Gossamer Forum
Home : General : Internet Technologies :

Value of free email

Quote Reply
Value of free email
I'm curious to hear if anyone has any thoughts about the value (or lack thereof) of providing free email as a web-based service.

It seems like there are a million-and-one people doing it, and they must see some profit or benefit from the practice or they wouldn't keep doing it. That said, I'm not sure I see the point. With yahoo, hotmail, msn, and many other "name brand" providers of free email, why would a customer want to bother with a free email address at some mediocre, unknown domain name? I even see a lot of sites offering free email at a whole bunch of different domains, and I just have a hard time seeing why anyone would care. I don't personally know anyone with one of these email addresses. In my experience, people either use their job-based address, an ISP-based address, or a yahoo/hotmail-type name brand address. I don't know anyone with an address @free-email-4u.com, for example...

Obviously GT thinks there is and will continue to be a demand for this, or they wouldn't have bothered releasing GMail. Any GMail users care to comment on their success (or lack thereof) at providing free email as a service to their users? Anyone else feel like weighing in on the subject? Just curious to hear some opinions. Thanks.

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund
Quote Reply
Re: [hennagaijin] Value of free email In reply to
Free email was big because of the advertising associated with it (ie: banner and the text advertisement includes in messages sent). It was also a draw to bring and hold users to your website. Finally, some sites used it as a way to create mailing lists and gather demographics to sell to others. Now that the internet bubble has burst and web advertising rates have dropped, most of the services (epecially the biggies) are offering "premium" paid email services with out the advertising and are attempting to move the user base to paid subscription system. This is being done by offering more storage, user features and elimination of the advertising.

Some of the smaller paid email services could now carve out a niche by offering you an email like 59t-bird@fastcar.com instead of 59-tbird134@hotmail.com Likewise, your vanity email address will handle all your hobby/special interest emails and not clutter your work or home email address. Vanity emails can also offer family members some privacy that a single ISP mailbox does not provide.

The email services also offer the ability to have a stable permanent email address that doesn't change when you move ISP's, jobs, cities, or companies merge or change their web address structure.

When GT Community and Shopping Cart are released, this would make setting up paid accounts much easier.

There are also a fair amount of people on the internet that create communities and provide email service as more or less a hobby.

Can you make any money at paid vanity emails or links services? Don't know, but I guess the more features you offer (links, forums, email, etc) the more likely it is people will use and trust your site and possibly pay you for premium services.
--
Rob

SW Montana's Online Community
Modular Model Railroading
Quote Reply
Re: [hennagaijin] Value of free email In reply to
Some trade associations offer free email as a membership benefit and as a way of promoting the organization. Some of the non-profits I'm involved with do it as a way to keep in touch with their members. They give each member an email address (which the member can forward to their own "real" address if they choose) and then it's a simple matter of sending one email to "members@yourdomain.com" in order to communicate via association maintained lists.

I think it's more of a "value-added" type of thing.
Quote Reply
Re: [Watts] Value of free email In reply to
Yeah, that's where I'd be going with it. My company's a non-profit pseudo-trade-association and I'm contemplating providing free email for our members. Can't decide if it's worth the trouble, though, since it's almost worse to provide it and have it go totally unused than not to provide it at all! Thanks for the feedback.

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund
Quote Reply
Re: [hennagaijin] Value of free email In reply to
Just a suggestion...how about surveying the membership to see if they are interested? You may find that they or may not want to use it...user-centric development and design should be at the forefront before deciding to deploy technologies.
========================================
Buh Bye!

Cheers,
Me
Quote Reply
Re: [Stealth] Value of free email In reply to
Definitely a good idea... Sometimes easier said than done, but unquestionably something to consider.

Fractured Atlas :: Liberate the Artist
Services: Healthcare, Fiscal Sponsorship, Marketing, Education, The Emerging Artists Fund