Review of the Top Five Email Providers

Comparison of Top 5 Email Services

 

	Gmail	AOL/AIM Mail	Yahoo Mail	Widows Live/Hotmail	GMX Mail
Storage	7.5 GB and Increasing	Unlimited	Unlimited	5 GB	Unlimited
Attachment Size Max	25 MB	25 MB	25MB	25 MB	50 MB
Protocols	POP3, IMAP	POP, IMAP	IMAP, SMTP, POP3 in Plus Version	POP3, Microsoft Exchange	POP3, IMAP
IM Integration	Google Talk	AIM	Yahoo Messenger	Windows Live Messenger	No
Browsers Supported for Internet Access	All	All	All	All	All

 

Overview Of Email Providers 

The world has long since got past the point when people expected to pay for e-mail. Today, providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft's Hotmail and Live services and AOL all offer free e-mail to anybody willing to sign up. Most of these services also offer you the option of using a POP3 service or an IMAP service to access your e-mail. They have varying degrees of service among them, however, and some users may prefer one over the other for various reasons.

 

Gmail

 

Gmail is Google's foray into the e-mail world. Google e-mail is a powerful product, indeed. It comes with 7.5 GB of free storage at present. The storage limit is gradually being increased, as well. Attachments can be up to 25 MB in size. Gmail is one of the most versatile of the free e-mail services out there. Gmail supports IMAP, POP, Microsoft Exchange and HTTPs connectivity, making it suitable for serious business users. There is also a paid version that users can sign up for to get more storage. Gmail's most notable feature is the way that e-mail messages are arranged into conversations rather than being in the traditional message by message format seen on other services.

 

AOL/AIM Mail

 

AOL is one of the most well known Internet brand names in the world. Since dial-up connectivity has largely gone by the wayside, and telephone and cable companies have provided ISP service, AOL has also been a company that hasn't had much of a role in the newest offerings the Internet has available. AOL has an excellent free e-mail service, however, that offers slightly more storage than Google's, at least for now. AOL e-mail comes with unlimited e-mail storage. It also supports numerous different browsers and supports both IMAP and POP3 access. One of the complaints frequently leveled at AOL e-mail is that it doesn't do quite as good a job of filtering out spam as does Google.

 

Yahoo!

 

Since 1997, Yahoo has been offering people free Internet e-mail. The company also offers a paid version of their e-mail service. Yahoo e-mail comes with unlimited storage and with a 25 MB file attachment size limit. If you use the free version of Yahoo e-mail, you will have to put up with advertisements. Of course, this is the case with just about every other type of free e-mail service, as well. Yahoo e-mail supports POP3 access, but only in its paid version. Its IMAP version supports all of the major browsers on the market.

 

Hotmail/Windows Live

 

Windows live and Hotmail have been bundled into the same product. Hotmail used to be notorious for being practically a honeypot for spammers. Microsoft has put a great deal of work into improving the spam filtering functionality of this e-mail service and it shows. Windows Live supports all of the major browsers on the market. It also supports POP3 and Microsoft Exchange access. This makes it one of the better choices for businesses that need e-mail.

 

GMX Mail

 

GMX Mail provides 5 GB of storage. One of the real advantages of this e-mail service is that it provides up to 50 MB of message size allocation. This makes it an ideal choice for those who work in fields such as graphic design or photo editing. It also functions as a meta-e-mail account in that it can get e-mail from your other services. It can, for example, pull e-mails out of your Yahoo Mail service and your Windows Live account, making it perfect for those who want a service that will allow them to consolidate a large number of services that they were formerly using.

 

Overall Picture

 

Any free e-mail service is going to be bombarded with spam. How well your e-mail service works for you will depend upon how well it filters out that spam. Gmail and Yahoo both have good reputations for getting rid of spam. Windows Live and AIM Mail both represent significant strides forward for their respective companies in controlling the amount of spam you'll get on their e-mail accounts.

 

Some e-mail accounts are more likely to be found in an e-mail lookup than others are. Free e-mail accounts are oftentimes addresses that people are more willing to share than are the old paid e-mail accounts that they got from their ISPs. Where e-mail searches and lookups are concerned, however, you want to make certain that you are not dealing with a dummy address. For a while, it was very easy for spammers to append @Hotmail.com or @aol.com to just about any name to make a phony e-mail address and to artificially fill up their e-mail lookup services. Today, you're more likely to find genuine addresses in e-mail lookup services than you were in the past.

 

Remember that some of these free e-mail services are integrated with instant messenger services, as well. For example, Gmail functions with the Google Talk messenger. AIM Mail, not surprisingly, is integrated with the AIM service. The same holds true of Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live and Windows Messenger. This integration makes it possible to use free e-mail accounts as business accounts. Because these messengers can be installed on any smart phone, it's possible to make certain that you are aware of any new e-mails you get whenever you get them no matter where you are.

 

Free e-mail from Gmail, Yahoo e-mail, Hotmail, MSN or any other service can be a great business tool for anybody. Increasingly, they are becoming more powerful.