Yahoo! Mail vs. Gmail vs. Hotmail

The flow of information these days is overwhelming. With the use of cell phones, netbooks, and that magical thing called “Wi-Fi”, you can easily access tons of information at your fingertips while staying in touch with your family on-the-go. A useful piece of technology that is used by almost everyone is email. It’s the fast and easy way to send and receive messages, pictures, documents, and files to anyone. Now, you have probably heard of the “Big Three”, which are Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, and Windows Live Hotmail. Maybe you want to get a new email so your wondering which provider will benefit you the most. Take a look below at the comparison chart, showing some of differences between them feature-wise.

Yahoo! Mail: Yahoo! Mail is ranked #1 in popularity, offering unlimited storage, an easy-to-use interface, and excellent integration with other services. Yahoo makes it easy to keep up with friends and family by displaying updates from sites like Twitter, YouTube, Pandora, Picasa, and more. Surprisingly, Yahoo users can chat with users on Windows Live Hotmail or with other Yahoo! users using the built-in chat feature. New apps help increase productivity by editing photos, storing and sharing large files, sending or receiving money through a PayPal account, and more. Along with sending emails, Yahoo! Mail can send text messages to any mobile phone and receive texts back. New users can even import their contact lists from websites like Facebook, Hotmail, and Gmail.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! Mail has its drawbacks. Users of the free Yahoo! Mail have a ton of advertisements to deal with. Yahoo! Mail also has poor spam filtering and no IMAP support. Users also cannot see updates from social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

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Windows Live Hotmail: Hotmail is ranked #2 in popularity, offering ever-growing storage (or storage that grows), a simple and customizable interface, and excellent integration with other Windows Live Services. Free users start out initially with 5GB of space for email. Messages don’t have to be deleted as long as your inbox grows at a steady rate. The 5GB will grow with your email as time passes. If a user happens to have more than one Hotmail account, they can easily switch between them. Hotmail also has good spam filters. Like Yahoo!, Hotmail will display updates from friends through the use of “web activates”. Updates from websites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Pandora, Photobucket, WordPress, StumbleUpon, and more can be seen and shared among contacts. Hotmail also makes it easy to send important information in a email using the "Quick Add” sidebar. It helps add information like maps, restaurants, movie times, images, videos, and business listings to an email. New users can import their contact lists from websites like Facebook. Myspace, AOL Mail, Gmail, and more.


Since Windows Live Hotmail is part of Windows Live, there are ton of other services associated with Hotmail like Windows Live Skydrive. Skydrive is an online storage site allowing users to upload a variety of files to a whopping 25 GB of space. The service includes Microsoft’s online Office Web Apps which allow office documents to be editing or created online for FREE! That’s not all, there are other services like Windows Live Groups, Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Spaces, and more. Finally, to top it all off, Microsoft created a suite of desktop programs which are part of Microsoft Essentials. They include Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Photo Gallery, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Family Safety, Windows Live Sync, Windows Live Writer, and Windows Live Movie Maker.


Windows Live Hotmail has some some disadvantages such as a 10 MB size limitation on attachments, no support for virtual folders, and no support to send SMS messages.

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Gmail: Google’s Gmail is ranked #3 in popularity, offering only 7.3 GB of space (which is growing slowly), a simple and very customizable interface, tagging support, strong phishing and spam filters, a built-in video and messaging service, SMS support, and more. A sweet feature called "Google Buzz" allows users to see and make status updates to social websites like Facebook and Twitter. Users can also chat with users of AIM through their Gmail account. Gmail is undeniably an undisputed leader in the web-based email area, offering almost every feature and more for free. This has made it a dangerous competitor for Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and others. Gmail has one feature in particular that has made it stand-out from other competitors. This feature happens to be “conversation” view which allows users to keep track of their conversations with various people by sorting and presenting all the emails in a group, making it easier to access. Like Windows Live, Gmail comes with a service called Google Docs which allows users to share and edit spreadsheets, word documents, and PowerPoint presentations. A Gmail account also gives you access to Google Calendar which allows for easy managing and sharing of appointments.


Gmail has some disadvantages. One unpopular aspect of Gmail is the account registration. New users must provide their phone number in order to receive a verification number to activate their account.

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