The best free email providers: a comparison

When it was launched in 2004, Google’s email service shook up the whole industry: For the first time in history of free email, a provider offered users an inbox size of 1 GB. This marked the beginning of a head-to-head race between free email providers as to who could offer the most storage space; a race that continues today. In line with this, the launch of Gmail has also seen storage space become a decisive factor in this competition. The result of this is that more free email providers, along with larger inboxes, are also offering cloud services when it comes to file storage. This means that Google can now offer a total storage capacity of 15 GB across all the connected Google services, including Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. The maximum size of email attachments has also increased in proportion to this growth, and now stands at 25 MB. Alternatively, the provider lets users send large files via Google Drive.

Just like Gmail, Yahoo Mail is another free email provider with huge amounts of storage space – a record-breaking 1,000 GB (i.e. 1 TB). This has meant that deleting emails is very much a thing of the past. The flip side, though, is that there is no cloud storage service offered. Connecting to external services like Dropbox or Google Drive is possible although a separate account is required. In 2017, the provider launched Yahoo Mail Pro, a paid alternative to the basic version, which features an ad-free interface and prioritised customer support.

For a long time, 'Outlook' was the name of the Personal Information Manager (PIM) developed by Microsoft. It is part of the whole Microsoft 365 package. But since early 2013, the very similar sounding web email service 'Outlook.com' has replaced Microsoft’s previous free email software 'Hotmail'. With Outlook.com, Microsoft now provides serious competition to the free email providers such as Yahoo and Google.

The first and most important advantage is its perfect integration into the Microsoft universe. By simply registering on Outlook.com, you will have access to other services offered by Microsoft. These include the video call and chat service Skype, the cloud storage service OneDrive, Office Online, and OneNote. Thanks to the presence of office interfaces, Outlook.com is also suitable for more complex work environments, and even comes with a similarly intuitive and trustworthy user interface. With regards to storage space, Outlook.com is on a similar level to Google’s Gmail service: With over 15 GB, there is more than enough space for all emails. Additional storage is available for files of a different kind with Microsoft’s integrated cloud storage solution OneDrive, which is available for free. Attachments can be up to 34MB in size.

GMX has two domains: GMX.net is the German version, while GMX.com is for English, French, and Spanish speaking users. GMX is not as well-known as the free email providers discussed above, but still conveniently manages to meet all your basic email requirements. One of the biggest selling points for GMX is its unlimited storage space – indeed, the software has come a long way since its offering of only 5 GB. Another major upside of GMX is its integration with Facebook. This feature means that GMX can attain contact data from Facebook, so that all your friends’ emails (if they are publicly listed) can be added to your contact list automatically. This has the potential to save quite a bit of time.

The default mailbox memory for GMX provides 1 GB. Using the free activation of ‘GMX MailCheck’ you can expand it: With this free upgrade you can encrypt mails, set up desktop notifications for incoming mails and unlock another 500 MB of mailbox storage. GMX offers a total of up to 1.5 GB free of charge. The attachments can be up to 20 MB in size; in the in-house cloud storage, the so-called MediaCenter, you can currently store files totalling up to 2 GB.

GMX offers apps for Android and iOS. Thanks to this wide range of apps, all emails and mailbox folders are always available, even when you are on the move. A spam filter is also integrated.

Many years ago, America Online was one of the biggest email programs, but it has since slipped down the ranks and is no longer one of the most prominent email services. However, this does not mean that it isn’t an adequate free email provider.

A while back, AOL realised the need for it to offer more. This led to it releasing AIM (American Instant Messaging). AIM offered 2 GB of free storage, which was a huge amount of space at the time. Today, the web portal offers 25 GB storage space.

AOL Mail gives you the option of choosing the strictness level of your spam filter: Low, Medium, or High. AOL themselves recommend setting it to ‘Medium’, as they find that that is the right level of security without the risk of losing any important mails to your spam folder.

Another very notable feature of AOL mail is the ‘My Address’ feature, which allows users to choose their own domain name instead of just having your email address as example@aol.com. What this means is that if you have your own domain, you can set it so that your AOL mail is then routed through this address (e.g. example@yourpersonaldomain.com). Additionally, it is possible to add up to 100 people to this domain, meaning that your colleagues, employees, etc. can also all use this domain as their address, too.

Zoho is an email service aimed at both private users and businesses. The free package is therefore aimed at individual users, and while being quite basic, still manages to cover all the major criteria that you might look for in a free email provider.

Zoho, similarly to Microsoft, offers a whole range of software programs. Alongside email, it also offers instant messaging, a writer, calendar, document sharing, as well as several other features. Together these are known as the ‘Zoho Workplace’. The fee-based packages start at around £2.50 a month. The more money you spend on a package, the more storage space you get and the more MBs your attachments can be. Outside of this, you will also have access to additional features as part of the Zoho Workplace.

One major upside of Zoho is that it is completely ad-free. The software seems to pride itself on this fact, stating in the ‘Features’ section of its website that: ‘this means total respect for user privacy as your messages are not scanned for keywords to feed you ads. However, freedom from annoying ads is not the stand-out feature in Zoho Mail’. This in turn provides a certain peace of mind when it comes to security and privacy policy.

In terms of storage space it offers 5 GB space and a maximum email attachment of 20 MB. The storage is all cloud-based and there is also the option of Dropbox integration. Security wise, the software requires two-factor authentication. Fundamentally this is a free email provider, but given that it also has a range of fee-based services, the basic, free of charge version will be restricted in certain ways. Unfortunately, none of the packages offer the possibility of automatically integrating contacts from a social media account or accounts. This must be done manually.

ProtonMail is a great email option for the security-conscious user. It’s an open-source, encrypted providers based in Switzerland. It boasts end-to-end encryption. Its PGP encryption standards are said to be fairly robust.

A free plan includes on email address, but has a limit of up to 150 messages a day to avoid spam. Users do not need to provide much personal information when they sign up for an account.

With a free plan, users get 500MB of storage, which isn’t a lot compared to other providers like Gmail. But users can upgrade to a paid plan if they require more storage space.

A Professional package is available for €6.25 per month. This provides 5GB of storage and priority customer support. The Visionary package is available for €24 per month and boasts up to 20GB in storage and up to six email accounts. ProtonMail also has options for businesses.