Email, Webmail and Custom Domains

We all have used one free email service or another. Lately, I have seen many message boards that boast of Gmail and AOL’s free POP(Post Office Protocol) /IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) connectivity as compared to Hotmail and Yahoo’s pay for service. It really goes beyond that.

I enjoy Gmail and AOL’s free POP email service, but I find that Gmail’s POP service will re-download mail I have already downloaded and if I happen to write an email from the web it will download that message as well. If an email contains an attachment over 1mb in size, I have to go to the website, locate the offending email and manually download the attachment (if it’s something I want) and then delete the email. This has happened to me no matter how fast a connection I am on, so it’s not bandwidth related. Despite all this I still prefer it to any of the others. Anyway, I digress. I have put together a table comparing Custom Domain services offered by the four main email providers on the web and I hope you find it helpful.

 

	AOL	Gmail	Hotmail	Yahoo
Custom Domains	Yes	Yes	Yes	Partial (details below)
POP	Yes	Yes	No	No
IMAP	Yes	Yes	No	No
Webmail	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Instant Messanger	AIM	Googletalk	Windows Live Messenger	Yahoo Messenger (requires Yahoo account)
Homepage Designer	No	Yes	No	Default Page very little customization available.
Document Storage	Using XDrive	Yes	Using Live Drive	Yahoo Briefcase (requires Yahoo account)
Photo Storage	Limited with XDrive	With Picasaweb	No	Flickr (requires Yahoo account)
Customizable Webmail Page	No	Yes	No	No

 

What is a Custom Domain?

A Custom Domain is when you purchase your own domain (Website) for personal or business use. Once you have a domain, you can have email yourname@yourdomain. Many services will charge you for this. I like to purchase my domains from Yahoo because the interface for managing the domain is very simple, but they only allow you to set up one virtual email account. This means people can send you email to the email address you set up, but you will reply from your yahoo account. Unless of course you purchase the pay for service.

Hang on to your wallet because AOL, Gmail, and Hotmail all give you custom domain email for free. All you need to know is how to change your MX Record, but as I’ve said Yahoo’s Domain Management interface makes it easy to do this.

Of course at some point any of these providers could begin to charge for this, but right now it’s free.

Hotmail’s service is strictly web based, however I’ve noticed on their mail blog that they have plans to offer free POP access to all Hotmail accounts in the near future, so it may become available at that time too. I’ve tried their outlook connector, but I find it buggy. Some days it works well and others it hangs.

Then there is AOL and Gmail. Gmail gives you a full package through Google Apps. Google Apps gives everyone at your organization a custom email address, tools for word processing, spreadsheets and presentations, a shared calendaring system and access to a flexible intranet system. Standalone security and compliance services are also available.

With Google Apps y

Technorati Tags: Google Apps,Yahoo,Hotmail,Windows Live,Microsoft,Gmail

ou get a personalized email login page (they even let you upload your own logo here and choose your own color for the login screen), access to manage user accounts, create your homepage, create and store documents in your account, POP access, IMAP access, and you can use your personalized email for googletalk, blogger, and picasaweb. They have developed this for Enterprise use and even more features are available for organizations that want to pay for the full corporate package.

AOL works great for Custom Domains as well, but does not give you all the perks that Google Apps does.

In summary, while we can grouse about Yahoo and Hotmail not remaining competitive, for custom email the choice is Gmail if you want a full package and can put up with occasional hanging. AOL is the choice if all you really want is email that gives you POP/IMAP access.