free webmail pop HTML-mode

June 24, 2007 10:45 PM

Free webmail with HTML mode, allows embedded graphics, does not have embedded advertising, and retrieves POP mail? Need it only for a month.

I'm on the organizing committee for an event in mid-July, and have to use their email account to coordinate with other volunteers.

I'm behind a firewall at work so I can't retrieve by POP/IMAP or send by SMTP. However, the head of the organizers wants us to use a GIF logo in our signature for consistent branding. The webmail interface to the email account only supports plaintext and no embedded graphics.

Is there are free webmail service that can satisfy my needs? A free trial would be fine if it lasts for the next month -- unfortunately I've already exhausted my free-trials with Yahoo! and Hotmail. No embedded advertising.

posted by randomstriker to computers & internet (13 comments total)

Ummm.... Gmail?
posted by stovenator at 11:34 PM on June 24, 2007

Yeah, your "no embedded advertising" requirement is going to get you nowhere. I imagine the number of sites that have all of that along with no ads will be somewhere in the single digits, and will suck very, very hard for a variety of reasons.

Your best bet is probably to allow for the small text ads that are present in GMail and use it. Any POP or SMTP access needed can be gained by setting up a "Keep here but also forward to [e-mail]" on the address the mail was orginally sent to.
posted by jmhodges at 11:42 PM on June 24, 2007

gmail seems to do this.

He may mean no advertising in the email itself, to look professional.
posted by null terminated at 11:47 PM on June 24, 2007

Gmail doesn't put any advertising in your outgoing mails, but AFAICT the web interface doesn't allow you to paste graphics into the mail body, or include them in an automatic sig.

It will happily accept mails via SSL-secured SMTP on port 465 or 587, though; it would be worth checking to see if these ports are in fact accessible through your corporate firewall (perhaps via a SOCKS proxy? Talk to corporate IT).
posted by flabdablet at 2:06 AM on June 25, 2007

Your best bet is probably to allow for the small text ads that are present in GMail and use it.

Umm... My Gmail doesn't have embedded ads. Never has. There are some at the site, just like a Google search. But not in the body of the email.

I don't think Gmail allows you to embed images. You can attach them and they appear as a thumbnail at the bottom if another Gmail recipient receives them. It has other HTML-style stuff though.

Gmail is the only free email service that doesn't add an advert at the bottom of your mail. If you pay at mail.com, you can get ad-free web-based emails. But mail.com drove me mad when I used it.
posted by humblepigeon at 2:10 AM on June 25, 2007

gmail is pretty much your only choice. I have an invite for you, if you'd like one.
posted by chuckdarwin at 3:54 AM on June 25, 2007

Yes, to clarify:
- I don't care if ads show up in my interface, just that I don't want ads (or taglines) embedded in my outgoing emails.
- I need to embed graphics in the emails.

Gmail doesn't do the latter, unfortunately.
posted by randomstriker at 4:46 AM on June 25, 2007

If the signature GIF lives on the web somewhere (or if you can upload to some public web space), you can drag/drop embedded images into gMail. (at least in Firefox 2 on Windows XP)
posted by misterbrandt at 7:35 AM on June 25, 2007

- I don't care if ads show up in my interface, just that I don't want ads (or taglines) embedded in my outgoing emails.

- I need to embed graphics in the emails.

There's nothing out there that meets your needs, at least not for free. No adverts means you're limiting yourself to Gmail, and that doesn't allow embedded images (for some odd reason—maybe to avoid spam emails).

If you absolutely need these two characteristics, you're going to have to either find a way of using a regular mail client on your network, or setup your own mail server complete with webmail interface.
posted by humblepigeon at 7:36 AM on June 25, 2007

On (poorly) previewing, I mean: you can drag/drop images into gMail, and they will be "embedded" into the body of the email (but only if the images are publicly available on the web somewhere -- they are technically just displaying an inline image, so some mail clients may block the image).
posted by misterbrandt at 7:42 AM on June 25, 2007

I have an invite for you, if you'd like one.

FYI, GMail doesn't require invites. Hasn't for a long time now.
posted by dmd at 7:45 AM on June 25, 2007

On (poorly) previewing, I mean: you can drag/drop images into gMail, and they will be "embedded" into the body of the email (but only if the images are publicly available on the web somewhere -- they are technically just displaying an inline image, so some mail clients may block the image).

He's right! I never knew that.

So there you go. Upload your images to some free web space, access them from another browser window, and then drag and drop them into your Gmail compose mail window. You can't move them about but they are definitely embedded into the email.
posted by humblepigeon at 8:23 AM on June 25, 2007

You can sign up for a free 60-day trial of Apple's ".mac" service. Nice web interface, no embedded adverts. Pretty sure you can embed gifs into the emails (I seem to remember doing this through the webmail interface a couple of times).
posted by angry.polymath at 8:58 AM on June 25, 2007