On September 30, 2025, AOL will hang up the modem for good. The company has confirmed that its dial‑up internet service will be discontinued, closing a 34‑year chapter that introduced millions to the web. Think busy signals, the whirr‑chatter of a handshake, and that simple promise: “You’ve got mail.“
What changes on Sept. 30
The shutdown affects dial‑up access over phone lines. AOL’s notice frames it as a routine product decision; newsrooms confirmed the Sept. 30, 2025, date after the help page went live. In practice, it means the number you used to dial, and the software tuned for that experience, won’t connect anymore.
Several outlets also report that AOL Dialer and the AOL Shield browser will be retired alongside the network, reflecting that the company no longer supports the legacy stack that made dial‑up workable on older machines.
What doesn’t change: your @aol.com email
Your AOL Mail address continues. You can keep reading and sending mail at mail.aol.com, or in any modern mail app. CBS, AP, and AOL’s own messaging are clear that email is unaffected by the dial‑up sunset.
If you prefer an app, use IMAP so mail stays in sync across devices. AOL’s current settings are: imap.aol.com (993, SSL) for incoming mail and smtp.aol.com (465, SSL) for outgoing mail. Enter your full email address and password when prompted.
If you’re still on a modem
A small slice of households still rely on dial‑up, about 163,401 in 2023, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. For them, this is a real migration moment. Any modern connection—cable, fiber, 5G home internet, satellite, even remaining DSL lines—will let you keep using your @aol.com address via webmail or IMAP. The email account is independent of how you get online.
If you’ve been running AOL Desktop Gold to organize mail and bookmarks, export your data before you move. AOL’s help docs explain how to back up items so you can import them on a newer machine and keep going.
Why this goodbye matters
All these years later, there’s been a novelty in asking your friends if they knew that AOL dial-up is still around. Other than that? Not much. Ending the service doesn’t erase that history; it marks the moment the early web finally gives way to the always‑on world it helped create.
If the end of AOL’s dial-up era has you reminiscing about the early web, we’ve got more blasts from the past. Hear the familiar handshake chime and other classic startup noises in Vintage Tech Sounds of the ’90s. Then, take a visual trip through 11 AOL Homescreens From the ’90s Through the Early 2000s, or dig deeper with Nostalgic AOL Images That Take You Back to the Early Internet.
