[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by LCF

And, as Dennis said, Gmail rulz. I have a few friends still using web based email accounts with.. here it comes... 12 MB storage space!! When I send them some assignment we have to do (attached files) more often than not I get a message that their inbox is full.
Why they don't migrate and forward their emails into a new account (if the old address is so precious) with at least 1GB space is beyond me...

I had problems back in the days when I had a DSL account because of limited space in my account on their email server. I was (and am) on some high volume lists, and it was possible for mail to bounce because my Inbox on the server was full before I had a chance to check it if I was traveling. That's one nice thing about GMail. I have 7.5GB of storage and counting, and don't worry about Inbox overflows.

Another is that GMail currently has a 20MB limit on attachment size. That's a mixed blessing for stuff I might send as attachments, because the recipient may use email that can't receive attachments that big. In practice, it's not a problem, as I seldom send attachments, and most are nowhere near that size.

Lastly, I had an account with a local company years ago. It was the first email account I really used, so I had a lot of emails there I would like to have had now. Most of it sentimental, but still... So one day I awake to find both my accounts there... completely empty. Not a single letter. 2 days later I am invited to join the paid service, otherwise they will close my account.
I asked if I will get my mails back. Nope, they are completely and forever gone, huge failure. But you can start paying us. My reaction was pretty much WTF?! No... that doesn't even come close. You see... because it was not very common mail service, I made one more account... for my (then) new girlfriend. It was meant to be just a funny present, but she liked it very much and we started using only these accounts to communicate online... Can you see where this is heading?... Yep, her account was empty too. Most of you have more life experience than me, so you can guess the value of these first letters between us.

Ouch!

If that happened over here, I'd expect something like a class action lawsuit against the company. At minimum, they'd be expected to tell you they planned to delete mail in free accounts, and give you an option to preserve it before it went away if you didn't plan to upgrade.

So what I learned was:

Have your mail with someone BIG, it's less likely they delete it all and then ask you to subscribe to their premium service (more likely the other way around).

I did have mail in my Yahoo account go away, because I hadn't accessed the account in some time. They did in fact send email warning me it would happen, but they sent it to the Yahoo address I never had cause to look at because I only used it to send things, and did that seldom, so I never saw it till too late.

The only reason I used it at all was to get around the one thing I don't like about GMail: they forbid attachments containing executables. I occasionally need to send someone a program, so this is a problem. To make it more fun, GMail never documented what they considered executables. I had a zip archive containing only HTML and png files bounced, apparently because a user could theoretically click on the downloaded attachment in email to open the zip file, then click on an html file in the archive and open it in a browser, and the HTML might try to do Bad Things.

I didn't lose anything I cared about, so no big deal, but I do now have GMail polling the Yahoo account, Just In Case.

Yahoo wouldn't mind if I upgraded to a paid account, but they offer nothing compelling enough to get me to do it.

Never put all your eggs in one basket. Now I have a gmail and she uses yahoo. If something happens it's unlikely that they will both simultaneously fail. And if so, it's probably WW3 anyway, so mails can wait

Google stores everything in at least three geographically separate locations. I tell anyone that if something happens big enough to interrupt Google's services, I likely have far greater problems than being able to access my mail.
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Dennis