We hope the About, Privacy, and FAQ, pages are helpful to you. If none of the suggestions found on these pages have helped you, please visit the Contact form to inform us of your problem. Your input will help us make MailStart easier and more useful.
Connection Problems - "Could not connect to mail server"
MailStart uses your email address and common naming conventions to guess at the name of your POP3 server. Many combinations are tried in an attempt to open a POP3 connection. Unfortunately, some networks have special naming needs and the MailStart.Com computers can not automatically find the proper host to handle POP3 requests. In this case, a form will be presented to you asking you to manually break down the connection information. This information should have been provided to you by your network administrator.
This error may also be due to a down mail server, heavy Internet traffic or some other temporary situation, you may want to try again in a minute or two.
Authentication Problems - "Could not login to mail server"
There are several circumstances that would cause authentication problems. Authentication is a means of making sure you are who you claim to be before you're shown your email. Authentication is traditionally done with a username and password. If you receive a "Could not authenticate" error from MailStart, it means that MailStart could not successfully retreive your email with the Username and Password you provided. If you know your Username and Password are correct, and you have verified the credentials with your Internet Service Provider (ISP), it's probable that your ISP doesn't allow MailStart, or any other foreign computers to access your mailbox.
In some cases, an Username will not be the same as the first part of an email address. Your email address could be "joe@company.com," but your Username could be "joe4". In this case, MailStart needs to know that your Username is "joe4". Enter your email address as "joe4@company.com" to let MailStart know the information it needs.
A note about attachments
While we continuously try to provide the best service possible while still remaining anonymous, there are certain features we simply cannot maintain. Because of the anonymous nature of MailStart, we are not able to store mail on our servers, which would be a necessary step for decoding attachments. In order to view attachments by using our services, you would have to sign up for the complete WebBox service for only $18 per year. WebBox is a more personalized service, which allows you to consolidate up to 5 email accounts, store 20 MB of Files (including attachments), store your bookmarks online, manage your business or personal contacts, and keep track of your day with a full featured calendar. WebBox gives you so much, and it only takes a few minutes to sign up! Sign up today at: http://www.webbox.com/signup/
Note: Once you have signed up, you have to actually log into your Webbox at www.webbox.com to use it.
Send Mail Problems
The most common cause of problems in sending mail is a problem with the formatting of an email address. E-mail addresses should be formatted as username@domain.com. Check for any extraneous information such as a persons full name. Some email packages include this in the return address, and it may be problematic if used through different services. The email address user@domain.com is valid alone, but is sometimes invalid if combined with additional text such as user@domain.com (Jim User). To prevent loss of important address information, the MailStart servers do not attempt to alter addresses, but rather return an error message and allow you to modify the address.
Again, temporary connectivity problems can also result in this message. Try clicking the back button and trying to send the email again.
