Free Webmail

Best free email services and low-cost upgrades

Among the most established webmail providers, Hotmail has the most users (estimated at 364 million), Yahoo! Mail has about 303 million, and Gmail has 170 million registered users, according to The Social Network Buzz. (Some websites dispute Hotmail's user number, noting that purchasing Microsoft Office automatically sets up an online account that many people decide not to use.) The most recent reviews often rank Gmail as the best webmail service. However, it's also clear from reviews that Yahoo! Mail users and Windows Live Hotmail users are very loyal to their preferred website service providers.

Although these three services are very different, reviews praise the way the Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail integrate calendars, instant messaging, news headlines, social media services, text messaging and more into their email programs.

Not surprisingly, reviews say the search function built into Google's Gmail is superb. As with most webmail, you can set up filters for incoming mail, but Gmail automatically organizes the inbox by connecting related messages into threads. This makes it easy to continue a conversation.

Gmail also earns kudos for unobtrusive text ads that appear above the inbox and with incoming email, not messages the user sends out. Other advantages are the free POP (Post Office Protocol) support that lets you download messages to an email client such as Outlook, Windows Mail or Apple Mail, plus IMAP (Internet message access protocol) support that synchronizes desktop or mobile device email clients with the webmail service. Gmail and Windows Live Hotmail also offer offline email, which automatically transfers recent emails to your computer so you can access them when not connected to the web. Offline Gmail also automatically syncs locally stored mail with mail kept on the server. Yahoo! Mail users can use offline emails only by purchasing Yahoo! Mail's paid webmail service, Yahoo! Mail Plus (Est. $20 per year).

An "unsend" feature, which holds the email for up to 30 seconds after you hit send -- giving you the chance to snatch something back you sent in error or in haste -- is available through Google Labs, a repository for experimental features. Registered users can sign up for Gmail Labs from their email account, thereafter, Labs reside under Settings.

After Gmail, we found the most current recommendations for Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. Both are available in free and paid versions, called, respectively, Windows Live Hotmail Plus (*Est. $20 per year) and Yahoo! Mail Plus. The paid versions offer more features than their free counterparts, and they eliminate advertising.

Like Gmail, the free version of Windows Live Hotmail also offers POP support, but to get this with Yahoo! Mail requires stepping up to the paid version. Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail do not offer IMAP support. AOL Mail does, but reviews say it lags behind the other major providers in features and performance.

Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail display graphic ads that reviewers say can be annoying. As noted earlier, you can get rid of advertising in the paid versions -- to a point. For example, while ads from other companies are eliminated in Windows Live Hotmail Plus, you do still receive the "benefit" of tips and product information from Microsoft. Yahoo! Mail Plus removes all ads, however.

Still, Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail offer some unusual advantages. Both offer preview panes, while Gmail just provides a short snippet. Yahoo! Mail is the only webmail provider to offer unlimited storage -- though reviews say this isn't a deal breaker for most users. (Gmail offers more than 7 GB and keeps increasing it; Windows Live Hotmail offers 5 GB in the free version, 10 GB in the paid version.)

More important, say reviewers, is that some people simply find the more familiar folder-style interface at Yahoo! Mail and Windows Live Hotmail easier to use. Gmail's interface is wonderful, experts say, but only after you get used to it.

Windows Live Hotmail offers more options for customizing the display than Yahoo! Mail. In addition to choosing colors (an option at all the major webmail providers), you can move the reading pane around. Reviews also praise the way this program makes it easy to move among different email accounts. If you have several accounts and like the other features at Windows Live -- Windows Messenger, for example -- reviews say this webmail is a fine choice. You can download messages to Outlook or Outlook Express even from the free version.

We found a few reviews of other webmail providers, like AOL, GMX and Lycos. But the features they offer are generally eclipsed by the three major webmail providers. AOL offers unlimited storage space, but most reviewers say the free storage space included in Gmail and Hotmail is ample for most users' needs; Yahoo! Mail also offers unlimited storage. Reviews say a number of ads are displayed in the AOL webmail, and it isn't possible to turn them off through an upgrade. GMX allows attachments up to 50 MB in some countries, but the organization functionality isn't as robust as with some other providers, say reviewers. Lycos Mail used to be free, but now charges users $19.95 a year to use the webmail service. None of the other email providers came out on top in any recent webmail reviews.