Webmail Reviews

For this update, we found the best comparative reviews of webmail providers -- such as Yahoo! Mail, Windows Live Hotmail and Gmail -- at About.com, Tech Crunch and Which? magazine (the UK's equivalent of Consumer Reports). All three of these articles compare these free e-mail services for usability, interface design, security and features.

Overall, we found the roundup at About.com to be most useful. Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com's Guide to Email has the most up-to-date information and critique. (Note: ConsumerSearch and About.com are owned by the same parent company, The New York Times.) Though some details have changed since they were published, the reports at Tech Crunch and Which? are still largely valid, and both provide useful insights. PC Magazine's reporting has a serious flaw as it does not include recent detailed discussion of GMail, but is otherwise an excellent resource. Consumer Reports has not yet covered webmail services.

One problem that faces even the most nimble reviewer is that the major providers -- and smaller ones, as well -- are in a constant battle for market share. That means that any change in features by one is usually matched very quickly by all the other players. For example, Windows Live Hotmail bumped its storage limit up to 5 GB in the past year. Shortly thereafter, Yahoo! Mail countered with unlimited storage, and Gmail bumped its limit to 5.7 GB plus 1,500 bytes added every second. Since all three services offer more storage than most people will need, storage limits are no longer a good way to evaluate webmail services.

Gmail and Yahoo! Mail easily top other services, according to reviewers. Windows Live Hotmail, (rebranded to end confusion over Hotmail and Windows Live accounts), gets good reviews, but critics say it lags behind in POP and IMAP access, as well as in organizational tools. The biggest mover over the last year is AOL's AIM Mail, which impresses reviewers by closing the gap with Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. However, cumbersome setup and sign-in problems forced CNet.com to downgrade AIM Mail and recommend it only for devoted AOL users.

Of course, getting free webmail means dealing with the advertising that comes hand-in-hand with it. For some reviewers, that's a big deal. For example, Gmail electronically scans e-mails and runs Google ads alongside them, something that appears to really bother the reviewers at Which?, helping to send Gmail to a distant fourth-place finish in its rankings. CNet.com hits AOL Mail for poor ad placement in its layout. However, most other reviewers don't even delve into the issue of advertising.  ... Continued

Our Consensus Report shows how many times products are top-ranked by reviewers included in our
All The Reviews Reviewed chart.

Thanks to its speed and flexibility, Google's Gmail still tops Yahoo! Mail in most reviews. However, advertising-related issues give some critics and subscribers pause. Yahoo! Mail's interface might be more familiar to most users, making it easier to use. Many experts now agree that the two services are near equals in ease of use.