Web Email Services

I spend a lot of time online, some may say I spend too much time. To those people I say… “whatever.” There are a lot of free email service providers out there, some well known, others not so well known.  Some are good, others should pay you to use them. Which is the best one? In this day and age, I don’t think there is any good reason for someone to pay for a personal email account; thus I don’t discuss the merits of the paid versions of the webmail services. With care, planning, patience and common sense, you can avoid much of the spam that exists on the web, mostly with multiple addresses and knowing that forwarding stupid emails helps spammers.

Anyways, I’ve had experience with various email providers. The main ones I’ve used (besides school and corporate programs) have been Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, AIM mail, with some other website-specific stuff like blackplanet.com, collegeclub.com and other gimmicky stuff like that which no one should use for any kind of serious emailing, in my opinion. I have formed various opinions and have ranked the main four that I’ve used, from worst to first

4: Hotmail.
It was the first email address I had, and it won over yahoo because it sounded cooler, hehehe. Plus, I was able to get the address I wanted, and that in and of itself makes my hotmail address one that I won’t throw away; plus MSN Messenger is the main IM program that I use. However, I cannot recommend hotmail to anyone as an email program anymore. It’s not as crappy as it used to be, but when compared to all the other free email programs out there it is sorely lacking. The spam filter is decent, but the storage space of 250 MB limited only to North American-based customers is a deal-breaker. Of course, it’s a big increase from the 2MB limit they used to have…but other than that, the only thing that Hotmail has going for it is its rapidly fading marquee status. Also, the advertising and pop-ups that are starting to take it over are not at all becoming of a prime free email service. If you already have a hotmail address, I would say to keep it; but I would recommend that you migrate to one of the top two and use hotmail solely for MSN and Passport features.

3: AIM Mail.
I hate AOL. I detest everything it stands for, and I would rather not connect to the internet at all than use AOL to connect to the internet. I also strongly dislike AIM messenger, and I use it only sparingly to speak to a few friends who do not use any other messenger service. As it is, I haven’t signed on there for a while anyways, but I don’t hate AIM as much as I hate AOL, mostly because AIM is free. That being said, I have nothing very negative to say about AIM mail, surprisingly. Nothing very positive either, but nothing very negative. The AIM mail is a new service that grew out of the netscape.net mail service, and since I got it for free as an AIM member, I decided to check it out. It’s a barebones email system to me. It has very good storage (2 GBs) and all the basics you’d need for emailing, but nothing more. I am not a “perks” kind of guy; I daresay that I find all them “bells and whistles” that people use in their email and Imming these days very annoying, but the austerity of AIM mail is pretty amazing. If all you’re looking for is a free email client, you could do worse than AIM but you could also do a lot better. If you have an AIM ID, then you automatically have an AIM email account and I guess you can do what I do; use it for various email forums that you find kinda interesting but don’t have the time to read on a regular basis. Or, you could use it to give to girls you don’t really want to talk to :p everyone needs a valid decoy email, hahaha.

2:Yahoo Mail
Yahoo is the best all-rounder of the lot. A Yahoo ID can be used with the best IM client around, its features of movies, weather, personals, sports, profiles, etc. is better than MSN’s in almost all aspects to me (the only thing that MSN has over Yahoo is the blog/spaces feature), it’s a lot easier to meet new people on yahoo than it is on MSN, and best of all, its email client stomps the heck out of hotmail. I don’t know why I didn’t make my yahoo account my primary account from back in the day, I guess because I didn’t get the username I wanted and the differences were not as vast between Yahoo and MSN back then…as it is, the current Yahoo email has 1 GB of free storage, decent enough spam control, a pretty intuitive and clear layout and is very robust and can fit everyone from the internet novice to the savvy gaming pro. It has a lot of bells and whistles too, unfortunately, but I prefer their default smiley package over MSN’s. If you’re just beginning your internet experience and you want to get an email that helps you to be a part of a community and not just something that picks up mail, then Yahoo is definitely your choice. However, it doesn’t get the top pick for me…

1: Gmail from Google.
All hail Google, who shall one day become the all-encompassing rulers of planet Googleia. This internet company has a gift of making existing things better, and email is no different. I was trying for the longest time to get a gmail account, since you have to be invited by someone to get one. It took me a while, but I finally got one through a friend in Indonesia (of all places). About a month after I got that invitation, Google finally deigned to send me an invitation about a year after I signed up for updates. Sheesh…

Anyways, Gmail completely changed the way I think about email. I had initially created a new yahoo ID to migrate from hotmail, but after I played around with gmail, I migrated there instead and I’ve never looked back. Free storage space of more than 2.7 Gbs and growing? A clear and easy user interface? A convenient way to check if you have mail without having to open the client? All of these things are present, but the feature I find most attractive is how they treat email conversations as, well, conversations! In regular emails, your messages come to you in sequential order so if you email someone and they email you back, you just get their message in your box and it’s presented in the order it was received. In Gmail, all email conversations based on the same topic where you’re just replying back and forth are grouped together so you don’t have to dig through anything to figure out who said what in response to whom. It’s all there for you to look at whenever you want! It’s easier seen than explained, so take a look at it when you get a chance. Granted, it is not an all-rounder like Yahoo; while you have the new Googletalk, I think that’s come a bit too late to make a dent in the IM market and I don’t really see Google as a community-based service like Yahoo. However, for pure email services with innovative solutions and great settings, Gmail gets my vote as the best free email service on the web.

One last thing: Any issues about privacy and ads in Google are overblown, I think. The ads that Google uses are text-based and not in-your-face like MSN and Yahoo ads are. Besides, it’s interesting to see the links that come up if you email your friend about some weird random thing like “why do we park in driveways and drive in parkways?”

So, if you want a great email service, pick Gmail or Yahoo. Use AIM if you already have an AIM ID and want an email for various purposes, and only use hotmail if you need to get an MSN passport.