Finding the Best Free Email Accounts

Free email accounts offer a number of benefits, including easy accessibility from other computers and the ability to keep your email address when changing to a new internet service provider. However, free email account providers vary in features, quality, and reliability, so some thought should be given to the particular service you are going to use.

EMAIL ADDRESS: Generally, the larger and more well-known the free email provider is, the longer and harder-to-remember your email address will be. While you might have to take an address with several numbers at the end of it at a well-known free email service, some small free email services still have addresses like "@.com" available. Having an address you and your friends can easily remember is certainly more convenient.

RELIABILITY: Some services' websites have less downtime than others, and some are also less likely to shut down. Generally, major providers like mail.Yahoo.com and hotmail.MSN.com aren't going to disappear any time soon (although it is true that a few fairly large free email providers in the past have shut down or decided to require payment).

ADVERTISING: Free email account providers range from having little advertising to annoying full-page ads which have to load before you can go to the next page and read or send an email. Most also add a short text advertisement for their free email service at the end of each message you send. The only way to know just how much advertising there is within the account interface is to ask someone who already has an account or sign up for one. Heavy advertising on the rest of the website offering the email accounts may be an indication of this, however. Some providers offer to eliminate some or all advertising if you pay for a premium membership.