It works best if your old account is set to "leave messages on the server" (if you don't know what that means then it probably is), but we can handle things either way.

If you're changing jobs and have a company-provided email account, you may need to get permission to keep your old one for a transition period. Most employers will allow this as long as you promise not to use it to solicit their customers.

If you're graduating from a school, most schools will allow you to keep your school email address for a while, too, but you should check.

The best thing, of course, is to plan ahead! Given the low cost of the remail.me service — it's just $5 (and during the beta period it's free! Click here if you'd like an invitation) — it makes sense to start using it as soon as you think you might be changing addresses.

Oh - and since remail.me runs in a browser, it will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux in Firefox 2.0 or higher; on Mac or Windows in Safari 3.0 or higher; or on Windows in Internet Explorer 6 or higher or Google Chrome.

We strongly recommend Firefox, Safari, or Chrome. They're faster, better browsers, and much more secure.

For security reasons, we do not allow logging in to remail.me with Internet Explorer 6 or earlier.

Without getting too technical, there are two types of email accounts, POP and IMAP, and remail.me handles both. It doesn't matter what kind of account you're moving from, but if your new account is POP, there will be a few limitations.

The main difference is in how we handle people on the cc: line of emails sent to your old account. Because they can't be put on the cc: line of a remailed message, we send you the cc list in a separate message.

POP is the older technology and not used much anymore, so if you're moving to a new account this probably won't apply to you. If it does, we'll let you know on Step 1 of the signup process.

There are some email providers, such as Yahoo!, who don't allow you to access your account through their web interface unless you pay extra for an "upgraded" account. If your old or new account is one of those, we'll tell you during signup and show you how to configure it.

One of the best ways to use remail.me is to switch email addresses within your current domain.

Have too much spam? Too many email subscriptions that you can't seem to shake?

Perfect! Use remail.me to help migrate just the people you want to stay in touch with to your new email address without running the risk of losing someone important, and without the hassle of having to constantly check two email accounts.

Remail.me is so easy to use you probably won't ever need support! But if you do, and we'll get back to you right away.

A forwarded message comes from you (or rather, your old email account). A remailed message comes from the original sender, which means you can respond just by hitting "reply" or "reply all", like you would any other message.

To respond to a forwarded message, you have to forward it again, then re-build the "To:" and "Cc:" lines by hand. t's tedious and error-prone and, depending on which email program you use, you may have to look up all the email addresses again.

With remailing, you can always find messages by sender. With forwarding, email from each sender will be in two places: under the sender's name if it was sent to your new account, and under your name if it was sent to your old account. And of course it will be mixed in with all the other messages forwarded from your old account. Not fun.

• You can start using your new address right away

• You can stop checking old email accounts, and still get all your important messages

• You make the transition easy for your friends as well – their mail still gets to you without delay, and they get reminded about your new address

• You can leave spammers and other unwanted senders behind

• It's easy, immediate, and really inexpensive

Yes. You can add as many old accounts as you like.

You can add them after you've signed up, by logging in to your account and going to your "my home" page.

Remail.me creates a list of everyone who sends mail to your old account(s) plus, in most cases, everyone to whom you've sent mail, and gives you tools to quickly filter out the addresses you don't want to keep. Then you can download it in a standard format that you can easily import into your new address book.

If someone new sends email to your old account after you've transitioned to your new one, we'll let you know so you can decide how to handle them, too.

Think of remail.me as a little commercial-free island in a sea of online advertising.

In general, you'll never see ads from us, either online or in your inbox, other than a footer explaining remail.me in messages you have us send out on your behalf. This helps us spread the word while keeping the cost down for you and everyone else.

Rest assured, though, that we will never let anyone else use your email address, and will purge all of your information when you close your account.

There's one exception: after the active part of your subscription has expired, then there may be ads on your account page and in emails we send to you. This helps us to defray the cost of providing the ongoing Account Monitor service.

Just login to your remail.me account. There, you can disable old account(s) or cancel the service entirely.