Your choice of 2013 ESP?

[jeffpan]

ESP = Email Service Provder

My points at different ESP:

#1 Gmail: almost perfect, it's clean, fast and secure. I have used it as primary account for many years. But, here the rubbish gov has been blocking it by GFW, most time we can't login into gmail (and other google services) unless using a SSH tunnel or VPN. So I forward all my messages to other email.

#2 Yahoo: I like the new yahoo interface. But sometime the webmail says the service is disconnected and no messages are displayed. so I may think Yahoo new mail is not stable at this time? And since yahoo has added the full https access, the secure is better than before. The drawback is it has no pop3/imap support for free account. Since gmail is blocked I most time have to use yahoo as an alternative.

#3 iCloud: it's not robust, sometime it can't login, but the main drawback is it lose messages silently when sending email. I have tested it to send a common message to different providers, all got lost. So I just use icloud as a backup mailbox since I am using the macbook.

#4 Outlook: Much better than the old hotmail, its antispam is pretty good IMO. But I don't have deep impression on it. Hotmail is slow, never matter the past or now, at least from here.

#5 Web.de: In fact this is a pretty solid service with good design and strong antispam, supports IMAP access for free. I have two web.de accounts, one for main usage for registration etc. You could be able to get an acct with a germany VPS or VPN. The drawback is it can have max 1500 messages only, and the storage is 512MB.

#6 Yandex: My personal domain email is hosted there, also from mail.yandex.com you can get a free account with english interface. Its IMAP is pretty good and fast. I think yandex's free email hosting is better than google apps and live domains. The drawback if I must say is, the first it is in Russian, the second its web interface is not as good as new yahoo or gmail (from my viewpoint).

#7 Zoho: I added this one because one of my biz domains has been hosting there. Zoho is great, except its account system, which make people confused. For example, when signing up a zoho email, you must bind another non-zoho email account, and this external email will be the main address displaying on the top of webmail, why? And, when creating an email account on your own domain, you have to create a zoho ID firstly, Google/Live don't require that. Zoho biz email can setup max three accounts only. But for a very small biz, zoho email is nice. It's fast, solid, works perfect on both PC and mobile.

#8 MyOpera: Powered by the new style of FastMail, very good user experience. I was thinking since there is Myopera, why people still want to buy a Fastmail account? they are almost the same (except the case Fastmail can setup user's own domain). I use Myopera email as a backup to fetch messages from some other accounts.

#9 AOL: I keep an old AOL email, it's maybe from 2003. AOL has improved a lot since the past, but on today, who uses AOL? I also t ried the new Aolalto, it's slow (from here) as well as AOL itself.

#10 Many other ccTLD emails: I have a dozens of ccTLD email accounts, including GMX.de, Arcor.de, Freenet.de, Orange.fr, Mail.ru, Virgilio.it, Rambler.ru etc. Most time I have the interest to try them (I like the different experience from the main ones), but would not use them for serious reasons.


As email fans what're your points in ESP 2013?

[drew]

I use yahoo.com almost exclusively now.
Keep Google/Gmail for the Android phone.

Yahoo works fast here in Sweden.
One reason for to stay on one provider
is that those one write to don't want to
change the addressbook. They keep writing
to the old email address months or years
after one changed.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by drew

I use yahoo.com almost exclusively now.
Keep Google/Gmail for the Android phone.

Yahoo works fast here in Sweden.
One reason for to stay on one provider
is that those one write to don't want to
change the addressbook. They keep writing
to the old email address months or years
after one changed.

That's really the truth. I have an old yahoo mail from year 2000, many people (mostly spammers) still send messages to it.

[B4its2L8]

Despite not having a lot of email traffic in my few accounts these days, I'm actually more anxious about security/customer support. I don't think I could use a service if I knew there was no way to get in touch with a real, live human being in the event I needed assistance of some sort – and esp. if I had a compromised account that I needed back. (For me, that leaves out the "big three": Gmail, Hotmail/Outlook, Yahoo.)

So, I opened a 'micro' Runbox account a few months ago. Peace of mind, knowing there are real people who will respond to needs & questions in short order.

I also have a free EuMX account, which I use for back-up. (Very good customer service there, too, though I kind of wish they would come out with their own custom interface. I'm not a big RC or Squirrelmail fan; I'm making do with OWM.)

I also have a MyOpera account and a Yandex account, the former for personal emails and the latter just something I'm playing with at this point. I'm surprised that a company as big as Yandex provides personal email responses to queries (usually in a few days).

[William9]

For a free email service, Gmail is #1 in my opinion. The web user interface is highly developed, functional, and a pleasure to use with a browser, plus its iOS email app is great. Free Yahoo! mail has those sleazy, obnoxious advertisements; and no POP or IMAP. Outlook.com is much better than Hotmail, and nearly as good as Gmail, but the UI and functionality are a notch below.

[ccl1]

gmail is terrible ever since they started to change all the crap to ugly, unintuitive icons and changing the interface for how the emails are laid out etc etc. i was a big fan of gmail up until about 2 years ago when they started to force all these 'improvements' down our throats.

yahoo is terrible b/c their spam filters just plain suck. i only use this for spam accounts b/c i cant trust yahoo for anything. also their 'new' look is rubbish. i cant stand to look at it for more than a couple minutes.

icloud on the web sucks b/c its like some kind of spartan, limited, phone ui. hardly any feature or options, settings, nothing. its like they stripped out as much as they could and only left a bare carcass of an email program.

outlook is ok. not a big fan of the design, but it could be worse. i'm not a big fan of windows 8 either so maybe that explains it. i could probably adapt to this if i had to.

web.de never tried it

yandex tried it but hated the yandex name so i only tried it for a few minutes.

[curvefan]

Originally Posted by ccl1

gmail is terrible ever since they started to change all the crap to ugly, unintuitive icons and changing the interface for how the emails are laid out etc etc. i was a big fan of gmail up until about 2 years ago when they started to force all these 'improvements' down our throats.

yahoo is terrible b/c their spam filters just plain suck. i only use this for spam accounts b/c i cant trust yahoo for anything. also their 'new' look is rubbish. i cant stand to look at it for more than a couple minutes.

icloud on the web sucks b/c its like some kind of spartan, limited, phone ui. hardly any feature or options, settings, nothing. its like they stripped out as much as they could and only left a bare carcass of an email program.

outlook is ok. not a big fan of the design, but it could be worse. i'm not a big fan of windows 8 either so maybe that explains it. i could probably adapt to this if i had to.

web.de never tried it

yandex tried it but hated the yandex name so i only tried it for a few minutes.

Is there a "choice" in there somewhere?

Not sure if you know this, but in gmail's settings area you can change those ugly icons back to text.

Lots of other settings in gmail to play around with as well.

As far as myself, I do like gmail/google apps free and I am starting to play around with polarismail and zoho a little more.

Both look promising even though I need to start eliminating some of my numerous email accounts.

Choices, choices.................

[Berenburger]

Because I went over (need to) to a Live account for my Windows 8 laptop and Windows phone, Outlook.com suits me the best. Outlook (mail, contacts, calender), Skydrive, OneNote, etc.; it all works perfectly together on these devices. I hate to leave FastMail, but I think the end is near......

[ccl1]

Originally Posted by curvefan

Is there a "choice" in there somewhere?

Not sure if you know this, but in gmail's settings area you can change those ugly icons back to text.

actually i did not know that. i thought they stripped all that out completely and didn't give people a choice anymore.
for the past several months i've been using a ff addon https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/fir...il-ad-remover/ that kind of puts back some of the text and does a bunch of other stuff in gmail.
edit: i found how to do it inside gmail. in the settings under 'button labels'

[Just Bill]

Outlook.com

Clean interface,IMAP, ActiveSync, reliable and excellent spam filtering, calendar and contacts sync. Not to mention the office apps and SkyDrive. Best of all, it's not Gmail.

[mike1977]

I like it where you can have a crazy, unique hard to guess login email address ONLY for logging in to the email account and never ever...EVER for anything else (besides official email from the email provider).

Gmail- any format can be used to login
Yahoo - profiles can be used to login
Mail.com - aliases can be used to login to the account

So Fastmail and Outlook.

[Tsunami]

Safe Mail miles ahead of any other service I've ever used.

The only downside is the limited storage, which is why I still use Gmail a lot too. But let's say I'm not a very big fan of the way Google generate their incomes.

Used to love Fastmail and I do like the new layout, however I'd love some final statement on the assumed takeover by Facebook. If that won't happen, I will continue using Fastmail as well as the service as it is now is clean, user friendly ... but I would like some final answer on the Facebook issue.

I still think about asking a Gift Account with EUMX too as the last year I heard nothing but praise about them. And Hungary for location, that doesn't sound too bad: rising IT industry, but in the safe environment (legally) of the EU.

I still hope for a correodecuba.cu account at some point, or to use a mailbox using the .kp, .as or .mu extention. But guess these are all out of reach for various reasons. I may give the new Outlook a try out of curiosity but then I doubt it adds anything new to Gmail or Yahoo, the basics are all quite similar.

All considered; Safe Mail remains nr 1 to me.

[popowich]

In response to a few of the earlier posts:

If you upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus you can enable email forwarding and can get support for the account.

As for Gmail, still my favorite, don't get why the haters hate it.

[jeffpan]

Originally Posted by popowich

In response to a few of the earlier posts:

If you upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus you can enable email forwarding and can get support for the account.

As for Gmail, still my favorite, don't get why the haters hate it.

Something due to the privacy IMO.

[silverthe1]

Originally Posted by popowich

In response to a few of the earlier posts:

If you upgrade to Yahoo Mail Plus you can enable email forwarding and can get support for the account.

As for Gmail, still my favorite, don't get why the haters hate it.

Apart from their invasion of one's privacy, I loathe gmail for its ridiculously pathetic web interface (the new redesigned one) which is a pain to look look at and work with. I'll be switching to outlook real soon. Google can kiss my a**