No more e-mail for private customers

For private customers, the E-Post service will be discontinued by the end of November 2022. The service was launched in 2010 so that Swiss Post customers can send their letters in analogue and digital form at the same time. Customers had to register in person, and the registration also served as proof of identity. For this purpose, Deutsche Post provided a personal electronic mailbox through which confidential letters and documents could also be sent.

The e-mail was sent by Deutsche Post to the recipient either purely electronically or, if the addressee did not have their own registration, it was printed out and brought to the front door by the postman. Since 2020, only the classic dispatch in paper form has been possible.

For business customers, however, the service can still be used: For them, e-mail will “continue unchanged and be further expanded” as a platform for digitizing letter communication.

Cooperation with GMX and Web.de

Deutsche Post now recommends private users to use the e-mail providers GMX and Web.de as well as their own Post and DHL apps as alternatives. In the future, owners of an e-mail account with the 1&1 services GMX and Web.de will be able to send conventional letters on paper from a new online office.

The documents can be sent to Deutsche Post using the "Send as a letter" function. There they are printed out, stamped and sent by post as a printed letter to the recipient's address, as announced by the United Internet brand 1&1 and Deutsche Post.

Test phase until the end of the year

Deutsche Post and 1&1 have been cooperating on mail delivery for a good two years. For example, Swiss Post can use the services of Web.de and GMX to inform its private customers in advance by e-mail which mail items it will deliver during the day. A photo of the envelope is sent in an email. The service is free of charge and is theoretically available to the 35 million users of the two 1&1 services.

At the start of the new service, users of Web.de and GMX can send three analogue letters per e-mail account per month free of charge during a test phase until the end of the year. It has not yet been decided what a digitally created letter will cost in printout and analogue dispatch after the end of the test phase.