Hotmail? Pah! Postmaster wins hands down! (postmaster.co.uk)

Member Name: unnameable

Product:	postmaster.co.uk
Date:	15/01/04 (213 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: ease of use, reliability, spam filter

Disadvantages: community can be addictive!

Recently I searched the Internet for a good reliable email service as I changed from dialup to BT Broadband (which doesn't supply an email address........not to be confused with BT Openworld Broadband, which does supply email addresses!). Postmaster.co.uk struck me as a very promising website going on the intro page alone.

So, of course, I signed up straight away. It was a very simple straightforward task of selecting a username (which would double as your email address) and a password. Surprisingly I managed to get my first choice of username (which is unheard of from the likes of Hotmail).

Upon registering you are given three options, as listed below;

Bronze Membership - This is your basic free webmail account. With this you get the following...

 Email (3 MB)
 Anti-Spam measures
 External mail collection
 Address book
 Discussion
 Polls
 Egreetings
 Optional Extra Storage
 Efriends
 News

When I signed up I was upgraded to Silver membership for 30 days trial, which I never managed to make full use of!

Silver Membership - For a fee of £9.99 per year you get, in addition to the features or Bronze Membership...

 Optional Advertising
 Calendar(s)

Gold Membership - For a fee of £2.00 per month, or £19.99 per year you get all of the above plus...

 Site Builder (5MB)
 File Storage (10MB)

I will go further into detail with the features later on.




The website itself has a simple login screen on which you type your username and password to access all the features (I will list below).

Once logged in you are faced with a poll, which Postmaster run every day. a number of current news links, ,and some more information on Postmaster's other services. Above all this there is a menu bar with
links to email, address book, calendar, file storage, site builder, discussion, E friends, E greetings, and of course, links to your settings window and help page. (That was knackering typing all that!).

Here's the long bit... descriptions of each feature/screen:

EMAIL

Left Hand Frame:

Going from top to bottom you have the following...

Actions menu - Compose, Address Book, Check for New Mail, Filter Messages, and Empty Trash. All of these are pretty much self-explanatory.

*Standard Folders*

This is where you find your Inbox, Sent folder, Drafts folder, and Trash folder. all with a number beside which indicates the amount of new messages, and total messages.

*Options*

External Mail - clicking on this allows you to set-up a program such as Outlook to read your mail. As yet there is no way to use Outlook to compose mail, as Postmaster do not have an outgoing pop3 server set up.

Block Addresses - You can add to, and edit your list of address from which you do not wish to receive mail here.

Signature Cards - Here you can create signatures that are added automatically to every email you send.

Create Folder - Here you can create custom folders to file your emails into. Any custom folders appear just underneath the Standard Folders list.

Folder Management - This gives you an overview of your filtering options (which emails are automatically sent to which folder etc), and the total space used by each folder.


Central Frame:

When you click on any one of the options in the left-hand frame, the contents open up in the central frame. For most I have already described what appears, but I shall go into more detail on the usual contents (such as what appears when you click on Inbox, Sent, or Drafts)

At the top of the frame you see a list of all the emails in that folder (with most recent emails at the top). Above and under the list
are a number of options such as delete, block, move to folder, and next window.

At the bottom of the frame you see the contents of the email you currently have highlighted in the list above.

Composing an email couldn?t be simpler. All you do is click on Compose and you are presented with a basic screen with boxes to fill in for ?to?, ?copy to?, ?subject?, and ?message?. You can easily attach files by adding them to the boxes at the bottom of the screen, and there is even a spell checker! You have the usual options, such as view address book, and set importance etc. So this is very much a complete email service!

When receiving messages Postmaster puts them through a Spam Filter which weeds out all definite spam, and labels anything suspect, which is a great feature (although it can be a bit flawed).


ADDRESS BOOK

A very easy to view and organise address book with options such as?

Compose with addresses ? Compose an email to the selected address(es)
Create a mailing list ? Create an e-mailing list including the selected address(es)
Edit - Edit an entry/contact
Delete ? Delete an entry/contact

CALENDAR

I only managed a brief look at this feature before my trial silver Membership expired. From what I saw it is very much like the Calendar feature of Outlook, allowing you to schedule appointments and organise reminders etc. Very handy for those of you with busy lives (that counts me out!)

FILE STORAGE

Only a feature for Gold Membership. This allows you to upload any files such as pictures, soundclips, and documents up to a limit of 10 MB. Very handy for allowing access to files from different computers. This can also act as you own web page! Any files uploaded can be accessed using a specified URL such as http://yourdomainname/fs/username/ for example.


SITE BUILDER

Self-explanatory really. This acts much like the site builders given on web st
orage sites such as Geocities and Tripod. Allowing you to create and edit your own web page(s) which are stored in the file storage section. You can use various layouts, backgrounds and decoration, add headings, text, pictures or files, and also share your site with other Postmaster members. Very useful if you want to build a personal website without the access limitations of Geocities (god that is an annoying set-up!)

DISCUSSION

Here you can find a set of community forums (messageboards) populated by some very friendly people. Subjects such as Auctions, Computers, Jokes/Humour, Literature and the obligatory Adults-Only make for some interesting reading. Once you start posting to the forums you WILL find yourself addicted! A great little addition to the features which only appeared a few months ago.

E FRIENDS

This is a database of people who have submitted personal profiles very much in the vein of the Hotmail Member Directory. The big difference is the fact that you have a list of contacts that you have made through E Friends, and also a list of incoming/outgoing requests for contact. So it very much acts like a website based instant messenger, which can be useful for those of you (like me) who are behind firewalls and cannot use the regular messengers.

You can enter your own personal profile so that people can see you when they are searching,. And searching yourself is an absolute piece of cake. Simply fill in a form giving preferred interests, age, sex and location and you?re away!

E GREETINGS

This is an E Card service, which gives you numerous choices of e cards that can be sent to any email address with a personal message. Very handy!

PERSONAL

Clicking this takes you back to the initial screen (with the poll and news links).

SETTINGS

Here you can change settings such as password, account details, email options and discussion options. There are many options to set
, but they are very easy to navigate and view.

HELP

This takes you to a very detailed help menu listing FAQ?s for each of the websites features. I have trawled through each listing and have found each and everyone to be hugely informative and very easy to understand.

UPGRADE

Here you can select to upgrade your account to either Silver or Gold Membership, and you can also buy additional storage space at £2.50 annually for each additional 5MB that you require.



To Sum Up?

Ever since using Postmaster.co.uk I have found myself drawn back to the site for more than just checking emails. I check the poll each day for one thing. It is a thriving community full of people from all walks of life, and the forums truly are great to read (and steal jokes off of!).

I have had no problems whatsoever accessing emails and sending emails, and the website seems very quick even on my outdated home PC!

Everything is so easy to navigate, and is very well presented. No jumbled pages at all, and no adverts (apart from their own!).

So, in summary, Postmaster.co.uk is a fantastic webmail service, unparalleled in its ease of use. And as it is (surprisingly) not that well known there are still many usernames available without having to resort to adding 4 or 5 random numbers after your chosen name!

It has features to suit everyone from the home user, to someone who needs a mobile email address for business. On top of that your email address doesn?t actually sound like a webmail address, which is very handy!

Postmaster.co.uk serves its purpose above and beyond what is required from it? A big thumbs up from me!

Thanks for reading,

Marc

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