Web Mail

Web mail is one of the most useful web applications on the Internet, it allows you to access, send, receive and manage your email through a web browser. The great part of web mail is that you can access your email from almost any computer around the world, as long as it has a internet connection and web browser.

Web mail differs from traditional email in which most people set up an email client on one computer, thus making their only access point at one specific computer and only one location. Where traditional email is stored on an email client on one’s computer, web mail is stored centrally, allowing access from anywhere via the Internet.

Web mail has been made popular by many technology companies including search engines and portals. Some of the more popular web mail services available are Yahoo! Mail, Google Gmail and Microsoft’s Hotmail. You will be happy to know that these web mail services are usually offered for free. Usually these companies offer their web mail service for free to entice viewers to keep coming back to their site. Many individuals check their email on a daily basis, the more a viewer visits a website, and the more revenue a company can make selling advertisements.

Advantages of Web Mail

Email Stored Centrally

The obvious advantage of using web mail is the ability to access your email from any location that has a internet connection and web browser. You now don’t need to be shackled up to one computer at one location to send and receive email.

Maintenance and Administration

Where traditional email clients made it necessary for you the end user to maintain and administer to your own email, today, all administration and maintenance is done on the web mail services end. You don’t have to worry about patches, reconfiguring software, etc.

Signing Up for Web Mail is Usually Easy and Free

Most web mail services make it extremely easy to sign up for an email account and start using your email immediately. Even a novice with virtually no tech experience can start an email account and use it within minutes. The vast majority of web mail services offer their email service for free. Many of these services do offer upgrades for a small fee per month or year, but for the most part, many users are satisfied with the overall email experience and usage of free web mail products.

Create Multiple Email Addresses for Different Uses

Many people have more than one email address and web mail makes it easy and free to do so. Many individuals might have an email address for their family, best friends, school, work or marketing offers that they sign up for. For instance, if you are tired of getting lots of spam or newsletters, create a separate email address that all of these emails will be sent to. While this won’t completely eradicate spam, you will definitely notice a huge drop in unwanted email.

It should also be noted that many web mail services include a free spam guard that not only sifts through your email for added protection but also removes viruses or alerts you when a virus may be enclosed in an email.

Large Storage Capacity

Many web mail services now allow you to store over 1 gigabyte of data on their email web servers. This means that you no longer have to delete your old emails or old attachments. When web mail first came on the scene, many services sometimes offered less than 5 megabytes of storage space. Many users were unsatisfied with this amount, especially when their friends would send them files that were sometimes the entire capacity of their storage space.

Disadvantages of Web Mail

Web mail is one of the most used applications on the web and the vast majority of people that use it are more than satisfied. However, there are a few disadvantages of web mail, they include:

Online Accessibility

A normal email client doesn’t require the end user to stay online to read all their email, web mail does. This means that if you do not have a Internet onnection, not only will you not be able to send or receive email, but you wont’ have access to your saved email online. While this is not a particular concern with many people that have continual Internet access, for those people that have shoddy Internet connections or live in areas of the world where Internet accessibility is not as stable, this can be an enormous problem.

Advertisements

For many people that use web mail services, the trade off of a free, easy to use service is usually the fact that they are bombarded by advertisements. For some people, too many advertisements can be distracting, especially when advertisements are inserted in actual emails. While this might not be that important when emailing close friends or family members, this might be deemed inappropriate or unprofessional if using a web based email service with lots of advertisements when conducting business.

Security and Spam Issues

Many security experts have stated that depending on the web mail service used, you might be opening up yourself to security and spam abuses. Since web mail is on a central server, a hacker can break in and search thousands or even millions of emails. Since you don’t store this email, you can’t control the security of it. Another fact is that services such as Google Gmail make it known that they search through your email to help their service target advertising.

Spam issues are another concern. Many times large web mail services are the target of spam. While many of these web mail services have added enhanced spam guards, you might experience a higher spam rate than with traditional email.

Free Webmail Services

Gmail
Gmail is probably the most used webmail service currently available. Gmail is fast and easy to setup and all you need to get one is come with a unique email address that hasn’t already been taken. Gmail has a counter that shows how much storage space each email account is given as Google is constantly adding more servers to their network of storage devices. You can have as many Gmail accounts as you wish and each account comes with full access to all of Google’s other free products.

Yahoo Mail
While Gmail is currently on top of the webmail food chain, Yahoo Mail has had its day in the sun. Yahoo Mail provides you with many of the same features of Gmail, the most significant being the fact that your Yahoo Mail account doubles as a Yahoo ID and allows you to use all of Yahoo’s other free products and services. Yahoo Mail also introduces an extra level of security by allowing you to create a “Sign-In Seal” which is a picture that is displayed on all of your Yahoo Sign-In pages. The idea is that if the picture isn’t there, then you shouldn’t enter your password because it is likely a scamsite pretending to be Yahoo.

Hotmail
Hotmail is a free webmail service provided by Microsoft that used to be the biggest webmail service on the Internet. Hotmail keeps track of your MSN news, local weather, email, and Windows Live friends all in one spot that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. Hotmail also allows you to combine separate email addresses into one interface and the whole thing is backed up by Microsoft’s fierce security measures.

GMX
GMX claims to be “the free email you’ve been waiting for”, which isn’t far from the truth. GMX offers amazing features that even some of the more popular brands of webmail do not provide. GMX includes an all-in-one function that combines your email addresses into one interface, the ability to check your email from your cell phone, an advanced SSL encryption scheme that blocks spam and hackers, and 5 GB of storage space as well as a 50 MB limit on attachments and a sharing service that allows you to send files to other users through a “file storage exchange”.

HushMail
HushMail provides a Business email system for $10 per month but they also offer a personal webmail account that is completely free. HushMail includes email encryption, spam/virus scanning, and the ability to check your email from your phone. HushMail has a serious downside compared to other webmail services, however, as their free accounts only provide 2 MB of storage space while other services offer several gigabytes. Hushmail’s goal is to get people to pay $35 per year for their premium webmail service which offers over 10 GB.

Inbox.com
Inbox.com is a growing webmail company that offers email, news, games, screen savers, ecards, and photo sharing technology all in the same spot. Inbox.com offers 5 GB of storage space to US, UK, and Canadian citizens and 2 GB of storage space to all other nationalities, however, up to 30 GB of storage space can be purchased for a price. Inbox.com also allows you to keep track of your to-do lists and personal notes, change the layout of your account, and choose RSS feeds from a number of sources including news, history, and comics.