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Inbox.com - Free Email Service

About.com Rating four out of Five
User Rating3.3 out of 5 (12 Reviews)  Write a Review

By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com

Inbox.com

Inbox.com

Heinz Tschabitscher

The Bottom Line

Inbox.com not only gives you 5 GB to store your mail online but also a highly polished, fast and functional way to access it via either the web (including speedy search, free-form labels and reading mail by conversation) or through POP in your email program. Unfortunately, IMAP access is not supported by Inbox.com, and its tools for organizing mail could be improved with smart or self-teaching folders.
Pros
  • Inbox.com offers 5 GB of online mailbox space as well as POP access
  • The fast web interface includes rich text editing, threading and free-form labels
  • Inbox.com includes solid spam and virus filtering
Cons
  • Inbox.com does not offer IMAP access
  • You cannot set up smart folders in Inbox.com
  • Inbox.com does not support encrypted mail and digital signatures

Description

  • Inbox.com offers free web-based email with 5 GB (US/CA/UK) or 2 GB online storage and POP access.
  • You can organize mail using stars, custom folders, free labels and filters.
  • Inbox.com filters spam using varying aggressiveness or a challenge/response mechanism.
  • Remote images in emails can be blocked from automatic download to protect your privacy.
  • Inbox.com lets you view mail in threads and supports rich HTML formatting in outgoing messages.
  • You can send messages up to a size of 30 MB.
  • For a fee, Inbox.com offers up to 30 GB storage and daily backups.
  • Email integrates to some degree with Inbox.com calender, notes, file storage and photo galleries.

Guide Review - Inbox.com - Free Email Service

With 5 GB of free space, Inbox.com can also comfortably be your Archive.com, but the size is not the only argument in favor of making Inbox.com your email service of choice.

For starters —and for everyday pleasure —, there's a web interface that is both fast and functional. It could be a tad more simple and offer even more convenience (drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts), though.

Finding all that archived mail works nicely using Inbox.com's search engine, and usually sufficient filters sort mail to custom folders. It's a pity the filters do not integrate with another great organizing feature, labels.

Color-coded, Inbox.com's free-form labels help you organize mail in flexible ways, and conversation view brings together related emails easily. Smart folders and better integration of address book and email messages would be great, though.

Inbox.com's spam filters perform reasonably well with little false positives and very little spam coming through. For even more protection, you can set up a convenient challenge/response filter that lets only authorized senders reach your Inbox.com Inbox.

When viewing any mail, Inbox.com protects you privacy not downloading remote images automatically. When writing any mail, you can make use of rich formatting using the functional editor, which lets you put any of your email addresses in the From: line, too.

You can also access your Inbox.com account with a desktop email program using POP and SMTP. With all of Inbox.com's web-based splendor, IMAP access is not a must, but it would be nice to have.

User ReviewsWrite Review
1 out of 5 1 out of 5
deceptively good, at firstJune 08, 2009By OpinB
"I had heard claims that inbox.com's questionable practices (spam, malware, etc.) were in the past. I'm seriously doubting it now. I've become first annoyed and now concerned over this account. If someone sends me an email with photos in it, they do not show up in the body of the email, as it originally appeared. You have to open them all as separate attachments. The HTML filter is too strict. I understand it's supposed to be a protection measure, but if I check the general option to allow HTML then all my emails should show up that way without further monkeying around. Instead, for 99% of them I have to click ""show options"" then ""switch to HTML view"" within each individual mail. I feel it should then at least remember my setting for that mail when I go to open it again (if not for that sender) but it doesn't. I get a lot of newsletters that use HTML and this is a pain in the butt! Also, like Dr.Motaweede, I suddenly started getting nailed with tons of spam and I don't care if it's all going to a spam folder. I hate wading through all that to make sure there isn't something there that I need to move to my inbox. Those are the annoyances, now for the concern part: Most of the sender names and/or subject lines have something in them relating to content of my emails, my contact list and now my inbox.com password! I'm ditching and switching to something better (if I can find it)."

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