Thanks for giving me the courage to leave AOL and go to mac.com. I”m almost there! getting closer anyway! I’ve been with AOL since they were first around, some 20 years, so it’s been difficult to say goodbye….

@Laura, I also want to post a topic on mac.com as well, as that will also run you, last I checked, about $100.00 a year. Please comment back and let us know what it is about mac.com that is of interest to you?

In many cases, I would say it is also a service you do not need. It has certain features, that if you need them, may be of value. There are also many ways to accomplish the same thing that might not cost anything.

I do not want to give the impression I am knocking mac.com, as to some, it will be valuable. I have a feeling, to most, it is unnecessary.

I doubt this will happen again, but when I first got broadband I had AT&T. AT&T called their service @home and everyone got an address at @home.com. Through some legal reason AT&T lost the rights to the home.com domain and with absolutely no notice had to change my address to att.com. Then later AT&T sold there cable division to Comcast, once again changing the address. this time at least had about one years notice. So I never moved, never really changed ISPs and had go through three addresses.

@Matt, exactly. I still have a client who at times, tries to get passwords and such, and I know they are going to her old @home address. The free email address that your ISP gives you is literally worthless. I have one for Comast, I imagine I can set up any number more. I have never even logged into it once.

According to AOL, you can keep your AOL email address even if you quit paying.

http://daol.aol.com/mailmessaging/email

@John, thanks so much for that link, that is actually pretty nice of AOL to offer. I would consider it an option, and still suggest people get out of the aol.com system.

I am a bit biased, which is why I said to stay away from hotmail and yahoo. I have administered email servers for about 10 years now, and those three email providers are near impossible to work with. We have constant issues delivering emails to them.

As a matter of fact, if you are a hotmail user, and you subscribe to our email newsletter, there is a good chance they will not deliver it to you. Too many emails to them over a short period of time and they block them.

I then have to spend weeks working with them to get approved to be a verified sender.

AOL has some of the same precautions set in place, which in general amount to ban first, prove you are not a spammer later.

I used .Mac for a couple of years but I found that I don’t need the features and services offered through .Mac. I use Comcast for high speed internet and I switched to a gmail e-mail address that I use through Mail on my Mac.

I like saving $$$ by not paying for .Mac. But if you want .Mac, I recommend buying it through Amazon.com for a $30 savings: Apple .Mac 5.0

@Scott
Great post.
Can’t wait to see your Mac.com topic published, I’d like to add my complaints as .mac email has been the ONLY part of my Apple experience that I find disappointing – and it would be great if that could be improved.

I have an ISP which allows 8 or 10 e-mail addresses, I have a Yahoo.com e-mail address, I have a .mac account with an e-mail address and several aliases, and …. I use them all – LOL!

The Yahoo address I use to run my own Yahoo groups mostly. I am fairly busy on the net and have a need for all these e-mail addresses. One address would NOT cut it. I had a g-mail account … I wonder what I did with that …..

Anyway, I love .mac for ease of use to throw up a web site. Mind you I use iWeb to make web sites and upload them to my web hosting etc. I basically use both for different reasons. Yes, I probably pay too much, but I find .mac handy. I have thought of cancelling it but I just like it for little movies and ease of use for family stuff, mostly. The other I use mostly for my web site.

Judie

PS – I should say I use .mac for putting up things like photo albums, slide shows and so on – family stuff.

@MacRussian, we hope to get to the post soon. (About .Mac). I too have found the email to be unreliable, and some of the other services a bit slow and flakey. In spirit, it is a nice idea, greate photo galleries, very simple way to end up presenting complex things. If Apple could keep up to speed with the demand I think it would be better.

As soon as we get a full report out, we will make sure to let you know.

@Judie, thanks for the comments. There are always nice uses for .Mac. I just want to point out there are other free methods to accomplish the same task.

There seems to be strong demand for this data, so we will get to a post on it very soon.

Hi, Scott.

Well, I’m interested in knowing about the free places for sure.

Judie

Thanks for helping people understand that they don’t need to pay that $120 connectivity fee if they already pay for broadband elsewhere. You can definitely KEEP your AOL address and not pay anything for the service. When AOL switched to free service years ago, I cancelled my payment. I’ve been enjoying AOL at no cost ever since. I like many of the benefits – most particularly its voice mail services. With it, I’m able to listen to my email by phone on a toll free number and have my telephone voice mail messages sent to my email address in a wav file. Both of these are invaluable to me – particularly because I travel a great deal. With it, I don’t need to access a computer or have a blackberry to retrieve all my email and home voice messages remotely. And I’ve been able to keep my original email address for twenty years without interruption.

@Amy, thanks for also pointing out you can keep the aol.com email address and use other services. I feel for all of those people who have a auto credit card charge happening every month and just do not realize they no longer need to even pay.

Glad you added your comments, as I was not entirely familiar with all the workings of AOL, I just knew most people do not need much of it anymore.

Yes, there are other ways to accomplish what can be done with .Mac. But, for a lot of people that is a lot of work setting up online backups, photo storage (even from your iPhone), Mail, Sync Bookmarks, Keychains, etc. between your Mac’s, Web site location, and 10 GB of online storage.

As far as I am concerned the $8.40/month that I pay for .Mac (I never pay more than $70/year for it) is a good buy. And, it lets me have those benefits in a Mac integrated manner that I consider part of the Mac experience.

For other users such as my Mom and Daughter it is the only way to go. I’m not about to try to set them up with the alternatives.

@RickPrather, thanks for posting, you are absolutely right. There are strong cases where certain people are going to benefit from .Mac. What I do not like is how on starting a new computer up, Apple pushes it in a way that makes it seem like you have to have it. You almost feel you can not register your computer without filling out that screen.

I want to educate people on what the services are, as I have a feeling it will be pretty divided on who needs them. I know some very advanced Mac users who swear by it as well, so it is much a to each his own case. Mainly, we want to make sure people know what they are getting into, rather than blindly walking into paying for something they may or may not need.

You don’t need .Mac or AOL. If you already have a service provider you don’t need either of them. Most providers will give you an email address and space to create your own website if you want. AOL also blocks parts of the internet. They only let you go to where they want you to go. That’s why I gave up AOL years ago. Don’t be limited by the service that charges you almost double for very little. .Mac does give you extra features that AOL does not. Such as 10 gigabytes of online storage that you can access your online files anywhere there is an internet connection. Also access to webmail, calendar, syncing, backups and more. .Mac is more of an add-on service and isn’t a service provider remember that.

About a year ago, I got tired of paying Earthlink $50 a month for DSL. I’d heard that ATT was offering the same speed for a guaranteed rate of $25 a month , so I switched.

I’m not selling one ISP over another. The point is that when I called Earthlink to cancel my account – and told them why – they were prepared to match the ATT offer. I’d already made the move, so the point was moot; however, it’s a good lesson for everyone to be a wise consumer with your ISP. If you’re paying too much, tell them you’re leaving unless they can match a better offer. The worst thing that can happen is that they’ll say “no.”

Not everyone who has an aol address is paying for aol.Aol.com now and ever since i can remember has offered a free e-mail account! This isnt something new because aol always did have free e-mail. When people pay for aol they are paying for the dial up local numbers not the e-mail account!:)

Thanks for the info. I passed it on to my Mom who is retired and should not be spending for free services.
I have always been VERY angry that Mac users have to pay for .Mac. accounts/access. Steve Jobs told all of his Mac following that we would receive a .mac account FREE. If Mac people were fooled into thinking they belonged to a”special fraternal groupl” it surely has changed. Apple not only built .mac into it’s OSX system and PUSHES IT. Gone are the days when Apple appealed to intellect and scholastics for the better good. Mac’s pandering for chump change has or will cost them more in future earnings by the loss of respect from their die hard supporters who stuck like glue in the good and bad times. Many of us took pride in being “Mac addicts. Tell Steve Jobs he’s losing HIS following one unhappy follower after another. I can’t wait to read your article on the .mac issue. I don’t think I will be alone in my thoughts.
Thanks!

I have been trying since July which is when I cancelled my AOL service to stop AOL from taking money out of my checking account. I cannot speak with a human when I call. What can I do I am elderly and on a fixed income?

@NELLIE, this can be a bit of a trouble. If they are pulling the money out against your credit card, take all the charges they have made, and contact your credit card company. Tell them you requested your account be turned off, and you want a chargeback for all the fee’s. Your credit card will give you all the money back, which will generally send a trigger to aol to stop charging more.

You should also, at that point, take a look at this site http://www.aolsucks.org/cancel.htm there are numbers and advice there that should help you get through it.

Keep at it, do not let them push you around.

I have an AOL free email account, I won’t have any problem at all right? I will not get charged for anything right? I have Verizon DSL internet connection. Please reply, anything, thanks.

@jlngchpstck You should not have any issues, if you just signed up for a free email account. It is the email accounts tied to paid aol accounts that can be trouble.

Thanks Scott.

Aol are the biggest con factory on earth !!! DO NOT USE THEIR SERVICES. I have been repeatedly ripped off by them, as have four other people I know. They take money without consent, increase your bill without notice, charge for add ons that you have not requested, refuse refunds, refuse to give mat codes etc etc etc. TOTAL CROOKS.

I’m another one of those long time AOL users, close to 20 years. I should mention that I have 4 other email addresses but, for some inane reason, I can’t seem to wean myself off of AOL. About 2 months ago, I think I finally found a reason. I frequently access my AOL account through my OSX Mail application. One day I noticed, without warning, that any emails that were older than one month were automatically deleted. I hadn’t changed any of the settings & this proved to be a massive problem, as I needed to check something work related, in an email from 4 months back. Bear in mind that up to this point, I could see emails on my Mac Mail app from October of 2008. Now, had I read all of my email through the AOL specific, old school interface, then those emails would have been automatically archived into my Filing Cabinet . Alas, that wasn’t the case. To make matters worse, since I was on the AOL free plan, in order to get my questions answered, I had to pay AOL $4.99, to find out what I already knew, those emails were toast!

Now, a word about .mac. The only reason I purchased a .mac account was for iDisk storage(mostly for work) & the ease of the MAC interface. Uploading to the iDisk with any file that is larger than 100MB seems to take forever. It’s highly inefficient & I’m beginning to think, like you, that it’s a waste of money. So where are those user friendly sites where I could a) have a remote storage option(safe) & b) a place to design a website for family/friend photos/files/ etc. In other words, to emulate what .mac gives me, hopefully with the same ease of use. OSX friendly, not only suited for PC users. Thank you.

Hi @Alexandra, let me see if I can offer up some suggestions.

First, pick a free email provider, I like to recommend gmail. Mainly because there is no lock in. They allow you to do forwarding, reply-to customization, custom domains, and IMAP.

The key to those things being valuable is that it allows you to use gmail in the web, or on desktop app. This gives you the ability to use gmail, but also download all your mail to your desktop as well. If they ever get a little overbearing, no matter, you have your email on your computer, as well as in gmail.

You need to be in ownership of your data, as you have learned with AOL. With gmail, you can store it wherever you want.

For your .mac replacement. It seems you want remote backup, and a photo sharing tool. With that, you want it to be transparent and simple.

Drop .mac, and look into DropBox, I can not say enough good things about it. Dropbox is a small menu application, that puts a folder on your mac called Dropbox, whatever you put in it, is backed up to their system.

It is free for 2GB, there are pay models as well. What is nice, is there is no learning curve. If you know how to put a file in a folder, that is all you need to know to use DropBox.

What is also nice is they store revisions, if you accidentally delete a file on your computer, just login to DropBox on the web, and you can restore it. You can do more than restore just the file, you can restore a particular revision of the file.

If you use more than one computer, this is where DropBox really shines, as you just install it on more than one computer. Then, whatever is in your DropBox, will be mirrored to all your other computers as well.

Finally, you use it as a way to share files as well. There is a Public part to dropbox, anything you put in there, can be shared to others. This means, if you have photos, you can drop them in your DropBox, and it will auto build you a photo gallery.

It s not the most sophisticated photo gallery, but for how simple it is, there is nothing else like it. You just put photos in a folder on our mac, and you are done.

If you need more comples photo storage, I would suggest you just update to the newest IPhoto and use Flickr.

DropBox can be coaxed into being used to host websites, it is not really what it is intended for, but it does work.

There are also .mac/mobile me clones out there, who offer the same service, at less of a fee, and probably work a little faster.

It is hard for me to push you in a direction for a good place for websites, since I do not know your specific needs.

Hope that helps.

Thank you Scott, your response was immensely helpful. I appreciate you taking the time to explain my various options. My main reason for even having the.mac account was for passing files back & forth for work. Unfortunately, when it came down to it, the uploading was so frightfully slow AND problematic, that I really can’t think of a good reason to keep the account. It’s a ripoff.

And btw, AOL is completely wacky, now they aren’t deleting the emails off their server, or maybe it’s more random about it, either way, not good for me.

Can’t envision AOL existing too much more in future? Where is their revenue stream coming from?

Sorry for the delay!

@Alexandra, look at http://www.getdropbox.com/ for your file exchange from home to work, it is free, and offers 2GB for free, works on all platforms.

AOL probably has a revenue stream from people just like you, who have not had any issues yet, so had no reason to look into it. They also make a good deal of money from people who no longer use the service, and just do not know to stop paying, because they think AOL is “the internet”.

I am going with Cox Broadband For a lot less I cannot afford aol.Please unstall Aol.

I had no idea we were paying the $239.40 a year for AOL. I insisted they cancel my “account that I have to pay money for” immediately and that I want to keep my aol email addresses. Change my subscription to a free account.
My forign customer rep, Mr. Johnny Deep, informed me that he couldn’t refund my prepayment for the next 3 months because I was getting a deal over the customers who are paying $25 a month for the same service!
They auto charged on my Discover number that expired 3 months earlier!

Why is this not a bigger story
How many uninformed victims are paying $300 a year because they don’t understand what they are paying for at AOL?
Basically this sums it up!
1. AOL Dial-up service
2. McAfee
3. Customer service

I’ve been on high-speed internet for years.

I hate McAfee so much I have their removal tool on my favorites

http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe

I started looking at AOL because their service is so crappy, but that’s a tirade for another day.
You certainly don’t loose your email account and as far as I can see you don’t even have to give up the original website (that was my concern, I was just so used to using it after 14 years)
I am going to start moving my important email contacts to my yahoo or gmail email and start phasing out AOL.
They have got to GO!
SPREAD THE WORD
STOP THE MADNESS!

@Cathy I guess the real question is, why would you want to use an email address from a company that has been staying in business by preying on the misinformed?

Gmail is pretty top notch, and you get a lot with it for free as well. They have their rough edges as well, but they are certainly the lesser of two evils.

Thanks for the comments.

I’ve been using AOL for 12 years.
I don’t agree that you cannot save mail to your computer, as I have all my mail from day one, 6000+, saved on mine. Also, I currently have over 100 emails more than a year old, which AOL has not removed. I use MacBook Pro & PC…PC has my main AOL account. I save mails only on the PC, (this can be set up in preferences), and have never tried on the Mac. In addition to the actual emails, the coded files are saved on your hard drive in the AOL apps folder. There is a somewhat complicated process to retrieve these but not too difficult. These files are identified with a screen name prefix. They can even be copied and transferred to another computer or external hard drive…but to access them you will need AOL installed on the new computer.(I suspect these coded files are not really your mail saved on the computer, but used to access your mail in cyber space, however, I could be wrong.) Thought this might be helpful. – Robert
P.S. Scott, what you are doing here is very helpful, Thank you.

@Robert thanks for the comments. In all honesty, you just explained a nice list of all the reasons why you would not want aol. Need for an app, proprietary email formats, need to know how to move data from one format to another or another machine.

What will you do in 2 years when aol is out of business, and you need one of those emails, but you can not open the app, since there is no server to connect to?

I am glad it works for you, but for our users, there is no way I can recommend they use something like this. You can just use gmail, setup IMAP, and the emails are on your own computer, in .eml format, which has been readable by any email client on the planet for the last 20 years.

Thank you for your comments.

I appreciate your advice. We were using AOL for 4 and a half yrs. prior to this past October when we decided to switch to Verizonwireless. I have never regretted once switching from AOL. AOL was very slow, to begin with, and I was constantly being “knocked offline”. I felt I could’nt do much about it through the yrs. because I did’nt have enough money for anything but AOL. I had so many complaints. For one, you speak to a voice animated computer and yell and scream your information to this thing for what seems like hours and “it” never understands what you’re saying. When you do get a Tech on the phone, they can hardly speak English and you’I did’nt quite understand you”? I had become disgrunted w/t Verizonwireless back in December of ‘09 so I went back to AOL just to see if things were faster or even better. No way…huge mistake. I had the service for 3 days and cancelled my service. It was perhaps worse than it ever was in the past. Now, here in January of ‘10, I recieve an e-mail from them telling me that I owe for an entire month of service I did not use. Yes, I am angry and something will be done about this. I am not about to allow them to just do what they want. If that were the case I’d send them an e-mail telling them perhaps I need money as well…same difference. I would not recommed AOL to anyone.

I do have AOL and everytime I called I received the best customer support, even from the technical department. People are quite mean when speaking to a person with an accent. My opinion is that you should say “thanks” they speak your language, in order for assist you better.

I enjoy my AOL and have used it for years and years without a problem. All of my homework is saved in my email and I have never lost a single piece. I seldom if ever lose my connection and I am on dial up. I am happy with it and if I ever get DSL will continue with my AOL.

@Sharon
I am glad that AOL is working out for you. You are in a minority of people who are happy with the service.

If you don’t mind me asking, what is it that you like about it that you are willing to pay for? You mentioned email, which is now a free offering from AOL. You should immediately convert your email account to one of the free ones, so it is no longer tied to your account. This way, if anything does ever happen to your account, you will always have access to your email data.

So that covers email, which will get you to a zero cost situation for sending, receiving, and storing email. Outside of that, what other offerings does AOL have that you find is worth the monthly fee?

Do keep in mind, email with AOL can be somewhat dangerous. I have heard if you allow too much time to pass without logging in and checking email, your email account can be erased.

If possible, you may want to hook up Apple Mail to your AOL account, or set up gmail as a man in the middle to AOL, collecting your email, so you always have a local backup in Apple Mail, or a remote backup in Google’s “cloud”. This should protect you from any data loss.

I used Aol for about 17 yrs (dial-Up) for my business. Now I have DSL with At&t. Eventhough I have multiples email addresses, I was wondering if I need to continue to pay Aol just to keep my Aol account? Please help me, I’m still confused…

Hi @Gina

You can maintain your free aol.com email address, and cancel your aol.com account.

I would strongly suggest that you get a gmail account, and move away from aol. However, some people like aol’s email. I find it sorely lacking and the storage space and options they give you are paltry in comparison to what is being offered by the competition.

I think the best thing to do is start reading any of these posts, which will walk you through canceling aol, and keeping your email address.

One other thing you can do, is pay for one more month, you should then have access to a auto-reply feature, in which you can tell all incoming emails, that you have a new gmail address. Or, keep your aol account, stop paying them, and check in on it once a week. Tell those people to update their address books.

There is a chance aol offers forwarding on free accounts, I doubt it though.

Good luck, and I hope you get out from the month to month that aol is getting you for. Heck, you could donate that month to month to this site ha ha

Hi! this has been very helpful! as i’m in the same situation…worried to change my old dial-up AOL in fear of losing all my emails/contacts etc. We are switching to Comcast high speed internet in our area and wondered if i would still be able to go to my AOL emails. Sounds like i can. Do i have to set up an email address with Comcast? I can just keep the AOL until i want to make the change with alerting everyone of a new address? (either Comcast or gmail). When i do call AOL to cancel (paying $25 a month) (and i will call my credit card company that it gets billed on), do i have to ask them to keep my email free? do i have to mention anyting to ASSURE that i will still be able to get to my AOL email? Will they just automatically stop charging me once i call them and all will be ok? (just any clues that i need to know to tell them when i have them on the phone). If i tell them i want to keep my free email account with them, will that trigger them to not cancel me or delete all my emails (lie to me). thanks so much!

Hi @Becky,

From everything I have read and heard from others, you should be able to cancel your AOL account and still keep your aol.com email address. This is in part because AOL now offers free email as a service, just like gmail and yahoo and hotmail.

I have heard a number of different methods for accomplishing this. If you read the post just above yours, there is a link to a google search that may be a good place to get you started.

From what I understand, you will login to your AOL account, and change your account settings from a paid account to a free account. At that point, you should be able to still access your email by logging into aol.com.

I really do not think there is anything you need to do. Your master email address will be maintained for you. I had AOL 17 years ago, and still to this day use that same username for AOL Instant Messenger. Just for kicks I used that login and password at aol.com to login to web email, and it worked.

I would for certain call on the phone to confirm this process, but all reports are that it is simple, and with the free email that AOL now offers, an automatic process.

I can offer you one suggestion. While Comcast will indeed give you a free email account, and you will have the ability to create several more email accounts within your Comcast account, don’t do it. You will be getting yourself in the same boat you are in now.

Take these possible scenarios if you choose to use the Comcast email address. Comcast is going through a company name change, to Xfinity. This happened once before, years ago they were called home.com. They told everyone that they would maintain the @home.com email addresses, but it took only a year, before they were entirely phased out, and everyone had an emil address of @comcast.net.

Comcast may be one of the few games in town now, but as technology marches on, fiber optic may be an option to you, or you may find that DSL has prices and speeds that better suit your use, or perhaps cellular based wireless becomes a new means of getting internet at home.

Any of those reasons will require you to move to a new ISP, Comcast is not going to allow you to take your email address with you, or keep it active if you are not paying them.

As to what will prevent AOL from deleting your emails, nothing. You should backup your emails before you make this call to AOL. There is no guarantee that they do not have a system failure that may accidentally delete your emails. Backup is imperative.

The problem is, backup of AOL emails is not particularly simple. While you still are paying for your account, I would use Apple Mail, in IMAP mode, to download your sent and received emails. From there, you can cancel your account, which will terminate your ability to use IMAP. AOL does not give away access to email outside of web based email. Once you have your emails inside of Apple Mail, you can then change your settings in Apple Mail, to use gmail instead. Now all your AOL emails have been migrated into one place, all in gmail.

Gmail is the only free email provider I am aware of that offers as much free storage, as large a limit on file attachments, and POP as well as IMAP access to your email.

Good luck, I hope it all works out for you.

I need help with this as I do find some of it confusing. In feb of this I called aol to find out if I could get a reduction on my bill as I was paying 14,99 a month to access my email alone as my main isp was talktalk. Imagine my suprise when I was told email had been free since march 2008. Cut a long story short I spoke to a manager who agreed to give me back 13 months as he disagreed with the free date. I said I would continue to look into the date discrepancy. He only gave me back 12 months and when I rang back again to ask why I was given yet another date for free emails. I took this matter to OTELO who found in aol’s favour as they said it was a different part of aol that supplied my emails, and they did not have to tell me it was free. I get free legal advice and was told if I could prove aol knew the emails were going to be made free they had broken the law. I have gotton hold of my phone bill and found that in fact they were contacted in early march of 2008 in order to arrange keeping my email address. I would appreciate any further advice someone can give me with as I feel its blatantly unfair to take money for nothing.

Hi Sue,

My only suggestion would be to locate the pages on aol.com where they state they offer free email, You can then use archive.org to go back in time and look at that page on any specific date.

It is called The WayBack Machine, which can be found here: http://www.archive.org/

The fact you got anything back is amazing. You could also try asking your credit card company to chargeback the most recent ones, depending on your terms and if you were paying with a credit card.