[em-bee]

free or not, i'd rather have a storage limit but no time limit. either way i'd have to forward all emails to my local machine, so the storage won't do me much good other than as a temporary buffer.

with a storage limit the worst that can happen is that mails get rejected, but the senders do get notified. and, if set up well, forwarding should work even if the storage is full, so even rejections would not happen.

with a time limit i am relying on the forwarding always working, and, in case of failure i'd be loosing mail possibly without noticing. because it's attachments from old mail that i am not looking at now that would get deleted. that's not something i'd want to ever happen.

[andreinwald]

Old emails will be saved. But without attachments.

Is it okay for you?

[em-bee]

any system that deletes stuff automatically without oversight is dangerous and can lead to critical loss of data.

the only time it is ok is when it is backups that are superseded by new backups, or a trash storage where i put things manually, and even there i prefer to empty the trash manually too.

but this is just how i am used to working. i realize that i accept messages in irc disappearing if i don't log them too (but then i set up logs for quite a number of channels that matter to me), and i could accept this service for certain use cases like for mailing lists which are usually archived elsewhere anyways.

but i could not use it for emails from family, friends or customers who might send me things that i want to keep.

furthermore, if you consider encrypted email you can't even tell what is an attachment and what is the body. removing the attachment would also affect unencrypted, but signed emails.

[andreinwald]

Thank you for your detailed opinion!

I understand the importance of attachments. But it's the only way to make email hosting cheap or free, bc attachments occupy 99,9% of disk space.

[marcos100]

No, a lot of times, the attachment is more important than the text of the e-mail.

[andreinwald]

I understand the importance of attachments. But it's the only way to make email hosting cheap or free, bc attachments occupy 99,9% of disk space.

[thunderrabbit]

Yes, email attachments take up a lot of space.

But anyone who tries to auto-delete my attachments will never get my patronage.

Why do you want to cripple email to create a free service? This seems like a race to the bottom, with very little upside for you.

[andreinwald]

Not everyone is willing to pay for mail service for custom domains. Paid email services already costs near or below disc storage prise.

Limiting attachments - the only possible way for free ADs-based alternative.

[rosndo]

Since when is disk space the bottleneck for email hosting? Do you not intend to offer features like search?

[andreinwald]

Disk space - is most popular limitation on email hosting plans now. Gmail 15 GB + ADs model, Zoho: 5 GB.

Mail search - will be offered. But old emails w/o attachments.

[rosndo]

Disk space being the most popular limitation does not imply that it is a real bottleneck.