The past month has seen some major happenings in the world of Freemail providers: UK provider EE finalized their closure of Orange email services – which included long-time freemail domains Wanadoo.co.uk and Freeserve.co.uk – and Terra.co.br announced the end of their freemail service. (A full listing of affected domains is at the end of the post.)

Orange had been heralding the May 31 closure date for a few months, recommending their users switch to Gmail, while Terra has given July 1 as the end date for their services. Terra.es had previously announced their email migration to terra.com starting in April of this year.

For senders in the US, these domain closures are likely to have varying impacts. Typically you’re unlikely to have a large number of Orange addresses on file, especially since these addresses are typically older and many users have migrated away from them to more advanced services. Terra addresses tend to be slightly more common in the US, particularly terra.com.mx. If you have these addresses in your database, you probably also know that delivery issues at Terra tend to be difficult to resolve – so maybe there is a bit of a silver lining in the closures yet.

In any case, you should take the opportunity to check your database for addresses at these domains. If you have any of the Orange addresses, suppress them immediately as they are officially shut down. If you have other contact data for those recipients, feel free to use it to get updated information. If you have recipients at the Terra domains, you still have 3 weeks to reach out via email to get updated details. If you haven’t gotten the info by July 1, you’ll need to suppress those recipients as well.

As always, please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments, or email me with any more detailed requests.

– BG