Yahoo To Charge For Email & AOL Stats

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Below is a copy and paste from an article at CBS Market Watch. Apparently Yahoo is going to charge for services currently part of their free email. Also, some really amazing stats on just how much email is handled by AOL.

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Yahoo currently offers 4 megabytes of storage for free. It charges extra for additional storage. A user can get 10 megabytes for $9.99 or 25 megabytes for $19.99.

 

Then again, Yahoo wouldn't be taking this step if it didn't think enough users would pay for the service. "They're weighing the benefits of fewer free users and some who'll pay up," said Steve Weinstein, an analyst at Pacific Crest.

 

Yahoo Mail was the first feature for which Yahoo began to charge for its premium services, such as additional storage. Yahoo Mail Extra Storage was launched in November 1999. Yahoo also has an address service, which allows a person to have a domain name as their e-mail address, such as JohnDoe @ JohnDoe.com.

 

"You can assume that they've had success charging for certain premium services already," Weinstein added.

 

Indeed, one Yahoo Mail user predicts that the day will come when consumers will have no choice but to pay for e-mail and associated products. The price for the e-mail access, adequate storage and ancillary services should be $20 a year tops, according to this one Yahoo Mail user. And another user is willing to pay for additional services without the advertising.

 

Indeed, Yahoo is beefing up its services somewhat. For the charge, a Yahoo Mail user will be able to send an attachment that's five megabytes large vs. the current 1.5 megabytes. Additionally, the Yahoo promotional text added to outgoing messages from Yahoo Mail will no longer be included.

 

Alternatives

 

One person said that as long as Internet service providers offer e-mail with the access service, then paying for Yahoo features wouldn't make sense economically and using Yahoo Mail would become inconvenient.

 

EarthLink's (ELNK: news, chart) standard(ELNK: news, chart) service is $21.95 for eight e-mail accounts and 10 megabytes of storage for each account.

 

There is also United Online's (UNTD: news, chart) free Internet access service, which includes 5 megabytes of storage. Of course, a member would have to put up with advertisements and is limited to 10 hours of access per month. The $9.95 service includes no advertisements, unlimited usage and 5 megabytes of storage.

 

Both EarthLink and United Online's service allows a member to access e-mail through e-mail accounts with Pop3 access.

 

The majority of AOL Time Warner's (AOL: news, chart) 34 million subscribers pay $23.90 per month, according to company spokesman Nicholas Graham. With that Net access, AOL offers seven screen names per account. AOL does not have a memory-size limit, rather it caps the number of new e-mails at 1,000, old e-mails at 550 and sent e-mails at 550.

 

Additionally, AOL provides a personal filing cabinet to store unlimited amounts of e-mail, according to Graham. And that's a lot of e-mails in filing cabinets.

 

There are 380 million e-mails sent daily by AOL members. The number of e-mail recipients is 488 million daily. This compares to 190 million e-mails sent per day last year and fewer than 60 million e-mails sent per day three years ago.

 

Microsoft's MSN says it has 110 million active e-mail accounts. Yahoo does not disclose how many accounts it has.

 

 

Cheers! Ritchie