Summary: Free email services and accounts are convenient and ubiquitous. But free email services aren't the right place to keep your important information.
I've been receiving a lot of reports of problems with Microsoft's Hotmail free email service lately, and it really begs the question: are free email services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Gmail worth the cost?
My position: Yes.
And: Absolutely Not.
As always, it depends on your needs and your expectations.
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You may be asking yourself, "What cost? Free email services are free, aren't they?" By now you should know there's no such thing as "free" - everything has a cost. It may not come out of your wallet each month, but there's definitely a cost.
Here are some of the costs I associate with free email services:
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In short, I would never recommend a free email service for anything that you consider important, or anything that you want to keep long term.
Here's how to judge: if the email account went away completely tomorrow, along with all the mail and contact information it contains, would it be an inconvenience or a catastrophe? If the later, then you need to get away from your free account. Now.
If your email is actually important to you, then spend a little each month to get a "real" email account from a regular ISP or mail service. Depending on the provider, each one of the 'costs' I list above will at least be diminished, if not eliminated.
But I did say that free email services were also worth it, didn't I? In fact, I have a Hotmail account, and a Yahoo account, and a GMail account. Why?
Free accounts are perfect when you don't really care what happens to them. They're great when you need to supply an email address to a company that you think may spam you later. Or if you need or want to remain anonymous or otherwise separate that email from your important stuff. Or for leaving as a contact address on a website that will probably get harvested for spam someday.
In other words, free email accounts are perfect throw away accounts. If you get something important that you want to save on one of those accounts, just forward it to your real email account, and you're safer.
But, for heaven's sake, don't use a free service for your primary and important email. You're just asking for trouble.
PS: as a side note, the problems I'm hearing about today all involve HotMail. My opinion stands for other free services like Yahoo mail - I get tons of spam on my Yahoo account. Today they seem more reliable, but I expect they'll have their own set of technical issues from time to time. Google's GMail service is not yet released - it's in beta - so it remains to be seen exactly how reliable or problematic it turns out to be. As you can imagine, I'm somewhat skeptical, and expect that it will fall into the same traps as Yahoo and Hotmail.
Related:
Ask Leo! - Why can't I access Hotmail?
Ask Leo! - How do I contact Hotmail Customer Service?
Ask Leo! - Can I automatically forward my Hotmail?
Ask Leo! - How do I transfer Hotmail contacts to another account?
Article C2217 - November 8, 2004
I read here that somebody closed their Yahoo account down and wondered why their friends' emails weren't bouncing back. Well, that's the least of their problems. Once your account closes then your email address name is up for grabs. What if someone who has your old address writes you at that address. It will go to the new holder of that email address. I have a yahoo account that I don't use. An old friend whom I hadn't contacted in years wrote me there. I was so glad I checked it once every 2 weeks or so just to keep it alive. Once you've closed it the only solution to that would be to write to your old yahoo address every so often to see if someone has taken the name and if so ask them if they would kindly forward any email addressed to you and hope that they will be helpful. Bottom line, in stead of closing an account, inform all of your contacts you've closed the account and wait at least a year before actually closing it, checking weekly and informing any one who writes about your new address.
Posted by: Mark at April 15, 2009 5:07 AMIn regard to a recent posting by a different Mark, he recommended not closing a free email account for at least a year so that you could notify any people you might have missed in announcing your change of address.
In addition to simply checking the old account periodically, you can set up an autoresponder (Vacation Response on Yahoo) to tell them of the change immediately after they send a message to that old account. On Yahoo, look for Vacation Response on the Mail Options page. On Gmail it is called Vacation responder and it is on the Settings page.
22-Apr-2009
With respect, setting up an Autoresponder from an obsolete but still live account is not really a sound idea as it will give the spammers another string to their bow.
Posted by: Bill Chubb at April 28, 2009 10:52 AMI don't know why I can't receive any mail inbox my computer. It always alerts some errors when it's downloading or uploading (send or receive)from internet. I didn't know setting an account how is exactly!
Posted by: nhatnam at May 26, 2009 8:59 PMI can not sign into to my hotmail. It comes up and asks me to sign in. Then I click signin and it tells me my password is not correct. I haven't typed in my password. It will not give me a box to type it in. help!
Posted by: Helen Cornett at June 11, 2009 8:57 AMI use gmail, hotmail and yahoo, and I get very little spam. I only use the gmail address for signing up to things, nothing personal, and even then I don't get much in the way of spam, mainly from junky things I signed up to and don't want anymore so marked as spam. Obviously back up, but surely if you have all your emails set to forward to each free email address you have, even if one goes down you're fine? Anyway, Thunderbird is also free.
Posted by: JH at June 30, 2009 2:33 PMI have all kinds of e-mail accounts, several free ones and also several with my own domains through web hosting. In the past I also worked for international huge companies and was doomed to use what their IT department considered the best fit. Quite frankly, your answer from, let me guess 2004, is totally outdated. My favorite is definitely gmail with more than 7 GB free, great search features, the option to have my mail local either through gears or Thunderbird yet still available anywhere I can get Internet access. What a great combination of features for free. If Google would ask for $10 / year I would happily pay that for one account and give up the catch all e-mails. But even the subscription only e-mails are almost spam free. Google did a great job with filtering!
Posted by: rt at August 2, 2009 2:02 PMHaving used gmail since beta, it is the best e-mail service I ever had. Yahoo is OK but much more restricted. Hotmail I can't comment and I have little desire to go there.
IMHO, it is very tough to beat gmail!!
RT
Dear Leo,
I would like to take your advice and "spend a little each month to get a "real" email account from a regular ISP or mail service"
But I don't know where to get this
Please be so kind as to name several of them that you think are good, or at least worthy of consideration
In your article on Online Storage, you did name several specific companies that you consider to be reputable
Can you please do the same for email services with good customer support ?
thank you
Robert
02-Sep-2009
GMX Mail is the best. Free pop and imap access. And larger than life attachment size limits
Posted by: john at September 3, 2009 11:13 AMFor years I've used "throwaway" free web-based email accounts for occasional things also. And I've been 99% spam-free; I'm not kidding! I guessed a long time ago that it has to do with clicking on nearby items on the page (anything other than what's in the actual composing area). I NEVER EVER click on anything I don't have to click on when I am using free web-based accounts. I remember the first time I learned this. I clicked on an article about finances and suddenly I was deluged with spam that had to do with finances. Can't get any clearer than that. (However I don't tend to give out my address to places that might spam me either.) So you might consider starting over with a new address if you are overwhelmed by spam and just promise yourself you will not click on anything that is not reserved for writing/receiving emails (no news, no advertisements,...). If you must read something, open a new window and find it another way. Don't use the links!
Posted by: D at November 15, 2009 6:50 PM