This page is maintained by Nick Christenson, npc@jetcafe.org. It was last updated on March 15, 2004.
The point of this page is to track the relative sizes of the Free Email Providers, where size is measured by some notion of the extent of their customer base. Very little information has been made publically available on this, and as far as I can tell, no attempt has ever been made to collate it. The purpose of this page is to make this attempt. It will disappear if anyone with real time and resources ever decides to track this information.
The only way to gain real information on the size of the customer base of any FEP is via their own announcements. Of course, we have no real idea what the methodology is that they are using, nor can we tell whether these numbers are in any way accurate. Nonetheless, this information can show some relative sizes without needing to be horribly accurate.
All this information is gathered via contributors who have sent in information for this page. Your contribution is necessary to make and keep the data on this page meaningful. If you ever hear a FEP quote its own size in any non-confidential context, please email it to me, npc@jetcafe.org along with a reference to the source of this information, whether it be a Usenet news posting by an FEP staff member, a newspaper clipping, a press release, etc.. Of course, representatives of the FEPs themselves are invited to send me their numbers when they can be released.
The goal of this page is to list every FEP doing business in the United States that can legitimately claim more than 500,000 subscribers and list their actual size as accurately as possible.
This is the information I have been able to find so far, along with a set of FEPs that may also qualify for the 500k club.
By the way, I will no longer be adding information from Internetnews.com or affiliated web sites, as I believe their ethical standards for journalism are beneath contempt.
| FEP | Subscribership | Date | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hotmail | 140,000,000 | 20040315 | The Register |
| Mail.com | 20,400,000 | 20001026 | Yahoo! |
| Netcenter | 20,000,000 | 19990831 | CNet News |
| Yahoo! | 18,000,000 | 19980819 | CBS MarketWatch |
| USA.net | 15,000,000 | 20001101 | Outsourcing Journal |
| Juno | 14,200,000 | 20010125 | Yahoo! |
| MyPersonalEmail.com | 7,074,382 | 20010111 | MyPersonalEmail.com employee |
| Netscape | 6,000,000 | 20000303 | CNet News |
| My Own Email | 2,000,000 | 19980910 | Email from My Own Email employee |
| Chek.com | 2,000,000 | 20000201 | Chek.com web site |
| Another.com | 1,800,000 | 20020219 | The Register just before Another.com started charging for its service. |
| MoreMail.com | 622,300 | 19990910 | Email from MoreMail.com employee |
| TheMail.com | 457,300 | 20000801 | Email from a TheMail.com employee. |
| AltaVista | 400,000 | 20020219 | CNet News at the time AltaVista terminated service. |
| MailStart.com | 130,000 | 19990617 | Wired |
| Freeze.com | 70,000 | 20001221 | Email from Freeze.com employee |
| Bigfoot | ? | - | No info on their web site. |
| Excite Email | Does not disclose | 19990910 | CNet News |
| NBCi | ? | ? | Does not split out members into email subscribers vs. subscribers to other services. |
This page Copyright Nick Christenson, 1998 - 2004, All Rights Reserved.
