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This is a complaint we have had several times and is normally down to a bad choice in personal/free email provider.

We understand that you need a non website email for personal communications but not all free email is equal. Some free email providers have become so fanatical about spam that they refuse legitimate email by rejecting emails they think are spam at server level.

This is nothing short of censorship, these companies decide for you what you should and shouldn't receive. Let me draw a comparison, imagine your local post office deciding whether or not your regular mail was junk mail and putting your mail in the trash not bothering to deliver it at all. I think you may have something to say about that when they bin your ad sense check from Google. You would not allow this behaviour for regular mail so why do you allow it for email????? In most countries interferring with someone elses mail is a criminal offence now there is a law the email regulators SHOULD bring in for email to stop the idiocy of some free email providers.

Spam Is A Fact Of Internet Life

Let us get real here for a minute. Where there is email there will be spammers, like it or not governments and official bodies can bring in all the legislation they want they simply will not stop spam! Common sense dictates if a problem is not going to go away then you just have to learn to deal with it the best you can. All free email companies should be spending thier time, effort and money improving spam filters not censoring your email. Very few free email providers do this well but there are exceptions.

Bad Choices For Your Personal Email

1. Your Internet service provider

Doesn't matter who it is, Virgin or BT in the UK. Verizon AOL or any of the others in the states. FORGET ISP FREE EMAIL PEOPLE!!!! They are silly, they block mail and even block certain server related ports entirely stupidly trying to stop spammers (Without explaining if they block port 25 you can not send email via your own website from your pc) Even worse than censoring they are now messing with your business.

Another point people miss, if you have a service providers email address and later change to another company for your internet access you have to mess around changing email addresses. Get one from a decent NON ISP email copmpany and you can keep the same email address all your life no matter who provides your net connection.

2. AOL, Hotmail, Verizon (And others)

These companies are terrible for censoring your email. If your personal email account is with them CHANGE IT! The 2001 web mail servers are not on any spam black lists we check them regularly but we can still struggle to get mail through to these idiotic companies. Don't believe us check out this article about Verizon blocking an entire continents and countries IDIOTS!

Recommended Free Email Providers

In all good concience the only decent email provider I can personally recommend is Gmail Their spam filters are excellent and VERY accurate more importantly they do not censor your email. But there is more.............

You get a whopping 2GB of space enough to say you will NEVER use it all

Gmail groups coversations.

Example you email me with a question, I reply to the question you reply again with a further question which i answer. You do not have 2 separate emails in your inbox from me you have ONE with all the little conversations grouped together so you can see what you asked and what I replied similar to the way support tickets are listed.

You can search your emails.

This feature is a REAL time saver. As a bad example I send you a joke about a tap dancing donkey. Four months from now you remember the silly joke but can't remember how it goes exactly, how many emails have you received in those four months? It would be pretty time consuming to find my email. Not with Gmail you type "tap dancing donkey" in the search and gmail will search subject lines AND the content of ALL your emails for matches.

Sorting with Tags.

Nice little feature that replaces the old folders system of conventional email. Example when you buy a program or a script online they send you a license code. Simply create a tag called licenses tag the email then click archive to srtore it away. Next month you buy another program and do the same. You get a new laptop and want to install all your programs, you go to gmail click the "Licenses" tag and Gmail show you all your emails from the software companies.

You can use this to separate personal email from business email, have a tag for jokes what ever you like.

No Clunky Address book to maintain

Gmail simply remembers any email address you email so when you want to email someone you simply click compose, the new compose window opens. Say you are emailing me you type in the to box G you will see a list of all the email adresses you ever emailed that begin with G, so then you type A that list shortens to all the adresses beginning with GA  by the time you have typed gary you have all the garys you email. Click the right address and you are good to go. No more searching folders for contacts type a few letters and youll see the right adress.

OK I'll shut up not before this turns into a GMAIL webinar.There are oodles of other great features with GMail it is simply the best out there for personal free email. That said do not email your customers with YOU@gmail.com this would be unprofessional, it is however a great email address to use for your support account at 2001web.com that way on the VERY RARE occasion we have server issues we can still contact you.

Final Advice

MY advice dump ISP, AOL, HOTMAIL and all those other fanatical email companies. Get yourself a gmail account you can use for the rest of your life. Get a Gmail account with a great spam filter that does NOT censor your mail. Ok you will have the hassle of letting everyone know once that you have changed email address, but that will be the last time you EVER do it.

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