Recently I put up a poll on my blog asking readers about the most popular and best E-Mail service. No surprises here, 75% of the votes went to GMail and Yahoo second with 18% of the votes. Here I have done a comparison of top 5 web based free e-mail services.
- GMail: Gmail is Google’s answer to e-mail services and by far one of the best services so far. Gmail offers 3GB of storage space and increasing.
The attachment size supported by GMail is 20 MB. GMail supports POP access and it has an excellent spam filter. Messages can be arranged using the label feature. One thing missing in GMail is the option to create folders and arrange mails. Chat featureis also integrated with GMail. - YahooMail: Yahoo mail is one of the oldest mail services. Yahoo offers 1GB of storage space and Yahoo recently announced about Yahoo mail having unlimited storage space.
Yahoo Mail allows attachments upto 10MB. Yahoo Mail beta has a good Ajax based interface. It also allows arranging mails using the folder option.
- Windows Live Mail: Windows live mail, which was initially the Hotmail service, is currently in beta phase. Live mail offers 2GB storage space and also has an Ajax based interface with folder support.
Another feature of Windows Live mail is the theme support for mailbox, you can customize the mailbox with available themes. Live mail is available in 36 languages. - Inbox.com: Inbox offers access to your mails either through web or through POP access.
It offers 5GB of storage space for US, UK and Canada residents and 2GB for rest of the world. It allows you to send attachments upto 20MB. Inbox offers fast and functional mail service and the only disadvantage is that a credit card is required for verification, although they don’t charge any fee. Inbox has online storage space in-built within the e-mail. Inbox also has an Ajax based UI. - Lycos Mail: Lycos mail offers 3GB of storage space with an unlimited attachment size.
It also has an advanced spam filtering and protection. Only disadvantage is that it deletes accounts if there is no activity for 30 days or more.
Other prominent mail services are AOL mail (2GB storage) and Mail2World (offers unlimited storage).
If you know any other prominent mail services which offers good features, do share it in the comments.
Technorati tags: Email, Gmail, Yahoomail, Lycos, Inbox, Livemail
Gmail rocks, but i do use yahoo mail, becoz it is difficult to tell everybody that i have shifted to gmail
long live gmail. ive never heard of inbox.com but that 5gb of space is pretty impressive. Thanks for this post.
what about Rediff is it nowwhere…
@Ram,
I use Yahoo, Gmail and also Live mail.
@Alex,
Inbox is pretty good service, as I said you need a credit card to get it verified. They dont charge any money.
@Shashank,
Rediff is used only by Indians mostly, so it cant be there in top5. 🙂
Lycos Mail is still around! Had an account (but now defunct) with them about 9 years ago and I think it was a ‘@mailcity.com’.
I prefer gmail . Never knew Lycos mail offered unlimited attachment size
I use yahoo and gmail, i having unlimited storage for my yahoo mail now and is great that i can keep all my email without delete in my yahoo email account.
I truely hate the new y!m interface. Windows Live Hotmail has a good interface but ms didnt bother to make it opera compatible. And never used the other two.
Gmail is really great. Hope they add some skins and other stuff 😉
@Pallab,
Live mail is compatible with Opera, I have used it in my PC.
@Shankar,
It would be great if they add some skins to GMail. 🙂
zapak.com is also offering free mail service. But, its interface sucks. 😯
@RAM – If you don’t want to tell people, switch to GMail then let it use the Mail Fetcher feature to move things over. 🙂
Google has basically taken away any excuse to not use GMail!
I am surprise that Rediffmail is not the list. I thought it is quite popular in India.
@Veerasundar,
Zapak is not offering a good service. Although I reviewed it, most of the mails sent to the ID was bounced. We’ll have to see it when it comes out of beta stage.
@Kyle,
You are right. Gmail has provided in with all the features. 🙂
@Kuanhoong,
Rediffmail is a pretty good service, but its not popular outside India, I guess, that why didn’t include in the list.
never heard of lycos or inbox.com
but still gmail is the best.. and as far as i know, only gmail provides free pop access and even their web interface is gr8 🙂 and a 3gb is more than enough.. i doubt if anybody needs more than that…
well aol mail recently launched is also gud but interface is so slow.
I’m sticking with Yahoo older interface.. Seems no one is here for my support 🙂
Almost a decade back, when I started to get online, I used Yahoo and EudoraMail.
Then, once I shifted to GMail, I have not looked back. 🙂
@Deepak,
Inbox also has a great interface and also POP access.
@Abhishek,
Although I registered with AOL, never tried using it.
@Benedict,
I also use Yahoo, but not the old interface. 🙂
@Vyoma,
Yahoo was one of the best service a decade back. I still remember people saying I have a Yahoo ID. 😀
A very good comparison Nirmal. I also voted for Gmail.
I use only hotmail and sometimes gmail but never yahoo!
I use yahoo and gmail. Eventually I might switch everything to gmail, but I don’t really have a strong preference for either one. I don’t think gmail puts ads at the bottom, so I guess that’s something against yahoo.
I have to say that yahoo is really stepping up their game in the email department. Their newest feature integrating yahoo messenger into email is far more advanced then any other mail service.
I have not got my friend’s email her name Gayatri
Have anyone tried 30gigs.com they provide thirty gb space was not bad,tried it….may be nirmal can make a review 😉
I need a email account free-web-based that will allow me to send as many emails as possible per day to email my customers – which web based email account would be best out of the ones above??? ❓
@JPOLO,
You can try out Yahoo and Gmail.
I did and could not find out exactly how many emails I could send per day do you know or can you find out?
JPOLO,
I dont think there is any restriction on how many mails you can send per day.
Please add my free web mail service to your listing.
Thank you,
John Dumas
g-mail is the best
AOL is horribly SLOW for me and when composing email AOL freezes on me and I must wait minutes before the mail can be sent. I must look elsewhere because AOL is costing me time and money.