After Nearly Three Decades of Service, Lycos Mail Quietly Pulls the Plug Leaving Longtime Users Scrambling

Triopolitan.com ^ | May 31, 2026 | Gene Lee

[fwdude]

For nearly thirty years, Lycos occupied a strange corner of internet history. It started as a search engine project in the early web era and grew into a portal packed with hosting services, personal websites, and email. Lycos launched its email service in October 1997, at a time when having an email address still felt novel rather than mandatory. At the olden times of 1997, they had partnered with USA.NET (NetAddress) to offer a co-branded free email service to its portal users, before ditching it in favor of their newly acquired proprietary platform (MailCity) in 1998.For many users, an @lycos.com address became their first online identity, one that survived the dial-up years, broadband adoption, smartphones, and even the rise of the AI era.

Now that chapter appears to be ending. While services do shut down all the time, the problem is how it happened, that is almost no communication, confusion, and a migration process that seems quite confounding at best.

[fwdude]

Wow, $50?! I was paying $9.95 per year, so your wife must have been on a higher level plan. I just had minimal email.

[Dr. Sivana]

My wife joined in the mailcity.com days (pre-1998).
She just checked and the site is still up, so she is backing up what she can.

[Dr. Sivana]

She hates having to tell everyone to use a new e-mail address. The $50 for three years was like a gun to her head.

[fwdude]

At last count I had about 10 emails.

@sbcglobal
@yahoo
@charter
@protonmail
@gmail
@lycos
@icloud
@aol

some more I can’t even think of.

[fwdude]

I once had a mailcity account. I wonder if my email is still active?

Also had an excite email.

[Dr. Sivana]

mailcity had been forwarding to lycos automatically, I do not know about now.

[TexasGator]

“My problem is that so many people had my lycos email as their contact that I’d like to know if someone is trying to reach me with important information. “

Open a Facebook account. They will find you.

[fwdude]

I HAD a Facebook account but got tired of being put in FC jail for stupid reasons, so I closed it.

[TexasGator]

“I HAD a Facebook account but got tired of being put in FC jail for stupid reasons, so I closed it.”

Reopen it.

[fwdude]

It’s funny, because I think my FB account was attached to my Lycos email. LOL!

[TangoLimaSierra]

Do you know that AOL is still around as an email platform and search engine?

I have a friend who still has an AOL address.
A couple of months ago AOL finally quit their dial-up service.

[fwdude]

A couple of months ago AOL finally quit their dial-up service.

That horrific modem sound still haunts my dreams.

[al_c]

Yep ... AOL is still hanging on.

[al_c]

That horrific modem sound still haunts my dreams.

The only sound worse that that is the screech you hear when you dial a phone number that is no longer in service.

[TexasGator]

You can still access your Facebook and change the email,

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

dbcooper@lycos.com

[fwdude]

No thanks. I always felt dirty being on that platform.

[TexasGator]

“No thanks. I always felt dirty being on that platform.”

Strange.

[fwdude]

You do you, I’ll do me.

Bye.

[exPBRrat]

We were just sent an email that our official email company TDS.net is getting out of the email business too. We’ve had that since the early ‘90s.