Web-based E-mail

Overview As mobile devices such as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones become more popular and powerful, there has been a growing need for flexible methods of sending and receiving e-mail. Web-based e-mail has provided a solution for some people. Numerous Web-based e-mail sites offer Internet users free e-mail accounts with address books, storage space, and e-mail management features.  

Popular Web-based e-mail Sites Web-based e-mail is so popular and easy to use that often the hardest part of signing up for a new e-mail account is finding a unique user name. With so many Web-based e-mail sites online offering free e-mail accounts, it may be equally hard to choose the one that is right for you. A good resource for general information about Web-based e-mail is www.emailaddresses.com/email_web.htm, which offers descriptions and links to major Web-based e-mail sites and is frequently updated with new entries and even user reviews. Below is a short list of some of the more popular Web-based e-mail sites. It is in no way an inclusive list.

Flashmail (www.flashmail.com) offers free e-mail accounts with all of the necessary features such as an address book, an e-mail manager, and forwarding options. It is also considered to be one of the easiest sites to use. 

With over 40 million users, Hotmail (www.hotmail.com) is one of the most popular Web-based e-mail sites. They offer free e-mail sign-up, spam filtering, a spelling checker, and signature options. However, Hotmail offers only 2 megabytes of storage space--which some users could find limiting.  

Excite (excite.com) offers free e-mail accounts, customizable home pages, POP e-mail retrieval options, and spam filtering, just to name a few features. Users are allowed up to 3 megabytes of storage space.

Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) is an enormously popular site offering free Web-based e-mail that includes a spell-check  feature, free forwarding, and POP mail services. Yahoo! offers a relatively high storage limit of 6 megabytes. 

Gmail is Google's (www.google.com) free webmail service. It comes with built-in Google search technology and over 2,600 megabytes of storage (and growing every day). You can keep all your important messages, files and pictures forever, use search to quickly and easily find anything you're looking for, and make sense of it all with a new way of viewing messages as part of conversations.

Web-based e-mail Resources Because of the vast number of Web-based e-mail providers on the Internet today, many sites have begun to offer numerous resources for Web-based e-mail users. 

This link contains useful FAQs about Web-based e-mail. Here you can learn about topics such as how to sign up for a free account, how to maintain e-mail privacy, and how to choose the best e-mail service. This Internet 101 page provides a review of the ten most popular Web-based e-mail sites and rates them according their features and their ease of use. For a straightforward introduction to Web-based e-mail, visit this site. You will find descriptions of how Web-based e-mail works and how to use it. This site also contains useful tips for selecting user names and passwords. Visit this Web page, which provides Web-based e-mail capabilities for Web sites. Since this site provides information on how Web-based e-mail works and how it is installed on Web sites, it is useful to the everyday user as well as to Web developers and designers.