| Type | Webmail Provider |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Chesterbrook, PA |
| Area served | Worldwide |
| Industry | Internet |
| Parent | United Internet |
| Website | www.mail.com/int/ |
| Advertising | Yes |
| Available in | English, Spanish, French |
| Launched | 1995 |
Mail.com is a web portal and web-based email service provider owned by the German internet company United Internet. It offers news articles and videos and a free webmail application with unlimited storage.[1]
Contents |
Mail.com offers a free, advertising-supported email service with unlimited storage for emails, choice of over 200 domains, online file storage, collecting of emails from other accounts, organizer, facebook integration, and spam and virus protection.[2]
Mail.com features unlimited storage and attachments of up to 50mb. In addition to the address chosen at sign-up, users can create up to 10 aliases. Users can configure their mail.com account to collect their emails from other accounts and servers.[3]
Users can choose from more than 200 domains for their personal email address including geographical locations, professions, beliefs and interests e.g. London.com, Europe.com, Consultant.com, Accountant.com, Muslim.com, Brew-meister.com, or Catlover.com.[4]
Mail.com offers its users unlimited storage for emails as well as 2 GB online file storage. [5]
After the acquisition of Mail.com by United Internet, the user interface has been overhauled and replaced by an interface that allows previewing, reading, and writing of emails in separate, integrated tabs. It also supports drag-and-drop as well as accessing context menus by right-clicking items, making it akin to desktop email clients. Furthermore, user can customize the appearance of their inbox through various coloring themes.
The organizer lets the user schedule tasks and events. Similar to desktop organizer applications, the user can set reminders, invite guests and import and export data to and from the *.ics and *.csv formats.
Mail.com offers applications for Android and iOS
Mail.com was originally formed in 1995 as Vanity Mail Services (corporate name Globecomm Inc.),[6] by Gerald Gorman, an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and Gary Millin, a Harvard Business School student at the time.[7]
They spent a majority of Gorman's wealth[7] to register and promote a total of 544 domains, and later began to buy domain names from other companies. At one time the company owned more than 1,200 domains on speculation, including world.com, usa.com, India.com, Europe.com, Asia.com, doctor.com, kosher.com, and lawyer.com.[8] To raise money to pay the yearly domain registration fees, they offered vanity domain email services to the public[9] from the domains they owned under the brand name iName,[9] and later began hosting mail services on behalf of the owners of other domains, and for internet service providers. The speculation was often successful. In 1999 the company sold kosher.com, london.com and England.com for $2 million.[10]
By 1999 the company had raised venture financing from Primus Capital Funds and Sycamore Ventures, and changed its name to mail.com. It conducted an initial public offering in June, 1999.[11] By 2000 it was supporting 14.6 million email accounts, mostly for free, and remained unprofitable.[9] It sold the mail.com domain and consumer email services division to Net2Phone,[12] changed its name to Easylink, and changed its business operations to focus on managed file transfer services in April, 2001, after acquiring Swift Telecommunications, which in turn had spun off the "Easylink" business unit from AT&T.[13][14][15]
In 2004 Jay Penske, son of automobile racing figure Roger Penske, joined and became CEO of Velocity Services, an affinity marketing and Internet services company operating as Interactive Digital Publishing Group.[16] The company acquired the mail.com domain, and re-launched it as a new service in 2007.[17] Parent company Mail.com Media went on to acquire content websites such as Deadline.com, Movieline and the Boy Genius Report.
In September 2010, Mail.com Media sold Mail.com to United Internet, who plans to integrate it into GMX Mail.