The mail client has traditionally been part of the software that has been installed or downloaded onto your computer. However, these days, an email client can also be a web application (as shown above when we included Outlook as part of the Microsoft Office 365 software platform). Here we’ll look at some of the additional options for the email client, both in the traditional sense, as part of the add-on software, and more recently, as cloud-based:

GMail has recently become one of the most successful web applications for providing e-mail, not least because it’s free. While there have been other popular free e-mail sites, not least from providers Yahoo and ISPs, several advantages set GMail apart from the competition. First, it integrates with all Google services, and even if you don’t use a number of G Suite apps, such as Google Docs, the Google Calendar app works with GMail without a problem. In addition, GMail has one of the best anti-spam and anti-phishing filters to help keep users safe. Add to that the fact that having a Google account to access a number of Google services means that the GMail account at its core has made GMail the popular home and business success it is today.

Oulook.com is Microsoft’s free online e-mail service. Even though Microsoft uses Outlook as part of the Office suite, you don’t have to buy or subscribe to the service to get a free Outlook.com account. It’s certainly handy if you just need a free e-mail address that you can use online. However, as a free service, it doesn’t integrate with other Microsoft products without a paid Office 365 subscription, so it should be treated as a separate account. This puts itself at a disadvantage over competing integrated services such as GMail, but Outlook.com does the job if you just want to use a free, if basic e-mail address used without any restrictions.

Yahoo Mail is one of the older email service providers. Instead of downloading and running software, it’s a web-based application that you log into when you’re online. Yahoo Mail is also free, which has long been the appeal of this service, especially since it has been available for decades and has often provided a free alternative to Microsoft’s paid options. These days, however, Yahoo Mail doesn’t seem to have progressed much beyond its original design, with little push for features, not least the junk mail filtering. If you desperately need a free email client, Yahoo Mail is an option, but it’s hard to recommend it to more developed apps like GMail.

Your ISP because usually when you sign up for a broadband (or even dial-up) account, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) will provide you with free email associated with your account. Some even provide a basic email client in their customer support platform that you can use. The upside is that you have immediate access to send and receive emails. The negative is that any such provision will be more limited than any of the more feature-rich alternatives listed above. Also, you’ll probably switch ISPs multiple times during your lifetime, so it’s probably best not to rely too heavily on one of their email addresses if you’re just going to move service later, especially if you can already use one of the other options listed here.