Free Space

• Live Mail/Hotmail provide at this moment in time 5GB of storage space.
• The basic Yahoo! Mail package you receive unlimited storage space!
• Gmail claim that their storage space is always increasing and at time of writing the storage space is around 6.75GB.
• The winner of the ‘Free Space’ award must be Yahoo! Mail simply because the space is unlimited!

Is there a paid for upgrade?

• Gmail provide two upgrades, one that you must pay for (Premier Edition) and the other which is free (Education Edition). The Premier Edition is aimed at Small Businesses and Enterprises. It costs £25 a year.
• Live Mail/Hotmail have no upgrades which is a huge shame.
• Yahoo! Mail have 3 upgrades, Yahoo! Mail Plus, Yahoo! Mail Personal Address and Yahoo! Business Email. Yahoo! Mail Plus is around £10 a year (under £1 per month). Yahoo! Mail Personal Address is around £17.50 per year (under £1.50 per month). Yahoo! Business Email costs just under £5 a month plus a month of set up fee of £12.50.
• I personally haven’t used any of the upgrades because the basic packages are perfectly adequate for me, however from looking at all the details of the packages I think that Gmail provides the best upgrade packages. Therefore Gmail wins the ‘Upgrade’ award!

Features-There are hundreds of features that all of the free packages provide and if I was to write about all of them you’d be here for hours, so click on the following applicable link for each provider to find out more about the features of, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and Live Mail/Hotmail.

• My favourite feature of Yahoo! Mail is that on the main screen you have tabs for the different folders/messages etc that you have open. Also there is a home tab which has the latest news/sport/entertainment and finance news.
• My favourite feature of Gmail is the fact that you can use so many applications with just one account. It’s worth getting an account just to use the applications!
• And finally my favourite feature of Live Mail/Hotmail is how easy it is to connect with Microsoft Office Outlook.

Easy to use/Stylish interface -

• In my opinion Windows Live Mail/Hotmail has a very easy to use interface and it is quite stylish too! You can change the colour of your account to your own preference.
• Yahoo! Mail is easy to use too and since its recent face lift is far more stylish but you don’t have the option to personalize it like Live Mail/Hotmail.
• I feel that Gmail is easy to use but is in need of a redesign to keep up with the trends as some people judge things on looks and Gmail certainly would not win!
• The winner of the ‘Easy to use/Stylish Interface’ Award is Windows Live Mail/Hotmail!

Is it cluttered with Ad’s? – So often you go into an email account you get annoying.

• Gmail has no adverts at all which is very good.
• Yahoo! Mail has one large advert and two very small adverts, none of them are in the way but they’re still there!
• Live Mail/Hotmail has on very large advert going across the screen which is distracting.
• Therefore Gmail wins the ‘Ad’ Award!

Are there many addresses free? -

• Yahoo! Mail and Gmail have a limited number of addresses left compared to Live Mail/Hotmail.
• Live Mail has recently been released so there are loads of address names still free!
• Live Mail/Hotmail has to win the ‘Addresses Free’ award!

Can you access your mail from your mobile?

• With a Gmail account you can access your mail very easily. You can also access other Google applications, for example: Search, Maps, Picasa, You Tube, Calender and News. If you’re interested visit ‘Google Mobile‘.
• You can get Live Mail/Hotmail on your mobile, however it costs you to send emails on top of your mobile Internet providers charges (£1 for 8 Emails). If you’re interested visit ‘Mobile Hotmail‘. You can also get MSN Messenger on your mobile phone.
• Yahoo! Mail also is available via your mobile. It looks very similar to the web based version which you’re used to. Like Gmail and Live Mail/Hotmail you can also get many applications on the internet too. For example, Messenger, Flickr, News, Sports and Entertainment. For more info visit ‘Yahoo! Mobile‘.
• I think that it is a joint win for Gmail and Yahoo! Mail for the ‘Mobile Access’ award.

In conclusion, it all comes down to personal choice and what you really need. If your computer skills are very limited and need something simple go for Gmail. If you want something stylish and also very simple to use go for Live Mail/Hotmail. If you want an account which is easy to use and you feel in the future you may want to upgrade go for Yahoo! Mail.

If there are anymore areas that you’d like us to compare please let us know!

You can upgrade Yahoo Mail from the basic free version to ‘Yahoo! Mail Plus‘, ‘Yahoo! Business Mail‘ and you can also purchase a package called ‘Yahoo! Mail Personal Address‘.

The Basic Free Yahoo! Mail has many features for example:

• Yahoo! Mail will automatically check for new messages.
• You can drag and drop items into folders which makes organisation easier than ever!
• Access your email on your mobile phone
• Also, recently Yahoo! have developed and integrated a way to send/receive Instant Messages, to friends that are online, straight from your Yahoo! Mail account.
• 10MB Message Size
• 15 Spam Filters
• SpamGuard (Spam Protection)
• There is also a features page which you can visit to see more!

Yahoo! Mail Plus has the features above, plus the following:

• 20MB Message Size instead of 10MB.
• 50 Filters instead of 15.
• SpamGuard Plus(Spam Protection) instead of just Spam Guard
• No account expiration
• However…this all does come at a price! On the website it is down as $19.99 a year which is just under $2.00 per month. This works out at the current exchange rate to be around £10.00 a year which is under £1.00 per month!
• For more info click here

Yahoo! Mail Personal Address basically lets you majorly personalize your email account,

• It includes 5 email addresses
• You can personalize your email address in the format ‘name@your-name.com’.
• The service also has an advanced anti-virus protection.
• To find out more click here.
• All this is for $35 a year which is less than $3 a month! At today’s current exchange rate that works out at around £17.50 a year and less than £1.50 a month!

Finally Yahoo! Business Email has pretty much all of the previously names features and more:

• Award-winning spam and security protection
• Easy-to-use and powerful main interface
• 24/7 Free Customer Support
• For info click here.
• At today’s current exchange rate this will cost you for the basic package just under £5 a month. However you will need to pay a set up fee of around £12.50.

From looking at all the Yahoo! Mail products I have discovered that they provide a package that can suit most people’s needs, however the downside of it all is that some of it comes at a price. It’s just down to the user to decide if they really need all the extras or not, as the basic package is adequate for most people.

There are many useful features you can get with your basic Gmail account. On their site they have made a list called ’10 Reasons To use Gmail’.

1. You don’t like spam. Neither do we
2. Search your mail instantly
3. Organize replies into conversations
4. Chat is built right in
5. Labels, Filters and Stars…oh my!
6. Get your mail on the go
7. Lots of space (and counting)
8. We have ads, but only the good kind
9. Save time
10. All this is free?

To find out more on these features and to see the details of the list click here.

Gmail have made some cool new features for all their users. Some new features include:

• Group chat
• Instant messaging
• 20MB attachment limit
• Emotions
• Contact Groups
• 6.732016 GB email storage per account and the amount it always increasing!

Click to see a list/information on all 35 updates/new features.

You can also upgrade to either Premier or Education Edition. An Education Edition is free to accredited not-for-profit K-12 Schools, Colleges and Universities which are described in the terms and conditions. It provides the same features as the standard edition but also includes:

• Conference room and resource scheduling
• APIs to integrate with your existing infrastructure
• Email routing controls for dual delivery (Coming November 08!)
• Email migration tools
• 24/7 assistance, including phone support for critical issues
• Third-party applications and services
• 6.732016 GB email storage per account and the amount it always increasing!

Click to find out more about Google for Educators or to Compare Packages.

The Premier Edition is by far the packages which supplies the most but it does come at a price! It costs £25 a year. With in the Premier package there are two versions, one geared more towards Enterprises and the other Small Businesses. The package provides all previously mentioned features from the Standard and Education Editions, plus:

• 99.9% up-time guarantee for email
• Policy management and message recovery by Postini (Coming in November)
• 25 GB email storage per account

Click to compare the package with the standard package.

Gmail has everything that most people need from their web based email account and you can also use so many great applications with an account. Although in my opinion it isn’t as user friendly as other providers.

Do you use Gmail? What do you think of it?

• Each account has 5GB Storage Space. By having more storage space you can store more emails and pictures etc. Also on Live Mail, you can send up to 10MB worth of attachments.
• Microsoft Live Mail has exactly the same features as Hotmail. Although as Live Mail is newer there are many email address names left, where as in Hotmail the amount of address names is getting less and less by the minute.

There are hundreds of great features that the service offers, here are a few:

• Microsoft have put together a great interactive tour of Live Mail which gives you a glimpse of the layout and features it provides.
• One great feature is that you can link Live Mail and Outlook together, this means that you can import contacts to and from each other and view your mail in both Outlook and Live Mail.
• Hotmail/Live Mail are also both very good for speed, you can either select a version which is suited to a fast Internet connection (broadband) or for a slower connection (Dial-up). Both versions make the most of the Internet connection, ensuring that they run at the best speed possible.
• Modern styling. You can also personalise the account by changing the colour etc.
• You can search your message using the search bar from the top.
• Finally, the most important thing is that all of this is FREE!

Live Mail/Hotmail is a very good free web based email service provider which has pretty much anything that an average user would need. However, the downside to it is that there aren’t any upgrades/different packages to suit other peoples needs.

What do you think of Microsoft Live Mail/Hotmail?