As we head further into the 21st century, having an E-mail address is becoming an extremely important part of every day life.

Luckily, as a consumer, you have several choices when it comes to getting an E-mail address, and most of them are free! Most internet service providers will give you an E-mail address with their internet service, but they probably aren’t the best choice you have available to you. Unless your provider is a large company with a heavy commitment of their resources to their E-mail service, their virus scan and phishing protection is probably lacking. Therefore, I recommend taking advantage of online E-mail services. They are accessible from any computer, allow you have a copy of every E-mail backed up for you, and they are probably alot safer.

Here is a list of the most popular options currently available:

GMail

  • Advantages – HUGE storage room. Its difficult to run out of room here. Google also offers an E-mail notifier and a unique integrated chat system to go along with their E-mail. GMail also sorts your replies with the original messages. Great search functions.
  • Disadvantages – Currently GMail is in beta, and a cell phone or invitation from a current user is the only way to get an account. Hit up your friends with a GMail address for an invitation.

Yahoo! Mail

  • Advantages – Yahoo! Mail is probably the most commonly used service, meaning it has all the bugs worked out and has alot of nice features. It has also recently undergone a revamp to help it keep up with Google’s GMail.
  • Disadvantages – The bad news with the popularity of this program is the amount of users. It can sometimes make it difficult to get the E-mail address you want, especially if you have a common name. The amount of storage room is also considerably less than what GMail offers.

Hotmail

  • Advantages – No real advantages. This is a standard E-mail service by Microsoft.
  • Disadvantages – The spam filter is not quite what the above two are and you have to deal with advertisements. It prefers Internet Explorer (for obvious reasons) over alternate browsers.

Windows Live Mail

  • Advantages – Because this is a Microsoft product, you can expect it to work well once completed. Also, if you use other Windows Live products, there will probably be some nice integration features.
  • Disadvantages – Currently in very early beta. It will be awhile until this is comparable to GMail and Yahoo.

Mail.com

  • Advantages – Free and offers personalized mailing address, making it ideal for business purposes. Lots of domain name choices.
  • Disadvantages – Less common, making it more difficult to remember the E-mail address.

If you prefer to have your E-mail loaded directly on to your desktop (using a program such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird), most of these services will allow that as well via POP3.

Which service is best for you will probably depend on your situation, or more than likely, your loyalty to Yahoo! services, Google’s services, or even Microsoft’s services. I use products from all 3 companies, but I love my GMail hands down. They are all free, so give them a try and let me know what you think!

If you decide to go with GMail as your E-mail service of choice, or you manage several E-mail addresses, see my post about why you should be using GMail.