They are going from free to pay service
Written: Mar 29 '02
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Offers email, internet fax, voicemail.
Cons: They are going from free to pay service
The Bottom Line: If you are willing to pay for an email account, check and compare with other services first. Otherwise, there are other free email services.
|
|
|
| rfox01's Full Review: Onebox |
I just received word that onebox is now going from a free email service to a pay-for service, so I had to post my comments on it here. But I'll play fair and describe the service objectively.
Service Features:
- 10 MB account
- Voice Mail
- Fax inbox
- Vacation messaging
- Mail forwarding, filtering, blocking
- Address book
- Calendar
Usability:
The email flexibliy options are quite good. You can create your own folders and sort your mail. You can save copies of your outgoing mail as well as save drafts of your mail before sending them. You can send/receive attachments as well as html or plain text email. You compse your messages via a textbox within the web page, but I assume you if know HTML you can easily enter the code to create an HTML email. I've never tried since I prefer plain text messages.
The fax inbox is a nice feature to have, particularly if you don't have a fax machine. When you sign up with Onebox, it asks you to choose a local phone number people can use to send you faxes. Faxes are recieved as either GIFs or TIFFs depending on your preference, and then you can just print them out on your own.
The phone number can also be used for Voice Mail--messages are saved as WAV files.
There's also a new Calendar feature. But I've never used it, so I can't comment on it.
It has a very clean and straight-forward interface, making it really easy to use. There are help pages if you need them, but they don't really provide much info.
Cookies are required, but since it's web-based, you can access your mail from any connected computer terminal.
Reliability & Service
Don't expect much if any support whatsoever. Matter of fact, until recently, I couldn't even find a contact email address anywhere for support.
I've been using Onebox for years, originally as a ZDNet service. Initially, the entire email service would go down for several days about once or twice a year. After a couple of years, Onebook functioned faithfully. I always recieved my email within a few minutes after they are sent, and I haven't had any lost mail (that I know of). When ZDNet stopped sponsoring Onebox, I created accounts directly through Onebook and was still able to have messages forwarded to my new Onebook accounts.
They are obviously making changes to the service because in the last few months, some of the pages fail to load, or logins wouldn't work the first try. It was somewhat frustrating but eventually it does come up.
Conclusion
For a free service, I was willing to put up with it's problems. But they are now charging for it:
$10/month (which is a discount for current members)
$25/year
This makes the *problems* a little more problematic, especially the zero support serivce. If I have to pay for an email account, I'll check elsewhere first.
There are other free email services available. They may not offer the same flexibility and options Onebox does, but this is only for my extraneous emails anyway.
Ratings:
I'm giving Onebox a 1 Star (Avoid It) because they are charging a fee. If it wasn't for that, I would give them 5 Stars (Excellent) for features and 2 Stars (Below Average) for support.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
rfox01
|
|
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.