Email account recommendations -
 

Does anyone have any recommendations for email account providers? I am looking for one "freebie" (yahoo, hotmail, etc) and possibly one that I would be willing to pay for if it seemed worth it (allowing for superior folder capabilities, saving capacity,etc)

I can USE email, but that is about the extent of my technie knowledge, so remember to be kind to us old folk in your response :D

I use GMail almost exclusively. It's slick, fast and very well designed. You can either use it as Webmail (like Hotmail) or you can use a mail client like Eudora to download your mail to your own machine.

gmail.com -- if you have trouble getting an account let me know and I'll send you an invite.

I personally have used hotmail and gmail (google's email program). I enjoy google, and it's easy to use, even on mobile web (cell, pda/blackberry). Its completely free, and as of this moment, you get ~6.5 GB space (it's constantly going up), which is pretty massive. The chat function is pretty cool, and your chats get saved with your mail. As for the mail itself:

Instead of folders, gmail uses "Labels," which are added to a particular message. You can add more than 1 label to a message if you want, color code the labels (to make them easier to spot), and easily add or remove the labels.

Gmail uses google's search function to search your email, which for some reason doesn't appear to be as effective as regular google, which is the only flaw I've found with it, although most of the time it works.

Gmail's spam trap is usually pretty good at picking up spam without being too overreaching.

If you need an internet calendar, Google Calendar can email you your calendar and reminders daily, and also offers an "add this to your calendar" function, which can be found in emails with a meeting time and place listed.

Lastly, Gmail's conversation function makes your inbox a lot less cluttered. It groups together replies and messages from the same concept, into one heading in your inbox. For example, you get a confirmation from your airline. You forward it to me, I respond. This shows up as 1 conversation, taking up one line in your inbox.

Hope this helps

sammy0623 has outlined gmail's strong points better than I ever will.
I will just endorse her (his?) post, and point you towards gmail, too.
It's a good idea to have a disposable address (for newsletters, website registrations etc) on top of your normal one. For that purpose, I use mail.gr. Free to use and easy to remember...

Yes definitely Gmail. Ample space, quick and superb spam protection.

Are you specifically looking for a webmail account - i.e., do you need to access mail regularly from machines other than your own?

For speed, flexibility, and versability I would always use a mail client on my own machine rather than webmail, and as a provider I would use someone that does not impose spam filtering on customers but that allows customers to choose. (If you allow your ISP to do your spam filtering for you then you can guarantee that a significant proportion of genuine mail will never reach you).

I like gmail, I like yahoo, I do NOT like hotmail.

I prefer yahoo's folder feature to gmail's label feature (I'm not sure why, since I use them the same way), but as you can assign multiple labels to a single message, it is actually more flexible.

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gmail

You won't need anything else.

I agree; Gmail.

But to make it better, check out Google Apps; it's Gmail but with your own domain name. Best of all, it's FREE, except for the price of the domain name, which is around $10 a year.

I have both of the above. Either is a fine option. No other free email provider comes close to Gmail.

Hosted Gmail (part of Google Apps) is a better choice if you want to share email/calendar/documents with family members/friends, but you need to have someone with a bit of technical savvy set it up.

I have yahoo and gmail. I use Thunderbird as an email client for my gmail.

What I don't like about gmail is threading email. I can never figure out what I've read. Some folks do like it, though. With Thunderbird, I have each email separately.

I have gmail on my Treo and it works well.

xxxxx

The beauty of gmail is you can leave your mail on the server - so you get the separated emails in Thunderbird/Eudora/Outlook/Outlook Express AND you can leave messages on the mail server for when you're travelling.

Gmail + Google Apps www.google.com/a is great, however you will need a tech savvy friend to set it up.

Actually, Google for Domains has become much easier in the past year. If you don't have a domain (yet), you can buy one from them, and they'll set it up for you. And if you host with Godaddy, you can do a one-click setup of the configuration on your domain.

Yahoo works fine for me...
 

Been using Yahoo for about 7 years now... for the past three that includes a professional consulting domain version as well as the "personal" address. I'm still using the "classic" version from inertia as much as anything else.

Spam filter works quite well... seldom grabs a real email (althought it always pays to check) and almost never allows a spam offer through to the regular mail. Search feature is a charm... and I like traditional folders to store things in.

Interested in the Google alternative, more from using google docs than anything else, but not really a reason to change everything over.

A new eeePC just arrived today... one of my first uses will be checking to see how the Yahoo email looks on the 7" screen. And from there to an impending smart phone in the next couple of weeks with Yahoo2Go.

I like the way Yahoo mail organizes its webmail. But the big reason I migrated to Gmail from the domain + hosting pro version of Yahoo is that Yahoo's spam filter was snagging too much ham and not as much spam as Yahoo's. Incredibly, Yahoo's spam filter actually believes the date of forward-dated spam mail. This meant I would have to wade through pages and pages of email dated from the year 2038 before I could get to the correctly-dated portion of the mailbox to find the ham that was snagged by the filter!

For $10 + $25 per year, IMO the Yahoo Pro product is inferior to free Gmail.

The only downside to Gmail is the damned "on behalf of " messages.

I use the google Apps version of so I can send emails from my primary domain. However, with multiple domains, its critical for me to be able to email from any of those domains. Gmail causes outlook clients to receive "On Behalf of " before my email address when I'm sending from emails other than my primary domain. Even though I have those domains also going through Google's servers.

Its a huge pain. Yahoo plus is better in that regard. Although, I really really prefer Gmail though.

Been using yahoo mail about a decade now and gmail about four years. I do prefer the interface and ease of yahoo mail, and the way the system works. I don't like the threaded view of Gmail and the lack of true folders.

The other thing I really don't like about gmail (and i DO use about five accounts now) is that when accessing from clients, if I want the email OFF the client, phone or outlook it deletes the mail completly from the gmail. I wish I could just get delete WITHOUT deleting. Although, sometimes I DO like to delete and have it delete. It isn't that big a deal, but I have to constantly LEAVE messages on my phone that I don't want on the phone, but DO want to save in gmail.

i initially had hotmail then yahoo... and now, im sticking to gmail... it gives u more space and so far, havent received any spam mails.

I would think if you just set it up in outlook as either a POP/IMAP email account with it's own SMTP account for sending email, it wouldn't do that. I suppose I could be wrong.

Anyway, t-bird and other email clients don't do that. I'm pretty sure outlook is capable of dealing properly with multiple email accounts if you set it up correctly. I confess, I've only used outlook (in any form) rarely.

-David

It's not deleting the email on gmail unless you have gmail configured that way. It saves everything except things in the trash/junk folder. It does remove them from your inbox though when you delete them on the client when using IMAP. You can configure the client to use the POP server and do it either way.

-David

What device do you use ?

When I delete with my BlackBerry it asks deleting on handheld, account or both... pretty convenient !

I'm not talking about me using Outlook to send via Gmail. I'm talking about my recipients getting my emails. If the recipient happens to be using a recent version of outlook, then he gets the "on behalf of " message... this is when I'm using the Gmail web interface to send as Gmail is meant to be used.

It sounds to me like you have multiple domains in a single Apps account setup, and you're choosing to send using different accounts, which results in the 'on behalf of' bit for any send domain other than your primary, right? If so, this is apparently a known issue with Google Apps. If you have multiple aliases in your primary domain it works normally, but using different domains causes the 'on behalf of' bit. Sorry it doesn't work for you.

The thing to remember here is that Gmail is following the RFC specs for email messages.

There is a "Sender" field that has to be populated if you are not sending the email from the email in the "From" field.

I too find it annoying but that is how it is supposed to actually work.

I think that this is subject to interpretation. If I am the owner of two different domains and choose to send from both of them then there is no reason that the from and sender addresses need to be different, especially if inbound email replies all end up in the same mailbox.

Exactly, you got it spot on.

All my domains run through my main domain's Google apps account. They are set up as validated Aliases who's MX headers point to google servers. I own these domains, can recieve email (via google's servers) at these domains etc, there is no reason in this case for the sender to be the primary mailbox.

I understand why they do it in the case of regular Gmail, but in the case where the MX records for all the domains are hosted with Gmail, its silly.