I looked last week at some more common questions I get from my readers. I will continue on that this week, and also next week. Last week it was browser questions. Today we will think about email and to be specific, free email.
There are some very popular email providers out there
which you may have heard of. When researching email providers, I found many lists which gave various top five lists. However, one was always number one; Gmail.com. The next four were usually in the top five places and are alphabetically here: AOL.com, iCloud.com (Apple), Outlook.com, and Yahoo.com.
Being a Google fan, I also put Gmail.com as number one. I must confess that I have an email in each of the others too; however, I rarely use them. I only use them occasionally when I investigate a question someone asks me about them.
My second choice would coincide with others since Outlook.com would be my number two. They are both similar; both are web-based, provide documents, spreadsheets, presentation apps, and more. In my opinion Gmail is a much easier email account to use, set up, and has many other applications you can use in coordination with your Gmail. Note that if you have either an old Hotmail.com or Live.com account, they are both Outlook now, so you can easily continue to use them at Outlook.com. Today new users to Outlook.com can only get an “@outlook.com” address.
The others in the list are, in my opinion, very basic email accounts which offer a few extras like news, sports, searches, etc. Now, iCloud.com is an Apple product and is very useful with your iPhone and does a few more things better than the others. But it is all specifically related to the iPhone.
Do not be concerned with spam or security as they are all pretty good in those two areas. Also, do not be confused between Outlook.com and Outlook the client. The “.com” is your actual email address. The client is the Outlook program, which is part of Microsoft Office. It allows you to use email of any email provider. I use Outlook for my work email account, website specific emails, Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, etc. all in one convenient location.
Keep in mind that even though this is about free email providers/accounts, you can pay for the top two at least. Gmail’s paid version is G-Suite, and Outlook.com is Microsoft Office. They both give you an enormous increase in proficiencies. They may cost more than you are interested in paying for. The paid versions are likely to provide more capabilities than a regular user needs.
All of that being said, they all are fine email providers and do many of the same things with email. But for all the extras available, I highly recommend either Gmail.com or Outlook.com.
One last thought. I am against using an email provider that you get with another company. Say you get your internet service provided by the XYZ Company. They will give you a “free” email address of rondoyle@xyzco.com when you open your account. Nice, but when you decide not to use them any longer, you lose your email address. Also, as we have seen in recent years, they are bought by some other company and try to get rid of your old address. You know the one you have all your bills, friends, and business information linked to. That could be an, “Oops!”
