts have that stability. Few other online email providers can guarentee that kind of stability. Of course, Yahoo! could go out of business, or could sell off the email business, but that's a risk regardless of what I choose.
Additionally I find that Yahoo!'s spam filter works fairly well for me (better than Hotmail), it's interface is more lightweight than Hotmail, I can even access it via a links or lynx web browser. You can change your privacy policy settings so that you don't get spammed or sold out and the service is always up. I made the decision several months ago and I haven't been disappointed.
Excellent free/paid email provider (Score:1, Informative)
If you guys haven't looked at FastMail [fastmail.fm] already, you must. It is the most geek friendly email service, providing secure IMAP, POP, SMTP, huge storage, spam assassin, multiple aliases, writing your filters in sieve etc. etc. And they are fast.
Another cool feature is automatic folder redirection, where mail sent to foldername@username.fastmail.fm goes to the specified folder directly. Very good for creating new email addresses on the fly for online subscriptions. I use amazon@myusername.fastmail.fm for amazon, for example. Excellent for keeping track of who is selling your email address.
The customer support is unbelievable and you get real responses from a human usually within a couple of hours.
No I don't work for them, just another happy paying customer.
As one who pays for this service... (Score:4, Informative)
Yahoo gives me only 6mb of email space, and constant ads asking me to 'upgrade' my service for *another* $9.99/yr for only 25mb more space!
Everything else on that service is for pay. If I go log in right now (oh yes and turn off Privoxy) even though I am a paid member, I am still faced with a myriad of flash and java ads. Then there is the giant ad at the bottom when you log in telling you that for $29.99 a year you can get more space, and more this and that. Then finally there are two separate links for mail upgrades on the front of the email page.
Worse yet, my wife also pays for an account, but we get no added benefit of having two paid for email addresses.
The only reason I kept this mail address is the same reason you keep cell phones; we have no loyalty to the provider, but isn't it a pain to switch addresses? I've had this email account for years.
And.. what's the alternative? Hotmail? No thanks. One of the reasons I pay Yahoo is because it's cheaper than running my own email, and it's much more reliable than many others. However, I think that their price points for $9.99 are 1999 customer expectations. Everything is obviously throttled and tiered for marketing, and it sucks.
Re:I pay (Score:4, Informative)
When web ads started getting too obnoxious, I started running ad blockers. I don't mind ads that stick to the margins where I can notice them or ignore them. I do mind when they make noise just by moving the mouse over them, pop-up over other content, pop-under and force me to click, distract me with animations, or distract me with boobies (in the workplace especially!!!!).
I am amazed that Yahoo would force ads at paying customers. I would never pay for a service that displays disruptive advertising to its subscribers.
Go back to simple magazine-style advertising and I will stop running ad blocking software.
HOw much of Yahoo's "sales" are tie-ins? (Score:4, Informative)
virus scanning? (Score:2, Informative)
This option should be a big money saver for small businesses since most virii are email-born. And most small businesses cannot afford to employ someone to keep their virus software up-to-date.
I think that Yahoo uses Norton to do virus scanning.
Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Doesn't seem worth it (Score:1, Informative)
Here's the snip from the policy
Yahoo! does not rent, sell, or share personal information about you with other people or nonaffiliated companies except to provide products or services you've requested, when we have your permission, or under the following circumstances:
* We provide the information to trusted partners who work on behalf of or with Yahoo! under confidentiality agreements. These companies may use your personal information to help Yahoo! communicate with you about offers from Yahoo! and our marketing partners. However, these companies do not have any independent right to share this information.
Re:Subtle. (Score:4, Informative)
Aside from other things, Slashdot does have a spellchecker. It just isn't a grammar checker. It doesn't correct the wrong word spelled correctly (i.e. thing where you meant think). Spellcheckers are limited.
My advice is, if you're reading slashdot for its literary merits, maybe you need to start browsing at -1. In lieu of that, lighten up. And I'm sorry if that sounded harsh, but seriously, if you want to judge slashdot, judge it by what types of stories get posted, by the ensuing conversations, but not by the occasional mistakes of the editors.
Yahoo personal address (Score:4, Informative)
I use it and it is a pretty convenient way to get your _own_ email address and be independent of the email provider. If Yahoo email start to suck, I can host my email myself, but so far it is far more convenient to let Yahoo do it.
What I wonder is how this new pay service works with the personal address service.
I left yahoo because of their charges (Score:3, Informative)
I looked around and found fastmail.fm - an excellent web/IMAP mail provider which integrates flawlessly with outlook or Mozilla/netscape mail. I pay $20/year and get something like 10 times the space I could get for the same price at yahoo. I also get the very cool email alias feature, where people can mail be at anything@myaccount.fastmail.fm. When web sites ask me for my address I sign up as say "slashdot@myaccount.fastmail.fm" - this way when I get spam I can tell who abused sold my email address, and block it based on the To: address.
Anyway, look around, there are many high quality email providers out there who charge much less than yahoo, and provide a heck of a lot more.
-josh
Paying is easy, cancelling is hard (Score:4, Informative)
In short, don't buy any sort of Yahoo premium service. There are plenty of great services out there with better tech support; I recommend using one of those instead.
Yahoo DOES have free POP3 access. (Score:3, Informative)
Yahoo DOES have free POP3 access. Yahoo is like American pharmaceutical companies. They push American customers to the wall, but sell for reasonable prices in other countries.
Yahoo in other countries has free POP3 access.
Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why I actually pay for Yahoo! Mail (Score:2, Informative)
The big down side: $50-$100/year.
the up sides:
--email address that's easy to remember, not bobsmith1483@yahoo.com
--permanet email addresses for *all* your family and friends as well (get them to kick in on the $$!)
--you get to pick the domain name
--you can put a web site up there too
--POP or web access
--If the guys go under, you can move to another provider a day later(and are you so sure Yahoo isn't teetering on TU?)
I pay $35/year to register.com for my domain, and $60/year to ICDSoft [icdsoft.com] for my hosting. There are even cheaper options, but for my $60 I get a third of a gig of storage, POP or web email, subdomains, mailing lists, MySQL database, great online tech support, $5 domain registration, no ads, and lots of other bennies. Highly recommended, BTW. And as long as I have $35/year, I'll have my domain.