Which Webmail Service Is Best for Me?

Email has come to be an intrinsic part of everyday life. Most email users have used a free webmail service at least once. There are a lot of free webmail providers out there, and new ones appear every day. However, not all of them offer the same features. Just because your neighbor Bob uses Yahoo, for example, doesn’t mean Yahoo is necessarily the right service for you. Making a decision based on your specific needs is important when choosing a free webmail provider.

A lot of people stay with the same service out of habit—even if that service doesn't provide all the features they need—because they're afraid of learning a new email system. Change can be hard, but remember: there's no risk with a free email account. You can create one and, if you don’t like it, you can close it out or just ignore it altogether. This is great news, because you can try several accounts and see which is the best to fit your needs.

Email is more than just sending and receiving. Most of the top free webmail providers provide security, threaded message conversation, spam filters, virus scanners, chat and more, rivaling paid services. So let’s look at some of the features of the top three free webmail services to help you narrow your search or maybe even pursued you to try something new.

Gmail

Pros: Gmail is the free webmail service operated by Google, one of the largest computer companies in the world. Over the past few years, it’s grown into one of the most popular email services out there.

- One of the best anti-spam filter services on the market.
- IMAP and POP3 access (you can learn about IMAP and POP3 from reading this post) and easy mail filter setup.
- The mail service ties directly into other Google services like chat, video chat (called “hangouts”), calendars, documents and cloud storage, allowing you to easily share calendars and documents with others.
- 5GB of cloud storage.
- Great mobile application that makes it easy to interface from your mobile device.
- Good virus scanner.
- Stacks and organizes conversations into threads so you can reference and find things easily.
- Provides the best mail support available for a free service.

Cons:

- Only offers 10GB of inbox storage, which can be limiting depending the size of the files you regularly email.
- Maximum attachment size: 20MB.
- Does not support secure, encrypted mail.
- Allows advertising to appear beside your mail feed.
- Does’t have the best message sorting techniques.
- Doesn’t integrate with social media feeds (Facebook, Twitter, etc.).
- Doesn’t offer aliases (secondary email addresses that you can use if you don’t necessarily want to use your main email account; for example, I use an alias address for online shopping).

Outlook

Outlook is the free webmail service formerly known as Hotmail. It’s operated by Microsoft Office, another PC giant.

Pros:

- A nice web interface.
- A good spam filter.
- A good-looking mobile app.
- POP access.
- 7GB of cloud storage.
- Unlimited inbox storage.
- Maximum attachment size: 300 MB.
- Microsoft’s OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) allows you to share photos and documents.
- Integrates with your social media: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Offers chat services.
- A virus scanner.
- Decent mail support.

Cons:

- Lacks IMAP access.
- No saved searches.
- No video chat.
- Displays advertisements next to emails.
- Transferring email into Outlook can be slow.
- Delivery and receiving speed is slower.
- Calendars are not as user friendly.
- The mobile app doesn’t have the web app’s spam filter.
- Notepad is rudimentary compared to the more robust Google Docs.

Yahoo

Yahoo mail has been around since the inception of email, and remains one of the most popular email services.

Pros:

- Very user friendly.
- Unlimited inbox storage.
- POP access.
- Excellent mobile app.
- Well-integrated chat, SMS texting, and social media features.
- Allows aliases.
- Offers virus scanning.

Cons:

- Security is not as good as Gmail or Outlook.
- Spam filter could be better.
- No cloud storage.
- Maximum attachment size: 10MB.
- No conversation view.
- Calendar isn’t very user friendly.
- No documents services.
- Doesn’t offer support other than answering frequently asked questions (and it isn’t great).
- Advertisements really slow down the service.

This was just a quick introduction to the top three free webmail providers. If you are looking for a webmail service, hopefully this information will help you in your decision. If you use any of these services, or if you use another we didn't list, we'd love to hear about your experience! Leave us a comment below.