Member Avatar for Toulinwoek

I'm going to let up on the beat-down for today, and instead give you a heads up. There is a company (and a service) that's been quietly kicking Google's butt (if you can believe that). The butt being kicked is not Google itself, but rather GMail, Google's wildly popular email service. I have an embarrassing number of GMail accounts myself and I love it. I have to admit, though, that I am one of what I am sure is a few users who doesn't like the sorting concept, labeling messages instead of just moving them to folders. I find it cumbersome.
However, what easily makes up for that inconvenience is the nearly 3GB (and growing) of storage space. There are also little programs you can download that will allow you to store files in your GMail space (these programs turn files into attachments and basically emails them to your GMail inbox). Nice, but still rather cumbersome.

So, all of a sudden...

SSLLAAPP!

Along comes something I have been using for over a year now, and very few people I know have even heard of it. It has gotten steadily better and more feature-rich over time, and right now it just plain boots the booty of GMail, in my opinion. Look at what you get:

  • An email address with 5GB (that's right, five gigabytes) of space.
  • An integrated Calendar and Task List
  • An online Photo Gallery
  • A Memo (notes) tool
  • A file system to which you can directly upload files (no email attachments)
  • A Contacts Management tool

Now, granted, all these services share that 5GB of space, but still, this is a lot to get for FREE, and also, you have FOLDERS for your email (a personal victory for me). If you don't use the photo album feature, and if you don't have a lot of large files you need to keep online, then you're getting email space that Google will need to speed up its little counter in order to even match.
Of course, you could argue that even the nearly 3GB of GMail space is far from being stuffed, but still, it's just the idea that impresses me. 5GB. Wow.

So, who's doing all this? It's a service called Inbox.com (Click Here), and I strongly encourage you to check it out. There are no ads (not even text-based, "contextural" ones), and the interface is smooth and easy to navigate. I don't know how they're doing it, but I like it! I think you will too.

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A quick, practical follow-up for anyone who finds this old thread after searching: what mattered in 2006 (cheap/free big mailboxes) matters less now — providers, quotas and signup rules change. ’s tip pushed people to try alternatives; today Inbox.com still exists but its signup and pricing posture has shifted toward a paid, privacy-forward offering, so check current account/plan terms before assuming the same 2006 experience. (inbox.com)

The major players also evolved. Gmail and most large providers now bundle email storage with cloud storage and offer a modest free quota (upgradeable via paid plans), so “how much free mail storage” isn’t the only axis — think portability, export options, and whether storage is shared with photos and files. If you’re using Gmail, export tools are available to grab your data for safekeeping. (one.google.com)

If the original recommendation in this thread convinced you to keep files in a webmail account, consider these action steps now:

  • Audit accounts and note which are still active or accepting signups.
  • Create an offline archive (IMAP-based tools or a mail client) and verify restores. Open-source and CLI options (imap-backup) work for large/scheduled archives; GUI users can use Thunderbird plus the ImportExportTools NG add-on to export MBOX/EML. Test the export and a restore to a fresh account or local client.
  • Move large, mutable files to a proper cloud backup or local archive (don’t treat email as a primary file store). (github.com)

Finally, ’s and ’s points still apply: regional offerings and running your own server remain viable choices. If you self-host, script regular exports and store at least two independent copies (local + cloud). Free offers change — keep control by backing up.

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Member Avatar for WolfPack

Although the 5GB limit applies to users in the UK, Canada and US ^^; , the service looks good to me. The storage, notes and calender features are awesome.

Member Avatar for 'Stein

That looks pretty phenominal :)

Except, I took the easy way out--I gots my own server space ;)

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