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?
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