9cays - Free Group Email Service

Pros

• 9cays makes mailing a group of people super easy
• You can add new recipients to a 9cays thread by Cc:-ing them
• 9cays creates a clean archive of every conversation

Cons

• 9cays does not offer password protection of conversation web archives
• You cannot block certain people from inviting you to 9cays conversations
• Custom 9cays addresses that create conversations with default members would be nice

Description

• 9cays lets you create group conversations that act like dedicated mini mailing lists.
• Every 9cays conversation has a group address that distributes mail to all members.
• Adding somebody to a 9cays conversation is as easy as putting them in the Cc: field of a group mail.
• 9cays creates a special web page for each thread that archives all messages.
• The 9cays web archive automatically hides quoted text to create a clean, easy to follow thread.
• Pictures attached to emails sent to a 9cays conversation are posted to the web archive, too.
• A new 9cays conversation can be started by adding go@9cays.com to the recipients of an email.
• Each 9cays web archive contains an easy link to start a fresh thread with the same group of people.
• 9cays conversations as archived on the web can be followed using a RSS feeds.

Guide Review - 9cays - Free Group Email Service

Of course, the best option is not the same as the ideal solution. Cc: lists quickly get out of hand, and either individual emails become horrendously long (with multiple quoted messages), or people added to the (now uncontrollable) Cc: list later have no idea what had been talked about before. Mailing lists help with some of the administration hassle and often keep web archives, but they in turn are rigid and inflexible. Who wants to set up a mailing list to organize a mountain get-together?

9cays finally sets out to combine the best of both: a clean list of recipients without the maintenance overhead; a clean web archive of group conversations created "on the fly". To create a new 9cays conversation, you just add go@9cays.com to the list of recipients. Subsequent messages can be sent to a unique 9cays address that distributes them to everybody.

To add a new member, just add them to the To: or Cc: field of a message to the group. They will be asked to join, and they can catch up with what has already been said on a clean and neat web archive that automatically hides signatures or quoted text and includes image attachments, too.

It's just a pity 9cays archives cannot be protected with a password. While you can sign off any conversation, there's also no way to prevent certain people from inviting you.