Email after I have left an ISP

Hello I'm hoping some people here might be able to help with some research I'm trying to do.

I'm looking to find out once you leave an ISP (pretty much any ISP) how long they let you use their email service, or if you can pay them and use it indeffinitly?

Hopefully some people might know from experince, I have found calling them less than helpful most have no idea what I'm really asking and ISP's websites don't seem to mention it that much.

Any help would be great, thanks for reading.

Which ISP? Some let you continue (Plusnet allow you to downgrade to a pay as you go service which gives you free email and seems to be indefinite). Others will terminate the account immediately.

Strictly speaking ISPs don't have to keep an email address going after you've left and stopped paying for the service, but there's no incentive for them to advertise that so it's not surprising you're not getting straight answers.

You might consider getting your own email and/or own domain from someone like PurpleCloud, which is independent of ISP. An alternative is to see if the ISP does a dialup account so that you can keep your email addy going with that.

ISPs that have PAYG dialup access may let you keep it forwever providing you dial up once a month, every 90 days etc or may provide a "resurrection" facility if it times out.

Some provide standalone email (BT, AOL) that obviously keeps going forever as you can have it without an internet or broadband account.

Others with it tied to the paid-for internet access (Demon for example) may terminate it when your account is closed.

Thanks for the replies. I realise it depends on which ISP, but I was trying to put something together across the board, so I would know how long each one, at least the main players, allows.

From what I can tell though it seems almost random, some get cut off, some get told they have to pay, others seem to never expire, but not many of the ISP's have a standard inside themselves as to how it works.

I think it must be such a low priority to clear these pop boxes out for them they do it when they have some down time maybe!

Thanks, and any more personal expriences might be useful as well.

if you're trying to sub out your research perhaps a start would be to list the ISPs you are interested in and solicit specific experiences.