What of the popular disposable email hosts is the best?
Today, we have three major email hosting: Gmail, Hotmail/MSN/Live, and Yahoo. It seems that they are all pretty much the same, but in this article we will take a deeper look at their features.
To get started, let me say: My favorite email host is Gmail. By far, I have found it to be more reliable than Hotmail and easier to use than Yahoo.
When considering switching email hosts, register an account at your desired host and “mess around” with it. Write yourself a few emails. Ask yourself these questions:
1. Do you like the email composer? Does it have the text formatting features that you need/want?
2. Do you like how emails are presented to you in your Inbox?
3. Do you like how it organizes old emails?
4. Does it have the settings and ability to turn on features that you might like, and turn off those which you do not want?
5. Will it allow you to be productive? (This is why you send yourself emails)
Gmail:
Gmail has a relatively basic interface — almost like the email hosts you would have expected a long time ago — resulting in a very easy-to-use interface. The options and settings are fairly basic, and you are allowed to change your themes as well. Google Labs offers you to add many features to your Inbox, including an Attachment Reminder (one of my favorites), Offline Support, and Google Docs integration. Google also offers a few other things that integrate well into the Inbox, the most popular of these are: Google Calendar, Google Tasks, and Google Talk. The one thing that got me to switch to Gmail from using a premium MSN account was this direct integration and the easy interface.
Immediately, when compared to Yahoo and Hotmail/Live, you may notice a few things:
1. Gmail does not use folders, they use “labels” (which work just as well and integrate with IMAP without a problem)
2. Gmail does not allow you to do fancy javascript things like drag emails on top of a label to label it or on top of the trash can to delete. You check a box and then select the appropriate action.
3. It’s just a different feel altogether.
Gmail’s biggest feature that seems to attract a lot of people to it is it’s support for IMAP and POP3. IMAP also supports folders in Gmail (the folders act as labels).
Gmail also supports switching to the “older” version of Gmail, the “classic” view which is a feature only found in Gmail and Yahoo. This is great for dial-up users.
Hotmail/MSN/Live Mail:
Microsoft just can’t settle on a name for their services, it seems. When I recommend email clients, Hotmail tends to be my second recommendation. It is a very dynamic service, which may be harder for older people to get a hang of. This is also the case with Yahoo. We’ll refer to all of these names as just Hotmail (that’s probably what most people are familiar with, anyways).
Hotmail has only just re-introduced POP3 support for their clients for free in competition with Gmail. IMAP support has been said to soon be supported. Hotmail supports the ability to drag and drop emails into folders, and even right click (providing that your browser supports it).
The reason why I personally decided to leave MSN was this: They would not “fix” my account. There would be many times in which my Inbox would become inaccessible, and they could not offer me advanced technical support since my premium account had come through Verizon. I needed reliable access to my email as well as fast access. Waiting long periods of time for a login to complete was getting to be a pain.
Hotmail contains a descent Rich-Text editor, and a relatively easy-to-use Inbox interface and folder navigation. For the purpose of email, Hotmail works fine.
Yahoo
Yahoo and Hotmail are very much alike, this is of course due to the fact that for a long period of time Hotmail’s only competitor for email was Yahoo. Both had lost the web search battle to Google. Nearly every feature mentioned about Hotmail already is also in Yahoo, and they are very equal clients. Microsoft and Yahoo have recently been merging some of their services (such as messenger) and in the future it would not surprise me if the Inbox’ became identical — don’t hope on it though.
Over time, Yahoo has really changed quite a bit. One great feature about Yahoo is that you have the ability to switch back to “Classic” view of your Inbox which is great for dial-up users. “Classic” view is a more traditional email interface much like Gmail.
Yahoo does not support IMAP or POP3 for free, a big disadvantage to users who may be using their email in a professional environment where they do not have their own domain. There are programs that supposedly download these emails in the POP3 format for you, but the reliability through a third-party is questionable.
Conclusion:
Gmail seems to win. More and more people are using it, and it is climbing to the top of the chain of email clients. Gmail seems to take a lot of pride in their services, and continues to offer more and more for a very reasonable price–free.
This concludes our short reviews about Yahoo, Hotmail, and MSN. We hope that you found it helpful. Feel free to comment and write about your favourite client, be sure to include your email address and enable replies so you can here what others have to say.
