What happened to mail.com

Mail.com is a free web-based email service that was launched in 1995 by a company called MailCity. At its peak in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mail.com was one of the most popular free email services in the world, with millions of users.

However, over the years, Mail.com faced significant competition from other free email services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Hotmail. Despite efforts to revamp its service and add new features, Mail.com struggled to keep up with the competition.

In 2011, Mail.com was acquired by the German media company United Internet AG, which also owns other online services such as 1&1 Ionos and GMX. Under United Internet's ownership, Mail.com continued to operate as a free email service, but its user base declined significantly.

In 2019, United Internet announced that it would be discontinuing Mail.com's free email service and replacing it with a new service called GMX Mail. GMX Mail is a paid email service that offers more features and storage than Mail.com, but it is not free.

As a result, Mail.com's free email service is no longer available, and users who had accounts with the service were migrated to GMX Mail. However, it's worth noting that Mail.com still exists as a brand and is used as a subdomain for GMX Mail, so users can still access their email accounts using the Mail.com domain.

Overall, while Mail.com is no longer a free email service, its legacy lives on as a reminder of the early days of the internet and the rise of free email services.