Top Free Web Mail Services

Having a personal email has become an important necessity today as having a cell phone. In fact, it came earlier than the common cell phone in terms of being used as a tool for communication all over the world. And with the whole world getting connected to each other online, an email provides individuals to reach out to the far corners of the world and establish a means of communication that not only is convenient but may also come free.

And because an email address has become an essential online communication tool for everyone, there have been a lot of online companies now offering free email services to online visitors. From there, any one may be able to register their own email address and start sending and receiving emails that can come and go from any point of the world. Here are three of the most popular free email services available today:

Yahoo! Mail

Yahoo! Mail is considered as one of the most widely used email service today. It is currently the largest web based email provider serving millions of users all over the world. Recently, Yahoo! Mail was given a new look with its new AJAX interface that can be used as an option to replace the classic interface that the email provider has used for several years already.

Yahoo! Mail provides a lot of features for its subscribers. Their email features unlimited storage so that subscribers no longer have to worry about filling up their inbox. Yahoo! Mail also offers an integration of their other services as part of their better features.

The mail is integrated with Yahoo! Calendar as well as with the popular Yahoo! Messenger. This popular email has also integrated with Windows Live Messenger to allow its users to interact with friends on the Windows Live Messenger network. With improved search facilities, Yahoo! Mail is able to help users sort out their emails better and more efficiently.

Gmail

Gmail, or Google Mail is a relatively newcomer as a free web based email provider but has become a widely popular email service partly because of its mother company, Google.

This free email service started sometime as a beta release in 2004. It has drastically raised the standard for free email storage when it initially offered 1 GB of free storage to its users. This allowed the new email service to gain ground fast that currently has them to about 58 million users worldwide.

One of the features of Gmail is that it offers a continuously growing storage space for its users with free IMAP and POP access and sending from any address. It also makes use of smart sorting and searching features that allow the user to find and organize emails as well as chat conversations faster. Gmail's use of the AJAX interface is fast and rich that also comes with useful keyboard shortcuts.

Hotmail/ Windows Live Hotmail

Windows Live Hotmail is the new look for the old Hotmail, one of the very first web based email services on the Internet established way back in 1996. It has since been bought by Microsoft to be a part of its Windows Live range of services.

This free email service has over 380 million users worldwide. This free email service now features 5 GB of storage, fast search functions as well as patented security measures. Users may be able to send emails from other addresses by using Windows Live Hotmail.