Yiddish Email for AOL Members
and Free or Inexpensive
Email Services

If you use AOL, you need the information below before attempting Yiddish email with standardized Unicode methods discussed on this website.  Here you will also find the codes and other information that you need to set up email accounts with a sample of the various popular free or inexpensive email services that will work with Yiddish email. There are many others. Try searching on Google or Yahoo or other search engines for "free email" to find more. Of course, most regular paid email services (at $20-50/month or so) will allow you to use the email program of your choice; but the purpose of this particular page is to provide tips for those looking to save a few bucks and/or for those who already subscribe to AOL.

The options discussed on the previous web pages, for both Windows and Mac, for Yiddish email using the Unicode UTF-8 plain text standard require an email technical protocol called "POP mail." (I believe that POP means Post Office Protocol, but it's always simply called POP. The current version is POP3.) As a practical matter, you must obtain two codes from your email service, a POP code and an SMTP code, in order to set up any of the email programs that can handle this uniform type of Yiddish text email. If your email service won't provide these codes, we say that that service "doesn't support POP mail." Sometimes, for an extra small fee, you can obtain POP support. Alternatively, you can  set up a separate email account, e.g., with a free service to use for your Yiddish email. I've tried to obtain current information, below, for a couple of the more popular relevant free or almost free services.

Please write me if you find that this information needs updating from time to time, as it is difficult to keep up with all of the changing plans of the various competitive services. If you have a favorite free email service that supports POP or another way to use the email programs that enable us to do Yiddish email in Unicode UFT-8 text, please send me the link for inclusion here to help others.

Reminder - After you configure the email service, be sure to configure your system for Yiddish. Click on the links at the bottom of this page for further instructions.

 

 

AOL Mail: AOL mail cannot be used for Yiddish because it does not support POP mail, IMAP mail,  Unicode, or right-to-left paragraph direction.

However -- there is a solution: If you decide to use a separate free or inexpensive email address  e.g., Hotmail or Yahoo for your Yiddish email, you can use AOL to connect to the internet, minimize the AOL software, and then use, say Outlook Express for Windows or Shoshke-post for Mac OS X with your separate non-AOL email account for your Yiddish email. 

At one point, I tried a paid service which would purportedly enable you to use your AOL address with POP support. Unfortunately, it did NOT work for Yiddish email, because once the mail went through the AOL system, it became corrupted. Don't waste your time.

 

Hotmail: Visit www.hotmail.com to sign up for a free email account.  Click here for instructions for use with Outlook Express for Windows. I don't know yet how to access Hotmail in the Mail program in Mac OS X (or if it can be done). Will post here if/when I can find out. Write me if you know.

 

Yahoo Mail: Yahoo mail now has two or more tiers of service. Unfortunately, their completely free service no longer supports POP mail. You can subscribe to Yahoo Mail Plus for $19.99/year (as of 9/4/05) for POP support in order to use it for Yiddish email; i.e. with a capable email program.