UK ISP BT Hikes the Cost of Premium Email Provision

Subscribers to BT’s Premium Mail (email) service, which is offered to customers who don’t want the ISP’s consumer broadband product any more (e.g. because they’ve switched providers) but still wish to keep their email address alive, will be hit with a big price hike on 6th May 2016.

According to BT’s website, the monthly price of “Premium Mail” will jump from £1.60 to £5.00 and all that for a bog standard Internet email service that is otherwise identical to the free BT Mail solution that existing BT Broadband customers can take.

The cost seems somewhat excessive when you consider that it’s possible to take free email products from all sorts of places and £5 a month is even more expensive than buying your own shared webhosting space, which often give you a free domain for 1-2 years with your own name to use.

As usual we always recommend that people who depend upon email avoid using the service provided by their broadband ISP (using this can make it harder to switch ISP later and creates problems like today’s news) and take out a separate paid product or freemail option from a third-party.

The other alternative is of course to swap back to BT Broadband, but then that’s probably what they’re hoping will happen.