Web Mail Blog

I'd just like to add the request for some sort of ultra-lite webmail to be used on mobile devices. I have a Tapwave Zodiac which fits my needs perfectly and has some decent web browsing capability, but it's a bit of an unusual device and I don't expect it to ever be an officially supported device. Some sort of stripped webmail would be absolutely perfect for me, since I'm not big on downloading/storing mail on my PDA...

Thanks for posting those settings. While I don't use a mobile device, I have looked for those settings on the support page. They are not easy to find and despite numerous comments left in the comment area at the bottom of KB pages, the settings have not been placed on a prominent, easy_to_find page and one can forget about getting useable results with earthlink's search feature.

I'm saving those settings to a local document so I can have them handy when evaluating third-party mail applications (QMail, Sylpheed, Pegasus, etc) to see if any offer all the features I'm looking for. Once again, thanks for posting those settings in a concise manner.

I use two email addresses; one for the office to which my Blackberry is set, and my home email, which I often access by webmail. I look forward to the day when webmail can be accessed through my PDA browser.

Just want to say that this afternoon is the first time I have looked at this earthlink department about web mail, and I am delighted to read it. Whoever you are, e-mail guy, you come across as a very decent fellow/lady. Appreciate your efforts.

Yeah, well, it's always surprised me that Earthlink wouldn't support at least Windows CE. I can access/send email through msn, google and yahoo mail through the web browser on my phone, but not earthlink? You guys are way behind the curve on this one.

BTW, I can access webmail with my phone, I just can't send any. So that leaves me with hotmail, I guess, if I want to send anything to anyone.

Bad business, I'd think - especially these days.

I, too, would really like to see a WAP-enabled webmail directly from Earthlink.

I tried having my (Sprint) cell phone provider's email service access my Earthlink account (by pointing it to Earthlink's POP server), but I kept getting errors--it didn't work well at all.

In the meantime, here's my workaround (and it actually works pretty well for me--but it does require use of a POP email client, such as Outlook, on your computer).

If you don't understand what I'm talking about, you may want to offer a beverage to your neighborhood computer geek to help you set things up because the folks at Earthlink may not be keen on trying to figure out how your cell phone service works. :-)

Caveat: I have Sprint PCS--I can't say how this will work for other cellular service providers. Also, check the terms & conditions for your cell phone service, particularly the fees they charge--you don't want to get nailed with an expensive data charge if some of the following things aren't included for free with your service.

First, set up your Earthlink Webmail account to forward a COPY of all email to your cell phone provider's email address (e.g., "1112223333@sprintpcs.com"). This will let you receive email from your cell phone using the cell phone provider's cell phone-enabled email program. Two issues I've found: 1) email will pile up in your cell phone email account (see below for the solution), 2) Email that is very large (e.g., with large attachments) may get bounced back to the sender (you'll still have it in your Earthlink account, but it won't make it to your cell phone and the sender will see an error coming from the cell phone provider).

To prevent email from accumlating in your cell phone email account, use your main computer's email program to purge it. To do this, add an additional email source to your main computer's email program. You'll need to determine the name of your cell phone provider's POP and, optionally, SMTP servers (try Google--for Sprint, it is pop.sprintpcs.com and smtp.sprintpcs.com). When setting up the new cell phone source in your email program, select the option to delete messages from the server once they are retrieved (this is what keeps things from piling up in your cell phone account). Also, you should set up your email program to authenticate when sending messages (via SMTP). Note: the cell phone account typically should not be set up as your "default" account and you probably don't really need to worry about the SMTP setup (since email you send from your main computer should usually be sent out using your primary Earthlink email account rather than your cell phone account).

Once that is done, every time you start the email program on your main computer, it will purge the email off your cell phone account (depending on how you set up the "delete messages" option, it will either delete the messages immediately or after a certain number of days--this is a matter of your personal preference).

Because your email program will now be retrieving the email messages from your primary email provider AND your cell phone provider now, you will probably see every email twice. The solution to this depends on your email program--see the next paragraph for a solution for Outlook.

If you have Outlook, you can create a new folder (e.g., "Cell Phone") then create an email rule that takes all email received from the cell phone source and moves it to that folder. If you want, you can alternatively create a rule that automatically deletes email from your cell phone account (as long as nobody sends email directly to your cell phone account, you'll just be deleting the extra copies). Still, just in case, consider creating a rule that only deletes email from your cell phone account AND which contains your primary (non-cellphone) email address in the "to" or "cc" lists--that way, email sent to your cell phone account directly won't be deleted.

A couple other tips:

1) Consider setting the "Reply to" address on your cell phone's email service to your Earthlink email account if that option is available (so people who reply to email you send from your cell phone will end up sending their reply to your primary Earthlink account).

2) You may be able to set up your cell phone to notify you when email arrives (you may even be able to select what email it will notify you about).

Thx, I'll re-post with another "how to" get to ELN web mail or Mac Mail (POP) when I activate my new LG w/WAP.
ELN seems to be the trailing edge in techno re: easy access to mobile web from what I have read on the net.

Great Blog..very informative and easy to read.

Unfortunately outgoing on my iPhone does not respond to any of suggestions for e-mail. Tried various changes, portings, work arounds and still get path failure. Incoming email seems great.

I have posted this issue on live chat question...but Sat so no one working I guess.

Thanks for any pointers

I did not try the work around posted by Rob as it hurt my head.

Oh, here is what I have tried.

1. add port 587 to addy
2. add port 465 to addy
3. Tried gmail account (sorry)
4. ATT account cwmx.com

Thanks again.

Rob's solution works, but is not ideal, since nowadays most email that is sent to a cellphone is handled as a text message, which limites the size of the message (so messages are truncated), and most text messages involve some kind of fee, unless you've signed up for unlimited text messages.

Opera's web browser seems to handle the web based mail system. I use it to access my suspect mail folder. Mobile Internet Explorer can't access all the command buttons, but it can flub up on other sites too.

I've set up the basic pop server on several handhelds successfully but a true lite PDA specific setup like virtually all other systems have would be sweet.

I use the email program on my Treo 755p (Sprint). It accesses and sends well with my Earthlink account. HOWEVER, even though I delete email from BOTH my device and the earthlink server (at least that's what the email software on my Treo says it's doing) ... the email DOES NOT get deleted from the earthlink server.

So that when i go to check my email again x amount of time later ... the email I "thought" got deleted, isn't and redownloads on my Treo. True, this has advantages, ie, when I'm back at my computer, the email is there. But it's mostly aggravating.

Any solution?

This information is getting stale. Many mobile devices have real browsers and many of us are using them to access the web using WiFi. The walled gardens of the mobile network operators are going away quickly. More and more of us will be reading our mail with mobile devices -- as opposed to downloading mail to the device. So Earthlink should redesign the rich user interface of Webmail to support these devices better than is currently done. The design of the Webmail page is less than optimal for accessing email from a small display. I have successfully accessed the page from both a Nokia N95 phone and a Nokia N810 Internet tablet, but the poor design of the page makes for a lot of navigation. First, the server site of your site can capture information about the browser and therefore sense use of a mobile device. You could use XSLT to transform the server side output and reformat it for mobile devices; technically, this is not difficult, and is the approach followed by Flickr, for example. Alternatively, you could create a different front end to support mobile devices, as does the NY Times for their site. In any case, the current Earthlink webmal approach needs to be updated to reflect the changing character of the user community.

I agree completely with Tony. It's very easy to access Earthlink's Webmail from my iPhone, but a serious pain in the butt to use it.

Gmail, on the other hand, is super simple, has imap integration and is specially formatted for my iPhone. Currently, the only reason I'm still paying $50 a month for Earthlink is so I can keep the email address I've had for 10 years. If Earthlink doesn't modernize soon, I'll be saying bye bye.

Stop thinking so much like Microsoft and more like Google. Evolve!