I was mildly surprised when a relative mentioned to me that her free Canada.com email address was being shut down. She’s had that email address for years – though, I know she hasn’t been using it for day-to-day email for most of that time.
For those individuals who are actively using their Canada.com email addresses still, here are a few suggestions from us at Perceptus:
- Do NOT move to the email provided by your internet service provider. Choose one of the major webmail providers such as Hotmail.com, Gmail.com or Yahoo.com – these services are all well run, and more importantly, they will probably be around for a long, long time. Of these three, I recommend Google’s Gmail.com service. I’ve written about this in a previous post: Picking an Email Address – Don’t use a Free Account from your ISP.
- This is a great excuse to move to a vanity domain. It’s cheap. You can buy the rights to a .com domain for <$10 per year and have Google host the email for you. If you have a few family members or friends, you can share a domain. We use Google’s Apps for Domains for all email to perceptus.ca – it’s excellent.
- You do not have to lose your saved Canada.com email. Read their own migration instructions here. You can move your email to Google’s Gmail service easily. These instructions can be adapted for all other major web email providers, and also, to download your email using POP3 to your own computer to software like Outlook or Thunderbird.
- Remember to update all of your 3rd party logins. eBay, PayPal.com, Amazon, everything. You will not have an easy time getting access to your accounts once canada.com webmail goes offline.
- Do this ASAP. Canada.com really did a disservice to their users by providing such a small amount of notice.
I wonder if the email being shut down is related to the recent change in ownership of the site’s publisher, Postmedia Network Inc. Seriously, couldn’t they find a way to make a buck on this by partnering with a 3rd party webmail provider and sharing ad revenue, rather than shutting it down?
Comments are encouraged.
Tags: advice, apps for domains, canada.com, free email, offline, postmedia, recommendation, shutting down, vanity domain, webmail
December 7th, 2010 at 7:41 am
Canada.com is a DISGRACE ! I tried for over 30 days emailing, phoning and evan faxing their troubleshooting site, compalints & questions site and any other way of contacting those losers ! Then (with only 15 days notice) they tell their clients they are shutting down. Real pro’s. When I finally got them on the phone, I told them to send me the new password we agreed on, but the new password would not work. So this lady (Patricia Murghy) directed me to the the troubleshooting dept and this guy sent me an email asking me if I used Internet Explorer. That should fix your problem he said………..it did not. I asked for help since this last email from him (Rick Gascon) did not help either. Still waiting for a reply after 3 days. The site is closing in 2 days they say and I have business and other information, emails and other stuff in canada.com. This is day 47 of trying to get in my canada.com account and looks like all my stuff will be lost to me. They are the most unprofessional people I have ever dealt with in my 34 years in business. I will never again have anything to do with them or the new ownership of this sinking ship. They have the balls to ask me if I would like them as my homepage ? They can go to hell is my answer. Stick that ON YOUR HOMEPAGE CANADA.COM !!!!!
December 23rd, 2010 at 6:01 pm
The mail service HAS been with a third-party provider (Critical Path, if I remember correctly, now owned by Mail.com) and, presumably, sharing ad revenue, since circa 2006. In fact, they upgraded the mail space from 200MB to 1GB circa 2007. What they didn’t fix or upgrade, however, was the spam filter. I opened my mygivenname@canada.com in 2001, and I was paying for their MailForward service (where all your @canada.com mail is forwarded to an email address you want) until they stopped selling it in 2006.
Like I said, the spam filter was outdated. For the next four years after 2006, I had no choice but transition to gmail. Support disappeared when they stopped selling the premium versions, and years later it is as if everything was on autopilot — nobody was manning the ship.
Even autopilots need resources. This announcement means they can’t spare any more.
What are Canada.com’s web traffic trends, do you know?
P.S. The mail service is still available now and is currently accessible via POP3, but not SMTP.
December 23rd, 2010 at 6:40 pm
Sorry I was mistaken. The third-party was Velocity Services Inc., who owns Mail.com. Michael Geist, founder of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, blogged about the turnover and its privacy implications on March 9, 2007.
Perhaps VSI gave up on providing the webmail service; it’s possible.
September 10th, 2011 at 6:55 pm
After having my address book mysteriously deleted, twice(!) along with 3 day long delayed emails and some just not getting through, I thought I was under some weird curse. After receiving a email termination announcement, it finally made sense. I have also received zero help from the “support” staff.
Thank you canada.com for removing yourselves from the e-world…you won’t be missed by this user.
September 15th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
I had an email with them from the beginning. I loved having the canada.com as an email. Spam hit and hit hard. It was ridiculas, but I had a ton of things I would have loved to have gotten off that server. Ten years almost of emails. Dicks.
January 10th, 2012 at 12:05 am
I didn’t get much support from their support team too…
March 9th, 2014 at 7:32 am
Now Canadians can have the best free national email service. Short name, secure and fast:
http://www.nili.ca