REVIEW: GMX Mail
GMX (Global Mail Exchange) is a major branch of United Internet AG, a stock-listed company in Germany in e-mail service provide. To be honest, I’d never heard of the company until I saw a double-page colour ad in a popular computer magazine touting ‘The Ultimate Choice for Webmail’. So I thought I’d explore…
GMX was founded in 1997. In Europe, GMX offers a free Web mail service called ‘GMX FreeMail’, which currently has about 10,000,000 active users in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, according to the company. That’s no small number! In November 2007, GMX launched an English language service called ‘GMX Mail’ (reviewed here) with its own data centre in the U.S. and a different range of features than in the German language version. Like the European version, the English version remains completely free of charge.
GMX provides solutions for home users, as well as small and mid-size companies. Because GMX Mail is Web-based, it’s accessible from any computer connected to the Internet (just like Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and others). More importantly, its features and convenience rival those of traditional client-based software that require installation on your computer - and it’s completely free! Of course, without an Internet connection you won’t be able to read, send or receive any messages - unlike offline mail clients such as Outlook which download all messages onto your computer.
GMX Mail offers a number of time-saving mail management tools. It’s also really pretty (looks a lot like MSN Live Hotmail,), and the interface is simple and uncluttered (are you listening Google?). A focus of the new service is security - the company claims that it draws on many years of e-mail expertise and offers sophisticated spam and virus protection for up to 98% fewer spam e-mails.
GMX’s virus protection is based on McAfee and Symantec scan engines, helping to locate viruses, worms, and Trojans - even in compressed file formats. GMX mailboxes are protected from spam with seven anti-spam modules, resulting in a good clearout of junk mail. Also important is uptime - GMX guarantees optimum performance with data centres located in Europe and the U.S. I’ve only been using the service for a few days so can’t really vouch for spam credentials, but in that short space of time I’ve had very little junk delivered - much less than Gmail in fact.
GMX Mail provides 5GB of free e-mail storage (maximum 50MB per attachment), and 1GB of additional free file storage for photos, MP3s and other files. This fares very well against the leading mail clients. E-mail names are available for the domains @gmx.com, @gmx.co.uk or @gmx.us, and changing e-mail names after registering is even possible. It also supports all the popular mail protocols (POP3, IMAP and SMTP), allowing you to import up to 10 e-mail addresses to your new mailbox.
The ad-free (e-mails actually have a GMX ad link placed at the bottom of the message) and non-cluttered interface is intuitive to navigate, though some may find the constant opening of new windows a little irksome. Easy formatting of e-mails and organisation is achieved by drag and drop, and a proprietary ‘mail collector’ allows collection of mails from third-party accounts in a single mailbox. There’s also an address book for online contact management, and it’s compatible with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X using Internet Explorer or Firefox.
GMX Mail is flexible and easy to use. Even seemingly complicated tasks like switching e-mail accounts is a breeze. Thanks to the GMX Mail Collector, all messages from your existing accounts will be collected and sorted into separate folders in your GMX mailbox. If you’ve tried all the other free e-mail services but still aren’t happy, it certainly won’t hurt to give GMX Mail a spin. [6.5]
March 25, 2008 at 3:53 pm
So … how long has GMX mail been unavailable today (25 March)?
March 25, 2008 at 5:17 pm
GMX is fantastic. But there is a major flaw: the alignment of email text is very odd for people on the other end of your sent messages. If you email someone who uses Outlook, for example, they will see your message squashed right up against the left of the screen. Terrible.
March 25, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I just signed on for an account, created the account, and when I tried to go to my account got a big…. “sorry the website is unavailable” message…. not terribly encouraging just yet.
March 25, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Forget about using this service with slow Dial Up…. !
March 26, 2008 at 11:28 am
I just signed up with GMX, and so far so good. I also found out about it through a computer magazine
April 4, 2008 at 4:15 am
I wants checking for service with good webmail+imap+smtp and this works great.
April 12, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I love gmx! i was able to snap up some very geeky and nerdy email addresses such as starwars or simpsons based email addresses!
April 18, 2008 at 12:31 am
Is it Just me or is this e-mail System Really SLOW. I like the interface and all the features, but the speed needs to be greatly improved.
April 23, 2008 at 5:47 pm
believe me… !!! i was dying to eat the GMX’s service since 126 years, and tis is something like “dream come true” wih english version… million thnx to the presenter…
May 6, 2008 at 3:16 pm
GMX seems GREAT. Clean easy interface, FAST, handles Japanese text, great calendar (similar to KDE’s calendar).
I only wish it handled larger attachments.
May 22, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly.
June 1, 2008 at 12:24 pm
GMX has Mail Collector which accesses your existing mail accounts to import mail into your GMX account. While their FAQ explains mail will be imported into the same folders as the service they are coming form; they aren’t. ERGO if you have Inbox, Clients, Temp folders setup on your MSN, Hotmail, or CPANEL account GMX will only grab Inbox mail.
IMAP - Yes you can access your GMX mail from Outlook, Thunderbird etc, but it doesn’t go the other way. In my case GMX mail can not import/sync my existing mail and especially important GMX can not create/mirror my existing folder structure with mail contained within.
FYI FuseMail can do this, but it is not free. Currently ~5.00/mo.
http://fusemail.com
June 30, 2008 at 5:03 pm
The webmail interface seems to lack the option of composing text only messages. Other than that, it seems very reliable and worthy of use. I tried the IMAP option with Thunderbird with no problems. Definitely a step up from Gmail and the others.
August 3, 2008 at 12:14 am
Does anyone know how to use IMAP with GMX Mail, in Outlook Express 6/Outlook? I can recieve emails, but I can’t send them. Anyone know what’s wrong with that?
October 22, 2008 at 9:56 am
Slow, even after the four months I’ve been using it, slow. Actually, it seems to be loading indefinitely from some computers, and from others I sometimes don’t get a response to “gmx.com” in the address bar - if only I’d realised earlier!
October 31, 2008 at 4:32 pm
I like the look of GMX Mail but it really is excruciatingly slow. This needs to be resolved if it is to be a serious competitor to existing services.
Gmail is OK - if only it had the GMX interface (but faster of course!)
October 31, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Been using GMX.co.uk for years, about 7 i think, however they dropped their non German service and became as the article says.
I use my own domain redirected into my GMX accounts
Yes they often ‘go slow’ but I prefer them to any other I’ve used