I had actually been planning since last week to write and say that all the webmail performance problems seemed to have gone away - and then ask why no-one at PlusNet had explained what had been wrong and how they fixed it.
But today it has been diabolically bad at times, with loading and deleting of emails being very slow, and the occasional 'Server error' message. So, the Webmail system is evidently still sick, like it has been since this thread began, about a year ago.
Added to that, my email client (Outlook 2016 [365] on Windows 10) has most of today been giving error:
"0x8004210A The operation timed out waiting for a response from the receiving (POP) server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or internet service provider (ISP)."
Secondly, since yesterday, Outlook keeps prompting me for my password for each email account on every scheduled or manual send/receive cycle - as if the logged-on session to each account has been lost. (In one Outlook session, I normally only have to log in once to each email account being read.) [This itself cannot be a PlusNet problem, since it is happening on another non-PN email account too.]
Thirdly, after I do sign back in to all the accounts, if it does actually pick up mails instead of giving the 0x8004210A error mentioned above, it then exhibits an error I have been getting intermittently for more than a year, which is that it downloads all the emails that are sitting in the inbox on the PlusNet email server, not just new ones that have not been downloaded before, so I end up with multiple copies of emails, and have to delete all the duplicates (fortunately made easier by Outlook's folder clean-up button). [I have my options set in Outlook so as to leave messages on the server for a set number of days after downloading to Outlook - for reasons that are not relevant here, just related to being able to read the latest emails on my phone.] I have never been able to determine whether this ‘multi-download’ fault is in PlusNet or in Outlook.
For the above reasons, I do need to use Webmail toaccess emails and delete unwanted ones directly on the server, but the Webmail service has been pretty awful. For a great deal of the day, I have been unable to collect my emails via Outlook and intermittently unable to see them on PN Webmail either. I’ve had to manage new emails as best I can via my email app on my Android phone.
Is this life?
and even thunderbird would not connect