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There are different types of free and/or advertising supported Internet email services. Many people use one or more of them in combination with an ISP account for optimum access and convenience.
Client in Internet jargon refers to software on your computer, that gives you access to some Internet service protocol. Server refers to a computer and software on the network, at your ISP or somewhere else like Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft, which provides such a service.
For example, your ISP generally has a mail server and a news server, for Internet email and newsgroups. Your own PC would then have a mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird) and a news client (Agent, Xnews). Your mail client lets you send and receive email, and your news client lets you read Usenet newsgroups and post your own messages to them. A news client program is also sometimes called a newsreader.
Web pages are served by Web servers, and your Web browser—Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, or whatever—is your Web client program. Many Internet services, including email, which formerly required separate client programs on your computer, can now be provided via your Web browser.
Thunderbird is the open-source, cross-platform, freeware email client offered along with the Firefox Web browser. I consider Thunderbird to be the new winner in the ease-of-use aspect, a welcome alternative to Microsoft Outlook.
Eudora was the easiest email program for years; it's been around in various versions since the mid-90's. In October 2006 Qualcomm announced that future versions of Eudora will be "based upon the same technology platform" as open source Mozilla Thunderbird. So you may as well just use Thunderbird.
Of course, if you already have a version of Microsoft Office, you should already have the Outlook POP-mail client, which I consider overly complicated, and the limited-feature Outlook Express comes with Microsoft Windows. For more about these and other POP-mail client programs, see my POP email clients page.
This is the email I recommend for most people now.
Web-based freemail services require access through an existing Internet connection—not necessarily yours—via a password-access Web site and a Web browser. This is obviously attractive for people who expect to always have Internet access through their job or school affiliation. Web freemail services are advertising-supported.
Web-mail is completely platform-independent. Your whole email interface—address book, mail folders, Compose form, etc.—is built on-the-fly in the form of dynamic Web pages. You can access your Web-mail from any Web browser, on any operating system, anywhere there's Internet access. People can probably use Web-mail from the space station, if it has an Internet connection.
You can sign up for as many free Web-mail user IDs as you want. For a family with a single ISP account, Web-mail is one very slick way for each individual to have their own separate email address with no added cost. In fact, if individuals have a preference, it's no problem at all for family members to use different Web-mail providers.
In Web-mail systems, your email and folders and your personal address book stay on their server, and your access depends on their uptime. I've seen even Yahoo! Mail and Google's Gmail have occasional service interruptions, but they've been quite rare and brief. Some Web-mail systems (including Gmail standard and Yahoo's extra-cost mode "Yahoo! Mail Plus") let you periodically download your mail folder contents to the local-drive POP-mail client of your choice (Outlook, Thunderbird, Eudora). Generally they impose some limit on how much volume you're allowed to build up on their server: 2.5+ GB on Gmail, 1GB on Yahoo! Mail standard.
There are dozens of free Web-mail services available. How many of them will still be available a year or two years from now is another question. When I was making my choice, I looked for one with a good feature set, and enough existing users and a strong enough sponsoring organization to give some confidence they might be around for a while.
For more detail on specific Web-mail services see my Web-mail page in the Net software section.
Some Web-mail services that seem to be popular:
If you mostly prefer server/client POP-mail, but occasionally need to do email away from your home PC, you can select an ISP that offers Web-mail access to their mail server. This is your normal email on the ISP's server, that you can also connect to via a Web browser and the ISP's Web site. It has nothing to do with ordinary Web-mail services such as Yahoo Mail or Gmail. Many if not most ISPs have this feature now as part of their service.
The main disadvantage I can see to ISP Web-mail, compared to ordinary Web-mail, is that just like POP-mail client access to that account, if you change ISPs your email address changes, and you will have to get your new address out to all correspondents. If you adopt an ordinary non-ISP Web-mail address, its function will be completely unaffected when you change ISPs.
A secondary issue is that you will be working with two different email interfaces: your POP-mail client on your home PC (Thunderbird, Outlook, or whatever) and the completely different interface of your ISP's Web-mail service when you are elsewhere.
As mentioned earlier on this page, Gmail offers free POP access, something Yahoo! charges extra for. This means you can sign up for a free Gmail Web-mail account, and connect to it using a POP-mail client installed on your own PC, pretty much as if it were a regular ISP mail server.
This lets you use a familiar POP-mail client, and still allows for occasional remote access to your email, similar to ISP Web-mail in the section above, plus you can get multiple email accounts for family members. On the down side, you still have two different email interfaces to deal with.
The four highlighted sections of this table correspond to the four subsection topics above.
| Email system address example |
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|
| Remarks | ||
| (a) POP-mail only (local client, ISP mail server) jdoe@isp.com |
• Store your email on your own PC • Can use an already-familiar POP-mail program; no second interface to learn |
• No remote access • Your email address has to change if you change ISPs • No multiple accounts for family memebers |
| You can stick with this old-school system if you are already familiar with a POP-mail client such as Thunderbird or Outlook, and you don't need to access your email while away from your own computer. | ||
| (b) Web-mail only jdoe@gmail.com |
• Access your mail anywhere, from any PC connected to the Internet • Your address doesn't need to change if you change ISPs later • Use the same email interface everywhere • Can get multiple accounts for family members |
• Your mail is stored on their server • Your access depends on their uptime • Might have to transition from an already-familiar POP-mail program |
| Go with just Web-mail if you want to access your email from anywhere, and the disadvantages listed for it here don't bother you. This is the system I like. | ||
| (c) POP-mail + ISP's Web-mail jdoe@isp.com |
• Store your email on your own PC • Combine POP-mail with occasional remote access • Can use an already-familiar POP-mail program |
• Two different email interfaces to learn • Your email address has to change if you change ISPs • No multiple accounts for family memebers |
| Use this system if you want to continue using a familiar POP-mail client and ISP-based email address, along with occasional remote access, and you're not worried about changing ISPs. | ||
| (d) Gmail Web-mail + POP-mail client jdoe@gmail.com |
• Store your email on your own PC • Combine POP-mail with occasional remote access • Can use an already-familiar POP-mail program • Your address doesn't need to change if you change ISPs • Can get multiple accounts for family members |
• Two different email interfaces to learn • Have to publish new Gmail address, if you were already using ISP-based POP-mail |
| Use this system to stay with a familiar POP-mail client, if you might change ISPs later, or perhaps if you are creating a new personal email address. | ||
Access to your email actually depends on some server being up and running in all four styles of email: the Web-mail server in styles 2 and 4, and your ISP's servers in styles 1 and 3. Better ISPs and Web-mail services get it that they need to keep those servers as close to 100% up-time as humanly possible.
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