What free email servers can you add a picture email signature to?

[Mitz]

hi guys
I am researching an article on free email servers that let you have an email signature with a picture, logo, or html in it. I have already checked out Gmail and it does not allow you to add graphics to email signatures. It won't even let you add rich text or html.

If you are using any other free email server/clients like hotmail, yahoo, and so on, could you let me know if they allow pictures in the signatures in the emails.. I do not want to sign up for more email addresses as I have thousands already...

Thanks guys.. any hints or tips will be much appreciated ..

[DSTM]

Hi Mitz,Mozilla Thunderbird Email lets you insert Images in your Signature and it's free.
Thank Mara for this.She kindly put me onto Thunderbird,and I am impressed.
http://email.about.com/od/mozillathunderbirdtips/qt/et_tb_sig_image.htm

[Mitz]

Thanks DSTM because I forgot about programs like Outlook Express and Thunderbird...Is it easy to work Thunderbird and put email signatures in?

[Dak]

With Thunderbird, it is very easy to add custom signatures, and you can put just about anything you want in them.
There are some things to take note of though..

Often other email clients, or 'free' web based email sites such as Hotmail and Yahoo, dont render the Thunderbird signatures correctly. In fact, if you want your emails to show up indentically as you have sent them from Thunderbird, then you pretty much have to go through a paid email service such as the one your ISP will provide you, AND the recipient needs to be using Thunderbird as well. This behaviour also applies to other email clients such as Incredimail.
I am not sure regarding Outlook Express as I have never used it, but I am inclined to think the same thing would apply.

Additionally, Thunderbird, Outlook Express, Incredimail etc do not work on the free email accounts. If you want to use an email client to access Hotmail and its derivatives, Yahoo, and probably GMail too (thought I am not sure on that one)then you have to pay them for the privilege by subscribing to an upgraded account.

I have just tried to add an image to a signature on an old Yahoo email account of mine, and the option certainly exists to do it. However, I created a signature, including a small image, and sent a test email to one of my other email accounts, and only the text portion came through. There was no sign of any image ever having been there. I suspect that if I sent an email from this Yahoo account to another Yahoo account though, the signature would have worked properly. 

I'd be interested to hear more if anyone has free email accounts that they can experiment with.

[DSTM]

Not all Free Email accounts, work harmoniously, between one another.
Thunderbird has the ability, to send in ''Plain Text as well as HTML" at the same time.
If another Free Email can't accept the images,that's hardly the fault of Thunderbird.
I have HotMail, Yahoo,Gmail,Outlook Express and Thunderbird,so will experiment between them.

[Dak]

You need to distinguish between free email servers and email clients.

An email client, such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird, is a program that lives in your computer, and checks your email inbox at specified periods. These can pick up your email from the server, and give you the option of leaving the original copy of your email on the server, or deleting it as it collects it and just storing the copy on your computer.

An email server, such as Hotmail or Yahoo, is web based, not stored on your computer. This is the actual 'Post Office' if you like, and the email client is the 'Mailman'. 

Hotmail and Yahoo don't allow you to use email clients to collect your mail unless you pay them.. you have to pay to allow the 'Mailman' to collect your mail. They demand you visit the 'Post Office' in person if you are using a free account.

If you have a paid email account, such as the one your ISP will provide, then you can use the 'Mailman', being your email client, to fetch the mail for you.

For this reason, I can configure my email client, which is Thunderbird, to collect emails from my various websites and my ISP provided account. I am a big fan of Thunderbird, and have been using it as my email client for years. However, I cannot configure my Thunderbird to collect mail from Hotmail or Yahoo because their servers will not allow the 'Mailman' through the door!

Thunderbird does have the option of sending emails in html, plain text, or both at once. Plain text however is not going to allow you to send anything except text obviously, so a signature with an image is going to be sent with the text part as the signature, with the image sent separately as an attachment. A html email will send the image, therefore the complete signature, as well. However... each of these email clients handle html in a different way, and the email you send from Thunderbird will not be displayed in exactly the same way when received in another persons Outlook Express.

Also, even if using a paid email account, en route to that persons Outlook Express, the email will pass through both your outgoing email server, and the other persons incoming mail server. Those servers can, though not always,  also have an effect on the way the email is displayed, so you have many influences along the way that can affect your email.

In the case of Yahoo, its likely that the text portion of the signature will appear at the bottom of the email, but the image will only be visible as an attachment, though I admit I am not certain of exactly how it will display since I dont use Yahoo. The point is, it will be different in some or many ways.

If I send an email using Thunderbird, via my address here ( dak@pctipforum.com ) to your Yahoo account, when you read it on the Yahoo site, it will not have the same appearance as it did when it left my computer. The same applies in the reverse direction. Even if Yahoo did not modify the email in any way, it will display it differently. You would need Thunderbird to interpret and display the email exactly as I sent it. Since Yahoo wont allow you to collect your mail using Thunderbird, every email I send to your Yahoo is going to be displayed differently than I had intended when creating the email using Thunderbird.

The free email servers these days have huge inbox allowances, and I know many people who choose to forward all their emails to a Hotmail account as a safe way to archive their emails.. if their computer crashes, all emails are safely stored elsewhere. Of course, its inconvenient to have to collect your emails manually, and as large as the inbox may be, eventually its going to be full.

Paradoxically, a paid email account will generally have a much smaller inbox. This is compensated for by the email client, though, as you can configure your email client to check and collect your email automatically as often as every 60 seconds if you like, and you can instruct it to delete the email from the server as it collects it. This ensures that your email inbox is never full, and that your emails are automatically collected and you are notified when they come in.. you just click once to open your computer based inbox and presto! the email is in front of you. The disadvantage of course is that if you have set your client to delete the emails from the server, and this is good practice due to the smaller inbox, then the only copy of your emails is on your computer, and you'll lose them if you lose the data on your computer.

Email signatures are useful if all recipients are using the same email client, and passing through a paid server account. This works particularly well in the corporate world, where emails are sent from one staff member to another, all via the same server, and using the same email client. In my opinion, they aren't much use for personal emails. I have given up adding any pretty stuff to my emails for this reason... its not pretty if they dont have the same servers and email clients.

I havent mentioned the other major free email provider, GMail, as I have never used it. I think I would be reasonably safe in assuming, however, that the same restrictions apply to GMail as with Yahoo and Hotmail (and Hotmail derivatives such as Live or Rocketmail).

[DSTM]

Thanks for explaining everything in detail,dak.You explain things clearly,that us Novices can understand.
I like Thunderbird because of the ease of use.I like to Jazz an Email up,when sending to my friends.I think it makes an Email more special.It lets you add and Image with the text,so easy.And add text to the Image with another small program,so the image can be transformed like an E card Birthday Card or whatever.Have so much fun with Thunderbird,and still experimenting.

Mitz asked the question "What free email servers can you add a picture email signature to?"and I recommend Thunderbird.

[Dak]

I agree, I use Thunderbird, have done so for years, and have no plans to change.

Just one point though.. Thunderbird is not an email server.. its an email client.

Mitz is asking about email servers, like Hotmail and Yahoo. Since you have accounts with all the major free email servers, I hope you'll experiment with what they can do, and how the emails appear once they arrive at a different destination.. ie Yahoo to GMail.. or Yahoo to Thunderbird (via your paid email server) etc.. and also how the emails sent from an email client such as Thunderbird (via your paid email server) appear on arrival at Yahoo etc..

I'll look forward to seeing your results.

[Mitz]

I did ask about email servers but now I realise I should have mentioned email clients as well... Because the actual article can be applied to any of the above...And thanks guys for the fantastic information..

I must say it makes it easier for me to write my articles when you guys are using all the programs and email servers that I want to know about. I am very interested in what happens when you send a picture in a signature to another email client or server... I mean whats the point of putting a picture in an email if it doesn't show up...I think this is a fantastic thing for people to know.