Additional email storage space.

[smudry]

Is it possible to have more email storage space than the standard 1.0 GB per email address?  If so, are there additional costs and what is the pricing of this? Thanks

[shaw-tamara · Accepted solution]

Hello smudry 

The current storage limit for Webmail is 1GB and we are not aware of any plans to change this in the future. If you need more storage, it might be a good idea to use a mail client so you can download your messages to your computer instead. You can find a bit more information that here https://community.shaw.ca/docs/DOC-11971 

[shadybrook]

Gmail offers 15 gb for free and one can add 100 gb for $2 per month. How can Shaw so glibly stick to such an noncompetitive offering?  

[GlennH1]

I only use one email account, not the 10 allowed on my package, why can't I have that 10gig quota all in one spot? And why can't this arbitrary low limit be raised when Google, Microsoft and others have much more generous free offerings?

[GladysHarvey]

I agree.  This limitation was appropriate 10 years ago.  If you stay with a service provider as a loyal customer year after year you are going to accumulate more than 1GB of email FAST!  

[StephenH1]

I'm in agreement that the need for additional space should be higher than 1 GB. Telus provides this level of storage: 

TELUS offers 5GB of storage space for each mailbox. Over the coming months, TELUS email will be powered by Google and your storage space will be increased to 15GB. 

[rstra]

Yes, more storage is definitely needed, but I have started the process of moving all of my mail to my Gmail account, I don’t like the idea of having it with any internet provider, just in case I want to switch.

[trunzer]

Totally agree!!

How can Shaw charge as much as they do and offer only 1 Gb of storage for email? I am constantly needing to delete attachments, or come up with workarounds, like dropbox, when people want to send me larger attachments.

I don't want to use Microsoft outlook. I use Mac Mail to access email on all of my devices, but I do not have it set to download my messages. True, I could store them in iCloud, but the why should I pay for that WHEN I'M ALREADY PAYING SHAW A STUPID AMOUNT OF MONEY FOR THE SERVICE?!

I really thought that we were just waiting for Shaw to get up to speed with their competition, but the reply above, from their customer service sounds hopeless.

Get into the 21st century Shaw!!!

[ndanzinger]

My mother made the terrible mistake of using Shaw for her primary email address years ago and now she hits her quota every 2 months.

Being an awesome son I will sit there for an hour and help her delete old emails, but the fact this is even a problem is ridiculous. She literally pays $150 per month for service and all she gets is 1GB for her email account? Shame on you Shaw. Being stingy on email storage is absurd given the monthly fees your customers pay. 

[mdk]

@ndanzinger -- setup Outlook on your mother's computer, as an IMAP client, and also create "Local Storage" folders within Outlook.

Those "Local Storage" folders are stored only on her computer. Presumably, she has 500 to 1000 GB of available disk-space on her computer.

Open Outlook, and select-and-drag-and-drop the oldest messages from her "Inbox" folder, to "move" them into one of the storage folders. This frees-up space within the quota that Shaw provides.  Compare to forever leaving the letters that a Canada Post carrier drops into your mailbox on the outside of your home, until it is "overfull", and then moving the mail out of that mailbox, and putting it onto your dining-room table, for sorting and "pruning" and archiving.

Of course, an awesome son will schedule a weekly backup of those "Local Storage" folders onto an external device.  🙂

A little math: if there are 1 million Shaw E-mail IDs, and each ID consumes 1 GB, that is 1000 Terabytes stored by Shaw. If Shaw uses RAID-5 file-systems, to avoid data-loss caused by failure of a single disk-drive, Shaw will need up to 9 times as much storage. Whew!  Even if Shaw had 0.1 million IDs, that is 100 Terabytes, before multiplying by 9.

To use multiple 18 Terabyte disk-drives -- the largest capacity that I can find -- will cost about $1000 per disk-drive. Using 5 of those drives will get you 90 (not 900) Terabytes, for $5000, before multiplying by 9, to cost $45,000 for 0.1 million E-mail IDs.

Anybody know the size of Google's "disk-farm", and how much they spend for housing & air-conditioning & physical security & electrical power?