We're constantly trying to improve all of our services, and now it's your time to shine! Modernize your account RIGHT NOW!

If you don't modernize your account, it'll be permanently deleted on March 20th. Don't wanna risk your precious contacts and conversations, right?

Modernizing will make your account even more secure, you can change your display name, you can make your email private! That's right, you now get a fancy, schmancy @escargot.chat email to use on Escargot!

If you have any questions whatsoever, just ask for help on our Discord, we're happy to help.

Infrequently asked questions

- Why are you doing this to us!?

There are actually a lot of reasons, but the most straight forward are:

1) Compatibility with older clients which accept only @hotmail.com addresses, and other protocols such as AIM/AOL and Yahoo.

2) Privacy: So that you can have a real email address associated with your account (that no other users can see) and still have a login that you want.

- What about my contacts?

Your new login name will automatically appear on their contact list after they sign on again and will appear the same to them, so they will still know who you are. The reverse is also true, anyone on your contact list who modernizes will show up again the next time you sign on. It is advised while modernization is happening, that people re-sign on at least once a day, though most people will likely modernize within the first week.

- What about my @escargot.live account?

Unfortunately those who have earned @escargot.live logins will have to wait until modernization is complete, then they will be able to begin using their login. All those who have earned the will be notified.

If you wanna know what it is, click here.

- Can I still use my email address for login?

No, at least not right now. While it is true when we started this stage of the project we said you could, but it's just too complex for now. Later on you will be able to register an email address as your login, but it'll have to be a new user, however you will be able to link it with your old account. This won't be available until sometime later.... We will publicly announce when you can do this.

- Can I get a 2 character screenname? What about a 3 character one?

Check our donate page for more information!

There's a new patch tool available, USE IT EVEN IF YOU ARE ALREADY USING A PATCHED VERSION OF MSN/WLM IT WILL FIX THE HOST NAME. Unless you're already using the new hosts (and you almost certainly are not):

INI:

server = msnmsgr.escargot.chat
configserver = conf.escargot.chat

WLM 8+ now supports a video display feature where the ad banner is. This rotates with the ad banner every few seconds.

A JavaScript error on the Escargot Today page should be fixed.

Now Messenger Plus! downloads come in an encrypted 7z format with the password "escargot". The reason is that some anti-viruses flag Messenger Plus! as malware (due to the optional adware Messenger! Plus would bundle on the installer, but it doesn't work anyway) and they flag our entire storage server as unsafe.

Yay, more changes! We implemented the ad banner system on Escargot. If you wanna submit your own banners (animated or not), please do on our forums or on our Discord.

We have a brand new website! This one is cleaner, more modern, responsive (doesn't go all crazy on weird resolutions), has dark mode, and is overall better. Try it out! For those web designers out there, yes, it uses Bootstrap 4. Give your suggestions on our Discord and in our forums. Thanks once again to Animadoria for the beautiful website (I'm pretending like I didn't write this)

Whiteboard is now available via Activities, so have fun. Major thanks goes out to Animadoria. Here is a demo that shows how terrible Tony is at writing with a mouse (see bottom of image for horror show).

We have moved successfully and have been up and running without any failures (except once by a crazed cronjob) since moving, and have had zero congestion since moving as well.

We are in process of moving to much faster server. You can learn more about how to move on the NINA Wiki.

We're glad to announce that we were able to find a solution for users experiencing issues with logging on through Mercury Messenger, and users of the app can continue using it normally. Effective immediately, its corresponding download in the MSN Messenger downloads along with all other content pertaining to it will be reinstated as well

Added distinction between Traditional and Simplified Chinese downloads with respective flags

Twitter and Facebook Messenger tabs removed and added Messenger Plus 1.10 to MSN Messenger downloads

After two years, our biggest update yet is FINALLY out. This might be our last big update for a while

Support for WLM 2009 is now out. Many improvements to existing services in previous MSN versions and the server core have also been introduced to fix various bugs that have been lingering around for some time and to better the user experience for everyone. We also introduced the text ad functionality back into MSN that we provisioned to display promotion from us and other projects we think are worth sharing.

For WLM 2009, if you plan to install with the prepatched installers make sure you uninstall any existing Windows Essentials installations > 2009 before installing as they will not function properly as a result of version conflict.

Alongside WLM 2009 support, we are also unveiling our new Group Chats feature. You can finally make your own proper, persistent group chat that won't require you to be online 24/7 to maintain (currently only WLM 2009 supports this feature).

For those who wants some refreshing Messenger Plus! action to go with their WLM 2009 experience, we've added Messenger Plus! 5.02 to the MSN Messenger Extras (note that you can still use version 4.83 for WLM 2009 if you really want to, but if you want to get the most out of your WLM 2009 experience with Messenger Plus!, we recommend you give 5.02 a try)

All new and previous pre-patched clients for MSN are now patched with our new Escargot Switcher component. If you have a client patched with our older patches and want to continue using Escargot without any unexpected issues later down the road, then we recommend you reinstall your client with our new pre-patched installers (or manually patch it if you feel comfortable doing that). This also means that all new pre-patched clients installed starting from now will only work on Windows XP and up for now due to the way the underlying patch solution is built.

Warning to MSN Messenger users: because we reverted our archaic msidcrl patch in these new patches, accounts saved from mid-2017 to 2020 on a patched client may not carry over and you will have to re-enter your credentials if that's the case, following installation of the new patches..

This site now has a proper login system. Currently this will allow you to manage your account's settings and your group chats. The ability to view your account's PUID also requires you to log in to your account settings. This news section also has an RSS feed now

Usernames are now a thing and are mandatory on all user accounts (previous accounts that have been created before 11/15/2020 have an auto-generated username; it was the best we could do). Keep this in mind when sharing your Escargot contact info from this point forward. You can find your username if you aren't aware of it by logging in to your account settings

Our service now supports offline messaging. To be able to utilize it in any fashion however you will have to reinstall your client with our new patches as the old ones break this functionality

A quick shoutout to Nerm from the community for making the lovely installer banner, by the way