Postmaster www.postmaster.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

IMAP mail.
No spam.
Very quick tech responses to issues raised on the tech forum.
Although for all the positive points, see the negative stuff below.

IMAP sync often falls over, or is not available at all.
Quick tech responses often amount to 'this issue has been recognised' or 'apologies for Postmaster's outage.....'.
Long delays in receiving email, to the extent that snail mail is quicker (I kid you not).

I moved my personal email address to Postmaster. mainly due to their positive web reviews. and the relative obscurity of the address i.e. spam free-ish. The spam free ideal proved to be right, however everything else has sucked the big one.

For many web users, an email address is little more than a fun but transient contact point. However for those that rely on (non-work) email communication, it can mean the difference between grabbing a job or being out of work - or, more importantly, staying in touch with loved ones back home. If you fall into the latter category, then Postmaster may not be for you!.

Over the past month I have received emails up to 72 hours after they had been sent. Over the course of the last year Postmaster servers have experienced continual downtime. In fact, during one blackout period, I was convinced they'd gone bust - my plea for help was taken on by The Register:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/06/postmaster_downtime/

I paid for Postmaster's enhanced service (extra storage and IMAP mail). The extra storage has been available but the IMAP service crashes every time the free service does, so not much enhancement there! It appears that Postmaster (as part of Bibliotech.net) are an educational type company. This is very sad. I'm fully in support of giving young un's a fair go in life, but Postmaster is sending out all the wrong signals to the kids they take on. I think it would be best if Postmaster/Bibliotech confine their products to a market they can cope with, rather than inflicting themselves on the big bad commercial world. That might sound a bit harsh, but I've always invested in the underdog, and now been forced to prostitute myself to Gmail......

In summary - if you want a sideline charity email address, go with Postmaster. If you want a usable personal email address, either get your own domain name or go corporate and use a spam shield!!

Good luck

Members' Comments onDrugBuddy's Review

• k10skw on 17th Jan 2006

  Postmaster are useless. I've had more downtime with them than up time. Emails sometimes take a week to get to me if I'm really lucky. It's got so bad I'm moving my email to hotmail. At least I'll know I'm getting mail!!!

• alwhite on 20th Feb 2006

  I think the last two comments are too critical - I've been with Postmaster for a few years now and although they are sometimes down for technical reasons, they do give notice in advance and it's not often or usually for very long. Yes, there can be a delay on emails arriving, but more often than not their arrival is immediate and I've noticed that the delay has lessoned a lot in the last few months. For a free service I find them pretty reliable, and the much reduced amount of spam is a welcome relief.

• maggot11 on 4th Feb 2007

  the first 2 comments are fair, postmaster delivers mail hours and hours late, if at all.