Swisscom Now Charges Fees for Bluewin Email

Up until now, the Bluewin E-Mail Basic email service was available to Swisscom home Internet plan subscribers on a complimentary basis. Now, Swisscom is charged a 2.90-franc monthly fee for this service. Calculated on an annual basis, that fee translates into 34.80 francs per year. There are other changes too. The plan now includes 15 gigabytes of storage space instead of the previous 5 gigabytes. Additionally, the Bluewin E-Mail Basic plan will now be available to customers with a Swisscom mobile plan as well.

Customers will receive an email informing them about when the changes will apply from. Swisscom is waiving the fees for the first three months.

New email offers from Bluewin: An overview

Swisscom is now offering three different email plans. These plans differ from each other considerably. The table below provides an overview of the offers.

Table 1: Bluewin plans

How are existing Bluewin email addresses affected?

Depending on the email plan, a number of changes will apply:

• Bluewin E-Mail Light: No major changes. This plan still includes one email address with a maximum of 1 gigabyte of storage space.
• Bluewin E-Mail Basic: If you have the Basic plan and use less than 900 megabytes of storage space, you will be moved to the free Bluewin E-mail Light plan. All other customers will remain with the Basic plan, but will be charged 2.90 francs per month for the previously-free plan. In exchange, the plan will be upgraded to 15 gigabytes of storage, up from the previous 5 gigabytes per email address.
• Bluewin E-Mail Pro: Customers will be moved to the Bluewin E-Mail Basic plan. These customers will pay 2.90 francs per month instead of the previous 1.90 francs. The maximum of five email addresses will remain unchanged. The storage space is 15 gigabytes per email address.
• Bluewin E-Mail Advanced: No major changes. This email plan continues to include 10 email addresses with up to 25 gigabytes of storage per email address. The price remains unchanged at 9 francs per month.

How can customers terminate their email plans?

Unfortunately, Swisscom makes it difficult for customers to quit the email service. For customers who are affected by the price increase to terminate their email plan, they must first face the hassle of moving to the Light plan. According to Swisscom, there are technical reasons that prevent customers from terminating any offer except for the Light plan.

Verdict by moneyland.ch telecom expert Ralf Beyeler

Customers affected by the introduction of the new fees are primarily long-time Swisscom customers. The reason is that a mobile plan or home Internet plan is required to have one of the affected Bluewin email plans in the first place. From that perspective, it is very surprising that Swisscom has introduced an email fee that penalizes customers who are already paying above-average fees for their mobile and home Internet plans. Another point that stands out is that Swisscom does not offer a single email plan that includes a modern amount of storage capacity for a single email address. Most consumers do not need five email addresses.

What are the alternatives?

Luckily there are numerous alternatives. Swiss service providers Infomaniak and Proton both offer free email plans. There are also established free email services like Gmail from Google, GMX, Outlook from Microsoft (formerly Hotmail), and Yahoo Mail.

If you want to keep your Bluewin email address from Swisscom, it is possible to do this free of charge. Simply open a new plan with an email service that offers sufficient storage space. Set up your new email service so that emails you receive at your Bluewin address are transferred directly to your new email address. If you do that, the one gigabyte of storage space you get with the free Bluewin plan is sufficient, so there is no need to use a paid Bluewin email plan.  

Table 2: Overview of free email plans

Yahoo is the most generous of the free email services, with unlimited storage capacity. Infomaniak comes news, with 20 gigabytes of storage space, followed by Gmail and Outlook, which each give you 15 gigabytes. The one gigabyte of storage space that you get with Bluewin and GMX is very small, and completely out of keeping with the times.

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