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Buying Guide: The Best Web-Based Email Services
Yes, you can send your pals a message in Facebook, and you can get to them more immediately with an SMS, iMessage, twitter DM, or instant message, but there are still plenty of usage cases that call for a good-old-fashioned email account. Just try signing up for any Web service without one. We scrutinized the five leading Web-based email services here. In descending order of U.S. popularity, they are: Yahoo Mail, Google Gmail, Hotmail (now in its new Outlook.com form), Aol Mail, and mail.com. In many ways, any of these will serve you well, but there are still noteworthy differences.
The webmail space has recently been shaken up with the introduction of Outlook.com, which offers the cleanest, fastest and yet feature-complete Web-based email service to date. The service is still technically in preview, but since July 31, the public has been able to create Outlook.com email addresses, and, as of August 15, over 10 million people had already done so.
Google's Gmail, in its eighth year of existence, has for a while been considered by many to be the cool email address to have, despite the search giant's scanning of all your email contents to serve you targeted ads and its busy, spreadsheet-like interface. What drove people to the new service were its at-the-time huge 1GB storage allowance, conversation view, and improved spam reduction. But despite its provenance from much maligned Microsoft, Outlook.com exceeds Gmail in pretty much every department—without the need for scanning your mail for ad targeting.
And Outlook.com isn't the only movement we're seeing in the Web-based email arena: old-timer Aol Mail (of "You've got mail!" fame) recently underwent a major overhaul, giving it a fresh, modern look and speedy operation. Though U.S. leader Yahoo Mail hasn't been majorly revamped in the last year, it's benefitted from several incremental enhancements, such as its cool, new Photos app, which lets you call up any photo you've sent or received over the whole life of your account.
With all these changes, it may well be time to re-evaluate your email provider. To guide you in this decision, and to get a deeper look at your options for Web-based email services, click through into the in-depth reviews below.
FEATURED IN THIS ROUNDUP
Aol Mail
Free.
The old-timer among email services gets a complete makeover in its latest incarnation. Its refreshed interface is now clean, clear and fun. As you'd expect from the maker of leading instant messaging service AIM, the email client offers on-page access to your chat buddies. You don't get as many inbox helpers and organizers as you do with Outlook.com, but you do get message preview—something you won't find in Gmail. On the downside, Aol Mail has the most distracting ads among the major webmail services.
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Gmail
Free
Gmail gained a large following thanks to its large storage allowance, fast operation, and low level of spam. It's fast, clean, and the recent redesign improves on its appearance. And there's the advantage of it's built-in IM and video calling feature. But Gmail still has bothersome interface quirks, lacks some useful tools found in competitors like Outlook.com, and privacy is an issue, so it won't appeal to everyone.
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Mail.com
Free. Premium: $19.95 per year
If you're looking for a vanity domain, such as @artlover.com, @usa.com, @bikerider.com, or dozens of other job and locale-related monikers, you'd be hard pressed to find a better webmail service than mail.com. And the site's interface is no slouch, either, with a preview panel and the ability to pull in inboxes from other services like those compared here. You will have to pay for a premium account, however, if you want to access your mail from another email client, and there's no built-in instant messaging.
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Outlook.com
Free
Though Hotmail has undergone numerous major updates, with some of the best inbox tools around, Outlook.com replaces it with a far cleaner interface, fast operation, and social network integration. Microsoft's new webmail service has the best inbox cleaning and organizing tools around, including a Sweep feature that deals with newsletters. You can also view photos and videos right in the inbox, and IM is built in and it even works with Facebook chat. POP and IMAP access are free, and you can create alias addresses for free.
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Yahoo Mail
Free. Pro: $19.95 per year
The largest email provider in the U.S. has only incrementally improved in the past year, though it did add one very cool new feature—a Photos app that lets you browse through all the images that you've sent or received during the entire life of your account. Yahoo's clean, still-fresh interface makes excellent use of tabs, and you get a preview pane. Built-in instant messaging lets you communicate with MSN/Windows Live Messenger as well as Yahoo's own Yahoo Instant Messenger, but not with AIM. "Apps" let you extend the interface, and though it's made inroads, the service still suffers from more spam than competitors.
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