Xtra Still Offers Mail?!?

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

I thought all the ISPs had abandoned their email services (and all
their other attempts at “value add”) years ago. Yet here
<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/spark-apologises-after-mans-xtra-mail-blunder-loses-30-years-of-family-tree-research/5ZEJ4PHPZ5EX3MYP4X7RWZPIWE/>
is an item about someone who had 30 years’ worth of mail messages in
their Xtra account, and who lost it all through clicking the wrong
thing.

Me, I would never have gone that long with something important,
without finding a way to extract a backup of it. (I’m not sure that
moving to Microsoft Outlook counts as a “backup”.)

And yes, Xtra is continuing with its email service, only it is going
to start charging for it.

[BungleBob]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro
I thought all the ISPs had abandoned their email services (and all
their other attempts at “value add”) years ago. Yet here
<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/spark-apologises-after-mans-xtra-mail-blunder-loses-30-years-of-family-tree-research/5ZEJ4PHPZ5EX3MYP4X7RWZPIWE/>
is an item about someone who had 30 years’ worth of mail messages in
their Xtra account, and who lost it all through clicking the wrong
thing.
Me, I would never have gone that long with something important,
without finding a way to extract a backup of it. (I’m not sure that
moving to Microsoft Outlook counts as a “backup”.)
And yes, Xtra is continuing with its email service, only it is going
to start charging for it.

Xtra dumped their own email system years ago and paid MSN and then
Yahoo! to run it for them, which unsurprisingly was a disaster with
buck passing every time there was an issue (and there were numerous
issues). These days the Xtra email service is run by SMX. It has been
free for Spark customers*, but from 16 May, 2024, Spark will start
charging for using an Xtra email address.

I don't know of any ISPs still running their own email servers now. The
few ISPs still offering email addresses are using other hosting service
such as Yahoo!, Gmail, etc.



* They charged a monthly fee if you wanted to keep the Xtra email
address after moving to another ISP.

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by BungleBob
Xtra dumped their own email system years ago and paid MSN and then
Yahoo! to run it for them, which unsurprisingly was a disaster ...

Ah, yes, I think I remember that little debacle ...