|
Home »
EMail
»
EMail Providers
Summary: Free email services and accounts are convenient and ubiquitous. But free email services aren't the right place to keep your important information.
I've been receiving a lot of reports of problems with Microsoft's Hotmail free email service lately, and it really begs the question: are free email services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail worth the cost? My position: Yes. And: Absolutely Not. As always, it depends on your needs and your expectations. • You may be asking yourself, "What cost? Free email services are free, aren't they?" By now you should know there's no such thing as "free" - everything has a cost. It may not come out of your wallet each month, but there's definitely a cost. Here are some of the costs I associate with free email services:
In short, I would never recommend a free email service for anything that you consider important, or anything that you want to keep long term. Here's how to judge: if the email account went away completely tomorrow, along with all the mail and contact information it contains, would it be an inconvenience or a catastrophe? If the later, then you need to get away from your free account. Now. If your email is actually important to you, then spend a little each month to get a "real" email account from a regular ISP or mail service. Depending on the provider, each one of the 'costs' I list above will at least be diminished, if not eliminated. But I did say that free email services were also worth it, didn't I? In fact, I have a Hotmail account, and a Yahoo account, and a GMail account. Why? Free accounts are perfect when you don't really care what happens to them. They're great when you need to supply an email address to a company that you think may spam you later. Or if you need or want to remain anonymous or otherwise separate that email from your important stuff. Or for leaving as a contact address on a website that will probably get harvested for spam someday. In other words, free email accounts are perfect throw away accounts. If you get something important that you want to save on one of those accounts, just forward it to your real email account, and you're safer. But, for heaven's sake, don't use a free service for your primary and important email. You're just asking for trouble. PS: as a side note, the problems I'm hearing about today all involve HotMail. My opinion stands for other free services like Yahoo mail - I get tons of spam on my Yahoo account. Today they seem more reliable, but I expect they'll have their own set of technical issues from time to time. Google's GMail service is not yet released - it's in beta - so it remains to be seen exactly how reliable or problematic it turns out to be. As you can imagine, I'm somewhat skeptical, and expect that it will fall into the same traps as Yahoo and Hotmail. Related:
Article 478 | Posted November 8, 2004 |
Popular & Hot How do I make a new MSN Hotmail account? How do I delete history items from my Google tool bar? My desktop Recycle Bin has disappeared - why, and how do I get it back? How do I delete my Hotmail account? I accidentally deleted my Recycle Bin in Vista - how do I get it back? New & Important How can I get the old Windows Live Hotmail back? Internet Safety: How do I keep my computer safe on the internet? Are free email services worth it? Would you please recover my password? My account has been hacked or I've forgotten it.
Stay Informed Archives Advertisers |
||
•
when my laptop boot i get this message c:window\system32\ne0ks.exe. how do i remove this error from my laptop . i am using windows home edition
Posted by: oduro at February 8, 2008 2:14 AMI hope this article was written in 2005. I have used free google apps to provide email to a very large company. I havent experienced any problems servicing my many users. As far as spam, please learn about SPF and open relay servers. I cant justify the cost of Microsoft exchange for the very extra value my users experience. This perceived value will only dissapear as google and yahoo make Office and Exchange obsolete in the next 5 years.
Posted by: Matt at February 11, 2008 10:34 PMI had never really made a decision about having a reliable email. When Yahoo made the Space available to store lots of contact information, I went for it. I thought now I can throw away every hard copy and access my contact information from anywhere in the world. Then one day all of my contacts with email and snail mail addresses and phone numbers and private information disappeared suddenly from Yahoo. Even the categories became blank. Boy, how I wished I had thought about a more reliable email service then and done something about it sooner.
Posted by: OLIVIA HILL at April 5, 2008 11:25 PMI am using hotmail because my service provider account had NO spam filter, and contrary to other reports, got more spam on that account than on yahoo or hotmail, which provided methods for handling junk.I would like to use my nac.net account since we pay for it but it is too difficult. How can I find a dial-up server in my area code?
Posted by: Aileen at April 26, 2008 11:21 AMEven if you keep your email for your friends only, there is still risk of the replicas and viagra sellers to get your email, don't be fooled by false security given by paid account, anyone who you give your email, however trustable he/she is may leak your email even without their knowledge. Their computer may be infected with an email harvesting spyware (especially for those who use Outlook or any other mail program). Once your email is registered to a spammer, it stays, and spammer have the tendency to share email list.
Posted by: Lie at June 19, 2008 7:20 AMEven if you keep your email for your friends only, there is still risk of the replicas and viagra sellers to get your email, don't be fooled by false security given by paid account, anyone who you give your email, however trustable he/she is may leak your email even without their knowledge. Their computer may be infected with an email harvesting spyware (especially for those who use Outlook or any other mail program). Once your email is registered to a spammer, it stays, and spammer have the tendency to share email list
Posted by: lovin thomas at July 31, 2008 5:45 AMI'd also never recommend to use an email address for which you pay a _monthly_ (or yearly, for that matter) fee. And I'd take Gmail off the non-recommended emails list as explained below.
While your comments are valid the thing is that in by 2008 people should understand that email _address_ doesn't really cost anything to provide.
But your identity does. It's awfully valuable. And that's why Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL -- and all those services that you _pay_ for for service don't want to let you 'own' i.e. have full control over your email address (i.e. allow you to forward your emails to your preferred service or access them w/ POP/IMAP for free).
So you say, ok: but I'm fine paying. And I say that the biggest reason that people don't change their email service provider, free or paid for, when someone else provides a better service is that they've given the address to so many. The email address is essentially your online identity and most of the providers keep you hostage because of that.
And here's where Gmail is very different. They offer free email forwarding - and POP & IMAP access. And it has by far the best spam filters of the tens that I've tested. But that's beside the point. The point is that others -- including those comcasts, verizons, etc -- keep your email and/or your online identity hostage while Gmail doesn't. Ok, some would say that they're still in beta and we _still_ don't know what it will become. I say, possible, but the company has committed quite strongly to these free-as-in-speech elements of Gmail.
So, I think Gmail is definitely good. (.. But not really all paid for emails are.)
You get the same freedom by buying your own domain. Cost: less than $10/_year_. And with that you own the whole address space of that domain.
And most domain hosts provide free email forwarding. And Google Apps even more. With them you can provide email accounts for your domain to hundreds of your friends. For free - and so that you and your friends have full control.
My choices: Gmail, own domain, Google Apps.
Don't let them keep you hostage - make you pay for "nothing".
Posted by: Jaakko H. at August 25, 2008 12:31 PMi make account hotmail in outlook express not find http:\\service msn
Posted by: Muryat at September 4, 2008 10:31 PMI do believe that with all the new technology this article pretty much has become obsolete.
You have your email client setup in your computer. It grabs mails off of the air through POP3 or IMAP or something like that. Everything is backed-up locally, including all your contacts and emails and everything you'd ever want, even a built-in spam filter.
You have your email encryption apps. If you are sending important stuff through email, encrypt it. Or you can just use attachments that are password-protected. Don't send non-encrypted sensitive information.
This article does say that it was posted in 2004, which makes me very, very happy. I shudder to think that somebody still seriously thinks that a paying email account is worth his money now... if he does, he really needs to stop wasting his money.
Backing up using POP3/IMAP is great, but it doesn't alleviate the many other reasons that free email accounts are a risky bet.
And I'll reiterate: this is a conclusion I've come to based on the problems that get reported here to Ask Leo!. Problems that persist, perhaps even in greater numbers, to this day.
Four years later.
08-Oct-2008
Posted by: Kinch at October 7, 2008 10:37 PM
Somehow the contents of my INBOX were completely deleted today (11/21/08). My account, which stared out at netscape (dgmennie@netscape.net) years ago, is now on AIM. So the address (dgmennie@aim.com) also works for this same account. Anyhow, I am finding just about nothing online that helps. The contents of my INBOX are not in my trash folder, as I already checked. I think the problem is related to deleting the trash folder contents. Thats when the INBOX contents suddenly disappeared. Looks like a lost cause, but before I give up can you help? Email me directly please! The clock is running!
Posted by: Don at November 21, 2008 9:28 AM