Nov 12, 2017

You'll have until December 10 to use AOL's smart email service before Alto takes the plot next to AOL Instant Messenger. November 12, 2017 PCMag reviews products independently , but we may earn affiliate commissions from buying links on this page. Terms of use . Though AOL's Alto email service might not have the popularity (or nostalgia) of AOL Instant Messenger, both will soon be reunited in digital obscurity. According to a notification from AOL last week, the company is officially pulling the plug on Alto before the year's end. AOL intended Alto to serve as a smart inbox that users could access on Android, iOS, and the web, organizing emails from various third-party services into different sections and displaying cards with messages relevant to whatever it is a user was doing. That could include prompting information about your flight check-in on the day you're heading out on vacation (or messages related to your hotel reservations when you land), as well as shipping notifications for packages you're expecting, et cetera. Once December 10 hits, Alto is gone for good—a brisk, but decent five-year run for a tech service. The Alto app is currently unavailable for download on Google Play and the App Store, and users will be unable to access any message stacks they created within Alto once AOL's service goes away. Their emails and data will still be accessible, but through the third-party services they connected to Alto, not Alto itself. Related