Dooyoo Care2 to Help Charity? (care2.com)

Member Name: campb3ll

Product:	care2.com
Date:	26/01/02 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free email with 3 Mb, Click to donate to charity, Free e-cards

Disadvantages: Very US focused, Rather loud colour scheme

Free email is a top priority for a lot of internet users these days and that's what initially attracted me to this website. I was browsing through my usual email bible, Emailaddresses.com, when the name "Care2" just seemed to jump out at me. So, off I went to check it out.

Free Email
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In order to sign up for free email, you have to register as a Care2 user. This is totally not a problem - usual questions with the ever irksome non-USA categories to check off. When registering, you're given the option to chose an email address then and there or to do so later. As email was the whole point of the exercise, I immediately chose one of the interesting "animal lover" type domain names available e.g. wildmail.com, animail.com, Care2.com - your Care2 username also doubles up as your email username. Once registration is complete, you can log in to the site and access your email account.

Each email account comes with a reasonable 3 Mb of storage, although this can stretch up to 6 Mb before they get seriously peeved and start bouncing your incoming emails. All the usual features are available e.g. address book, folders, filters, POP email collection, out-of-office reply. On top of that is a rather neat feature that I can't help admiring: the red light/green light filtering service. Basically, you can choose to accept all incoming emails or only emails from your chosen list (green light) or all emails except those on your "spam" list (red light). It seems to me that this would make Care2 email especially suitable for tiny tots as you could guarantee no nasty spam and only email from folks that you put on the green light list.

I signed up a while ago and have no complaints. It's very easy to set up, there's no irksome pop ups, no spam and emails are sent and delivered quickly. The only problem I have encountered is that the POP collection is dreadfully slow. I can't figure out
if this is due to Care2's servers (unlikely as their own email works quickly) or if they've set POP collection to once every blue moon (far more likely than you realise). This is not an issue for me as I was only after an alternative web account to supplement my "regular" email and won't be using POP collection but this may be an issue for other folks.

Other Care2 Features
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Care2 has a lot more to offer than mere free email accounts. They are a for-profit company that donates 10% of all revenue to charity, raising funds mostly for animals and the environment. Every activity you do on their website generates a little bit of money, so it's the ideal "armchair" donation solution.

It's really a portal site - in their own words, it's a Yahoo for folks who care about the environment. You've got a wide range of eco-type news, stock tracker, US weather reports, search engine (powered by the wonderful Google.com), newsletters, free ads (GreenPages), shopping, forums, polls, petitions, click-to-donate and e-cards.

The e-cards are great as they cover a wide range of categories e.g. birthdays, holidays. You can choose the card design, background, "stamp", music and date of "posting". (There's a particularly cute card called Bear Hugs featuring a baby and mommie polar bear but the cards aren't all animal/eco themed. Everything from Chinese New Year to Ground Hog Day is represented.) You can also keep track of the last 20 cards you sent plus a list of favourites for quick reference.

The shopping section is clearly a big money spinner for Care2. They have strategically placed internal ads for their products throughout the site. It's basically divided into three categories: partner store Green Home (whom I've never heard of), their own CafePress.com store and a huge list of associate program stores (e.g. the Amazon associate pro
gram). Green Home flogs a range of organic eco-friendly goods, presumably just to America although they don't actually tell you this. As an example of their "interesting" goods, they sell a terracotta water dispenser for $65 USD plus $10 USD postage. CafePress.com you may have heard of - anyone can sign up and set up their own store selling customised CafePress goods at a mark up (store owners receive the difference between their advertised price and the item's basic price). You'll definitely be familiar with associate programs; most folks have these on their websites, hoping to generate a few pennies whenever someone clicks through and buys from their associate. Unfortunately, all the associate stores are American based.

Of course, I'm saving the best Care2 feature for last ...

Click To Donate
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One of Care2's best features is the click to donate pages. Currently, you can raise funds for the rainforest (and other habitats), big cats, pandas and combating breast cancer. If you're unfamiliar with the concept, basically you just go to a page and click on a link - a sponsor will pay Care2 some money for displaying their logo and a portion of the funds generated goes to charity.

Registered users can keep track of how many times they've visited, how much habitat they've saved (or how much money has been raised) and how many friends they've encouraged to participate.

In Conclusion
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Care2 is graphics heavy and has a very colourful website theme (think tropical animals) but the site is reasonably fast loading and the shock of colour is actually a welcome relief from some of the dull tedious websites out there. To get the most of it (email, e-cards) you will have to register but it's not onerous and you can maintain a good level of security - you can hide your profile, disable online password retrieval, block incoming emails, etc. Alth
ough the site is heavily (practically 99%) American focused, visitors on the wrong side of the pond needn't feel left out - unless they're desperately keen to go shopping. Care2 is definitely worth a visit. Even if you aren't after email or eco-warrior news, then do stop by to send an e-card and click to donate. Go on. You know you want that warm fuzzy feeling inside from doing your bit to help charity ...

http://www.care2.com/ - Home Page
http://rainforest.care2.com/ - Click to Donate (Habitat)
http://breastcancer.care2.com/ - Click to Donate (Breast Cancer)
http://bigcats.care2.com/ - Click to Donate (Big Cats)
http://panda.care2.com/ - Click to Donate (Pandas)

Summary: