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  • Date: Thursday, December 11, 2008 Time: 8:00 am Category: Email, The Internet Tagged Email, gmail, hotmail, web-based email, yahoomail Discussion: 2 Comments

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Even if younger generations are using it less, we all use email.  It still serves a purpose in our 21st Century lives.  Our professional lives depend on it.  In the early days of the Internet/WWW, having multiple email addresses was uncommon. Many of us were given email at our place of employment, so our work email address quickly became our main point of contact for everyone, work and personal relationships both.  Others may have started out by signing up with AOL or used the free email address included with their Internet service account.

I don’t have to tell you that web has changed a lot over the years and email’s role in it is no exception.  Web-based email has become the de-facto standard in email delivery and with good reason.  Here are several reasons why you should be using web-based email if you aren’t already.

1. Permanence – So what happened when you had to change ISPs or switched jobs?  All the sudden you had to tell everyone you had a different email address and they’d need to update their address books.  Annoying huh?  Your web-based email account is you wherever you go or rather you go wherever you want, it just waits for you.    That is not to say that you won’t ever change your address again, it just makes it far easier to extricate yourself from a bad ISP or switch jobs without the headache of updating your email address as well.Web-based email also makes archiving and searching for old email easier than storing it locally.
2. Protecting your privacy – Do you really want your personal shopping habits or financial information to be subject to review by your employer?  Email privacy is not a right that extends to employer sponsored email accounts.  Additionally, if you work for a public institution (such as WVU) your email is subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.
3. Access – Why be tied down to one computer for all of your email?  For those of you still using a POP email client to access your email, you’re really missing out on a much more convienent way to manage your inbox.  Just log on to the web and send all the email you want.
4. Features – There are some great features in many web-based email programs that most people never use – like the Send As feature in Gmail.  I can send email AS any of my email addresses (and I have a bunch) from a single account.  In other words, I can tell Gmail to change the “From” line in any email I send to be from any of my email accounts.  You have to verify that you own the account, but this is a  handy feature.  Occasionally, I’ll need to send something from my work email address, but don’t have time to access GroupWise.  I compose my email and tell it to “Send As” my @mail.wvu.edu email and that way replies are sent to that address instead of my Gmail account.
5. Spam protection – In this area it really just makes sense to let the bigger companies manage the headache of spam filtering.  Why?  Because they do it best.  How much spam do I get in Gmail?  A lot, but it all goes directly to my spam folder very little, if any makes it to my inbox.  I never look at it unless I want to.  It is almost always right in figuring out what is spam and what is not.  Occasionally I’ll get a piece or two but if that is all I have to worry about, no problem.  YahooMail has good spam filtering as well, but I’m not sure if it is as good as Gmail’s. (YahooMail users: feel free to chime in here.)  Anyway – my point is that web-based email providers generally have great resources and methods of dealing with spam.
6. Virus Protection – If it even makes it past the virus protection on the web-based email provider’s system, unless you click on that virus that someone emailed to you, it won’t be downloaded to your computer.  It’ll just sit on their server until you delete it.  You still have to practice diligence in determining what attachments are legitimate, but at least you won’t have to worry that the files are now on your system.

So, OK, there are plenty of reasons to use web-based email.  What, you may ask, are the web-based email options out there?

The major players are GMail, YahooMail, Hotmail, AOL.

Some other web-based email websites are GMX, Lycos, Zenbe, MobileMe, Inbox.com, Mail2Web, Mail.com, FastMail.FM, and many many more.

What should one look for in a good web-based email service?

• Price (most are free)
• Storage space (2-5GB is average, though this will probably just increase as time goes on.  None of these services want to lose users.)
• Ease of use (no point in using it if it is complicated)
• Features (Does it integrate with calendars?  Can you send mail as another account?  Can you download to a POP mail client? etc.)
• Privacy Policy
• Spam Control (Probably the most important.  How good are they at keeping out the spam?)

What makes one preferable to another? I think this comes down to personal preference.  I, personally, prefer Gmail, but I know other people who are just as taken with YahooMail.  It really just depends on what about it appeals to you.  I’d say a good common sense assessment of the service is if it does something you don’t like or doesn’t do something you need, keep shopping.  If you are content, stay put. 

Here are some other articles/lists on this topic:

• Top 17 Free Email Services
• 75+ Email Services That Aren’t Gmail
• Web Email Reviews
• Find the Best Free Email Accounts
• Free Web-Based Email Services