17th May 2008

Guide to Email services and email providers - choosing the right provider

The internet revolution has brought us many new tools we can use in everyday life, one of the most useful of these tools is the email system (for a beginners guide to email click here).

First of all we will have a look at the FREE email services available and then we will look at the benefits/drawbacks of using an ISP (Internet Service Provider) for email aswell.

There are many free email providers available on the internet but we will concentrate on the more dominant ones, Yahoo ^® and Hotmail^®.

These two providers are without doubt two of the biggest on the internet, and both offer very useful services, below is a run down of what each has to offer :

Yahoo^®

Full email service.
Security by way of Password.
Unlimited amount of storage for your mail.
Instant message system with Yahoo Messenger™.
Access to your emails worldwide.
External Mail system to get access to any other email accounts you may have.
A SpamGuard™ system that redirects any spammail to a separate mail folder.
Automatic virus scan of outgoing attachments and the option to scan incoming attachments.
A File Viewer system which allows the user to take a look at any email attachment without downloading.
Many other services which are not appropriate for this section.
for further information or to sign up visit http://mail.yahoo.com

Hotmail^®

Full email service.
Security by way of password.
5GB of storage for your mail.
Instant message system with MSN Messenger™.
Access to your emails worldwide.
email to mobile phone service ( optional ).
Many other services which are not appropriate for this section.
for further information or to sign up visit http://www.hotmail.com

As you can see there is not a lot of difference between them and they both offer similar services, with Yahoo^® you get more space for your emails, which is important if you don't want to download all your messages to your computer (if you travel a lot or don't have your own machine).

Whichever you decide to use, they are both FREE and very reliable, both instant messenger systems are very useful, and they are both permanent email addresses. As with any free service it is advisable to read the terms and conditions of both services which can be found on their respective websites.