Mail.com

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Web portal and web-based email service provider

title: "Mail.com" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["internet-technology-companies-of-the-united-states", "internet-properties-established-in-1995", "webmail"] description: "Web portal and web-based email service provider" topic_path: "geography/united-states" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail.com" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0

::summary Web portal and web-based email service provider ::

::data[format=table title="Infobox website"]

FieldValue
nameMail.com
logoMailcomlogo23.png
logo_size150px
company_typeWebmail provider
locationPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
area_servedUSA, Europe (Except German-speaking countries). No longer accepts new registration of account in worldwide, including Asia.
industryInternet
servicesEmail, Cloud
parentUnited Internet
url
advertisingYes
registrationYes
languageEnglish, Spanish, French
launch_date
::

| name = Mail.com | logo = Mailcomlogo23.png | logo_size = 150px | company_type = Webmail provider | traded_as = | foundation = | founder = | dissolved = | location = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America | locations = | incorporated = | area_served = USA, Europe (Except German-speaking countries). No longer accepts new registration of account in worldwide, including Asia. | industry = Internet | products = | services = Email, Cloud | revenue = | operating_income = | net_income = | total_assets = | total_equity = | owner = | num_employees = | parent = United Internet | divisions = | subsid = | url = | alexa = | advertising = Yes | registration = Yes | num_users = | language = English, Spanish, French | launch_date = | current_status = | screenshot = | caption = | footnotes = mail.com is a web portal and web-based email service provider owned by the internet company 1&1 Mail & Media Inc., headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. 1&1 Mail & Media Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet Group, a publicly listed internet services company based in Montabaur, Germany.

Services

mail.com provides cloud storage and email service with over 100 email domain names for creation of email address. They offer brand-neutral domains, including geographical locations, professions, beliefs and interests.

Security

mail.com requires a personal phone number to set up an account, and the phone verification is required to enable two-factor authentication (2FA), a form of multi-factor authentication, followed by the configuration of Time-based One-Time Passwords. If 2FA has been enabled for an account, logging in to that email account requires a dynamically generated code.

All mail.com customers' private data stored in the company-owned data center located in Lenexa, Kansas, United States. mail.com uses SSL to ensure secure data transfer via the internet. mail.com offers configuration options to control interest-based advertising and newsletter settings.

mail.com email accounts have an antivirus that scans through emails and attachments, checking for malware. The anti-spam filter also helps detect junk mail and sorts it into the spam folder.

Alias email addresses

An alias address allows users to customize the sender email address shown in their correspondence by creating an additional email address within an existing mail.com account. Up to ten alias addresses can be registered at the same time, all associated with the main mail.com email account. This feature enables the use of multiple email addresses from a single mailbox.

History

mail.com was originally formed in 1995 as Vanity Mail Services (corporate name Globecomm Inc.), by Gerald Gorman, an investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, and Gary Millin, a Harvard Business School student at the time. They spent a majority of Gorman's wealth To raise money to pay the yearly domain registration fees, they offered vanity domain email services to the public from the domains they owned under the brand name iName,

By 1999 the company had raised venture financing from Primus Capital Funds and Sycamore Ventures, and changed its name to mail.com. It conducted an initial public offering in June 1999. By 2000 it was supporting 14.6 million email accounts, mostly for free, and remained unprofitable. changed its name to Easylink, and changed its business operations to focus on managed file transfer services in April 2001, after acquiring Swift Telecommunications, which in turn had spun off the "Easylink" business unit from AT&T.

In 2002, AltaVista quit the email service business they had served together with Mail.com under its i-name branding. Addresses using "AltaVista" domains were eventually closed; other email domains once offered by AltaVista remain operational through Mail.com.

In 2004 Jay Penske, son of automobile racing figure Roger Penske, joined and became CEO of Velocity Services, an affinity marketing and Internet services company operating as Interactive Digital Publishing Group. The company acquired the mail.com domain, and re-launched it as a new service in 2007. Parent company Mail.com Media Corporation (MMC) went on to acquire content websites such as Deadline Hollywood, Movieline and the Boy Genius Report.

In September 2010, MMC sold the mail.com email and portal service to United Internet, at the time already Europe's largest internet company, which intended to operate mail.com on its GMX email platform. While existing accounts could be accessed from anywhere, users accessing the site from German-speaking countries could no longer sign up and were instead invited to use United Internet's GMX services geared to those markets (gmx.de, gmx.at, gmx.ch). In purchasing the mail.com brand, United Internet was aiming to leverage the unique character of the mail.com name and its many domains as part of its push for international expansion. At the time of the purchase CEO Jan Oetjen noted, "On the highly competitive international e-mail market, we perceive mail.com as a unique opportunity for differentiation which cannot be copied."

In the first quarter of 2016, mail.com launched a new support and contact portal, offering improved usability and FAQs for its customers. The first mail.com mobile email app for Android users was released in February 2016, complementing its iOS app. A mobile webmailer was also rolled out.

In June 2020, mail.com celebrated its 25th anniversary.

References

References

  1. "We're very sorry – we can't sign you up - mail.com help".
  2. "About mail.com – The right email address for everyone".
  3. Tsotsis, Alexia. "Mail.com Media Sells Mail.com To United Internet Group". TechCrunch.com.
  4. (26 July 2022). "Best free email service 2023: Send messages for free". toptenreviews.com.
  5. "Mail.com Review". toptenreviews.com.
  6. "Two-factor authentication - mail.com help".
  7. "How Two-Factor Authentication Keeps Your Accounts Safe".
  8. (10 April 2023). "Two-factor authentication statistics: A good password is not enough".
  9. "mail.com Press Room".
  10. "Ssl-mail.com Domain Reputation Report".
  11. "Data Protection with mail.com FreeMail".
  12. "Email Spam has met its match {{!}} mail.com".
  13. Fischer, Stacy. "These Are the 11 Best Email Accounts You Can Use for Free Right Now".
  14. (6 September 1996). "EasyLink Services Corp. To Appear on MN1.com". M2 Communications.
  15. Peterson, Andrea. (11 February 1999). "Mail.com Intends to Profit by Giving Away Its Product". The Wall Street Journal.
  16. (28 March 2000). "Mail.com Buys Chinese Portal, Plans World.com".
  17. Bociurkiw, Michael. (2 June 2000). "Mail.com Shouldn't Stay Master of Its Domains". Forbes.
  18. Gruner, Stephanie. (17 June 1999). "European Firms Pay Big Money to Obtain '.Com' Domain Names". The Wall Street Journal.
  19. Barrett, Larry. (30 June 1999). "Mail.com surges on ISP deals". Cnet.
  20. (21 February 2001). "Mail.com to Acquire Swift Telecommunications, Including AT&T's EasyLink".
  21. Keenan, Faith. (4 July 2001). "On the Third Try, a Dot-Com Charm?". Business Week.
  22. (2 April 2001). "Mail.com Changes Corporate Name and Identity to EasyLink Services Corporation". Easylink.
  23. "AltaVista to close free US e-mail accounts next month - PC World Australia".
  24. Shipnuck, Alan. (12 July 2004). "Hitting Cleanup".
  25. Chowdhry, Amit. (22 October 2008). "Quadrangle Capital, WI Harper Group, and Novel TMT Ventures Delivers $35 Million to Mail.com". Pulse2.
  26. Corporation, Mail com Media. "MMC Announces Strategic Transaction With Europe's Largest Internet Company".
  27. "Mail.com Media Sells Mail.com To United Internet Group".
  28. "Email pioneer mail.com celebrates 25 years of reliable service and unique domain names".

::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::

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