Leaving YPOPs! Development | 2/20/2009 |
It is with great sadness that I announce to you all that I no longer have the time and energy that is required to keep YPOPs! in working order, as required every time Yahoo! makes changes, which is becoming more frequent. I took on this project in October of 2004 after the original developers went on hiatus, and YPOPs! was in jeopardy at that time. I managed to keep this project alive for a little over 4 years, mainly on my own.
However, keeping up with Yahoo! is no longer feasible for one person to do alone. I have tried to get others involved, but ultimately they had even less time than I did.
So rather than do the user community a disservice by dragging this out and leaving you all hanging for my return, I figured it is time to do you all a service by helping you get to alternatives sooner (since I strongly believe no one else will have the time and energy to keep YPOPs! going now).
So, what are the alternatives? Here are several that I can think of (if you have something I have not thought of, please feel free to email me (see my Contact Me page) and I'll add it to this list:
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UPDATE: YPOPs/FreePOPs is no longer required (for most people at least). Try this setup for direct POP3 access!
- With your Yahoo account preferred content set to Yahoo! Asia, you can forward your email to another account, such as a free GMail (Google Mail) account (follow the steps here, but instead of selecting POP3, select forward and enter the email address you want to forward to, then click the send verification button and complete that process).
- Switch to GMail (Google Mail) or some other free mail that offers free POP3 service. I have done this and I'm very happy with it. My own Yahoo! Mail address is all over the place, registered literally at 100's of web sites, so I took this opportunity to register for a domain and have begun the process of changing my email address in all these web sites, so that I could keep control over my email address so that this doesn't happen to me again in the future. Those of you who fit this description might want to do the same thing. It is not good to have your email address held hostage by any entity, like Yahoo!, when they can change their policy at any time (Yahoo! used to offer free POP3 service many years ago - I think more than 7 years ago).
Tell Yahoo! you are switching to GMail because they do not offer POP3 service for free. Maybe the threat of leaving will convince them into giving you POP3 service for free (but don't count on it). Maybe if enough people switch, they'll get the message.
- Switch to FreePOPs or Postman or some other free program that can pull email from Yahoo!.
UPDATE: I no longer need to use FreePOPs (see first point above).
UPDATE: FreePOPs is no longer working for some people.
UPDATE 1/29/2026: FreePOPs isn't maintained any more, it seems.
- Use the web browser interface to read and compose your email. The new interface isn't loaded with ads like the original was, and it does operate much faster than the original.
- The least desirable option is to reward Yahoo! by upgrading to Yahoo! Mail Plus, which has POP3 capability without the need to use any program like YPOPs! and FreePOPs, etc. I only mention this option because some of you would probably rather pay the fee rather than change your email address or switch to using the browser to read and compose emails.
I will really miss YPOPs! and I wish you all the best of luck finding the alternative that's best for you!
Good Bye.
Don Beusee
