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EarthLink Keeps Access in the Family

Family Pack option lets you add multiple users and e-mail boxes to one EarthLink account.

By Liane Gouthro, PCWorld   

Family Pack lets members establish up to five additional user IDs for $2 monthly in addition to EarthLink's $19.95 monthly fee. Up to six people in one household can now share one EarthLink account while maintaining separate e-mail boxes and personalized settings, which include custom Personal Start Pages, bookmarks, and filters.

EarthLink had previously offered users additional e-mail boxes for an added charge of $4.95 each per month, note EarthLink representatives. But this is the first service that allows multiple user identities, so users don't have the added hassles of either sharing their personal settings with other users or remembering the information and re-entering it each time.

Family Pack is designed to "work hand-in-hand with the new EarthLink 5.0," which was released in early December, says Kurt Rahn, an EarthLink spokesperson. With the latest version of EarthLink, users can switch among different user names without having to log off and then log back on.

Aiming at AOL

Support for multiple users and multiple mailboxes on one account is not a new idea. MindSpring and AOL offer similar options. For $26.95 monthly, MindSpring users can sign up for "The Works," which includes five mailboxes; its $19.95 service also supports five mailboxes.

MindSpring and EarthLink have agreed to merge in late January or early February. So will this new Family Pack service be offered to users? Post-merger service offerings have not been decided, but Rahn says that it is likely that the Family Pack service will continue. "We're taking the best from both services, and we think that this [Family Pack] is the best offering," he says.

Licenses for Microsoft's MSN prohibit simultaneous connections using a single account, and state that users who share a computer still need separate MSN accounts.

AOL, of course, pioneered the multiuser account as part of its appeal to families. Rahn acknowledges that EarthLink's new service is aimed at wooing customers from AOL.

But AOL actually gives a bit more: AOL offers users seven user names and mailboxes through one account, and you can switch among them without have to log off. And both services cost the same: AOL costs $21.95 monthly, which is exactly what EarthLink costs with the optional Family Pack service. So how does EarthLink differentiate itself?

"We allow users to choose any browser and any e-mail client," Rahn says, which is an added bonus for more advanced users.

EarthLink also touts its privacy features as a way to lure disgruntled AOL members. AOL recently changed its policy so members must annually "opt out" of having their personal and contact information shared with AOL marketing partners. In December, EarthLink offered a free month of service and made a donation to an electronic privacy advocacy group for each AOL member who switched to EarthLink due to unhappiness with AOL's privacy policy.