Email is the primary medium of communication for many people. Some people log on to the Internet only to check their mails. Internet is equivalent to email for them. There are many free service providers for Email like Hotmail (Live Mail), Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL.
The ESPs can be used in conjunction and I believe most people have more than one email account, with virtually unlimited storage and almost every feature under the sun. I have been using Google Apps, Live Mail and Yahoo, for my email needs. I think Google and Live mail are the ones that I would want to talk about in this post. I wrote off Yahoo when it tried to imitate Outlook in its web interface.
When I heard about Gmail in late 2005, I was very excited. I thought this was what I wanted for my email woes. I was using Hotmail since 1997 and was not happy with it. I found Microsoft mean to give a 2MB and then 5MB storage space, finally making it 250 for customers in UK. I still lived in India! I remember changing my location to UK, waiting for MS to give me 250MB storage, and then changing it back to India! I was still in college and had only that much money (nil, to be precise).
I happily used Gmail for a pretty long time. I even hosted my domain’s mail to Google Apps as soon as it was available. Prior to that, I was using a forwarder to send my email to Gmail. I hosted my emails with Google for about a year when I realized that there was something called Windows Live Mail and Windows Custom Domains. I think there is no other company that understand email better than Microsoft. Be it the Web Interface or the desktop access, Microsoft has excelled the technology and has proved that they know it best!
I have my mails hosted at Google Apps and at Custom Domains. I find Microsoft’s solution much better because I can use Outlook to access my mails, with the Outlook connector. The mails remain synchronized with the server and I do not have to download them multiple times just because there was a change at the server. When I sync my mails via IMAP, I do not know what does Gmail do to my mails. There are so many folders and trees that the mailbox becomes very confusing. When I delete messages, they go to All Mails folders I guess, and also to the Trash folder. If I create a folder in Outlook, it will be treated as a label in my mailbox on the web.
Gmail also had a lot of privacy issues in the past and I am not sure if I find my data secure with Google. While I still host my email there, it is only for the purpose of archiving, zipped and secured. I use Live Mail as my email service provider. Live Mail has unlimited storage, excellent Junk mail filters, best PC sync, best Mobile sync, an average mobile web interface, good security, Live ID synchronization, WL Messenger, Contact Management, all that you would want from a Mail server, and more. Best of all, they are FREE!
I can help you get your emails on Google Apps and Live Mail so get in touch if you want to host your domain mails for FREE!
