Setup Hotmail as your 'Inbox', but at a price...

[Guest Spanky]

With Hotmail you can pay for one of their 'premium' services which will then enable you to set up your existing Hotmail account as a POP3 account. The 'premium' options are:

1) Sign up for MSN 8 (add-on service that works alongside your existing ISP - MSN Explorer and stuff). Currently free for two months, then £6.99 per month thereafter (or £59.99 for a full year's access).

2) Pay for 'Extra Storage' on your Hotmail account. This will cost you £19.99 per year and gives you 10Mb of storage space plus larger attachment sizes, etc.

Once you've done this, in Hotmail, go to 'Options' and under 'Additional Options' click on 'POP Mail Retrieval Settings', from here you can configure your POP settings. Then all you need to do it set up your SPV Inbox by going to 'Inbox / Menu / Options / Email Set-up' and entering POP server addresses / username / password, etc.

So... if you're prepared to fork out an extra 20 quid a year (or if you're already an MSN 8 subscriber..?) then you can have POP Hotmail and access your Inbox directly from the SPV Inbox, all say "ooooooooooohhhhhh......."

Spanky :wink:

[Guest Danlance]

Why does anyone want to use hotmail as their main mail client???

It's easy enough to get a free / nearly free pop3 account - and using a service like bigfoot you can keep a single email address even when you switch ISP's (plus they offer anti-spam facilities)

Hotmail just seems to act as a PORN/SPAM magnet...

[Guest Spanky]

I totally agree, I paid my website host £6 for my POP account for a year, and it's only three quid each for additional addresses (directNIC.com if anyone's interested). Only reason I posted the above was because soooooo many people still seem to be asking how to get Hotmail without having to go through IE & the usual web-based login.

Six quid sounds a lot better than twenty to me, but a LOT of people use Hotmail and don't wanna change, so...

[Guest mchristie2]

Do you know where i would get the Hotmail POP3 Account details, as i currently am set up for the extra storage ??

[Guest stu.mcandrew]

I have had a look at the POP3 settings stuff (I already subscribe to the £19.99 per year service), and it looks like this is for collecting mail from another POP3 account as opposed to making the hotmail account a POP3 account.

If this is the case, then I dont think this will work. Bummer.

Please advise, as I really would like a way round this.

[Guest Spanky]

I don't actually use Hotmail myself, I was chatting to a guy at work who was telling me about the ability to setup POP3 on Hotmail. He tells me that if you click on 'Help' in Hotmail and search for 'POP' then you get all the info on how to configure it. I setup a new Hotmail add this evening to have a look, but because I don't subscribe to any premium services it wouldn't even let me view the POP3-related help pages. I'd suggest you try this in the first instance.

As for whether Hotmail only retrieves mail from other POP3 accounts and can't be setup as one itself, I'm afraid I don't know. If you're a premium service subscriber then have a quick look at the Help and see what it says in there, I'd be interested to know..!

[Guest Paul [MVP]]

I have not managed to get this to work, I am fairly certain HoTMaiL no longer have POP servers (they used to!).

Please prove me wrong ;-)

P