Why is paid mail better than free.

Let's start with what I mean by medium business. I do not know the exact classification and have not looked or checked anywhere. It seems to me intuitively that this is from 10-15 users to 200-300. I will consider the segment up to 100 users, since almost all the time I work exclusively in this niche. The problems and needs of larger companies are not reliably known to me. Although I'm not sure that something will be fundamentally different from 100 people, I think the approaches will be the same, only the hardware is more powerful. Problems of load distribution and clustering here most likely will not arise yet.

We have a small company for several dozen people. We need a mail server. Despite the fact that technology has stepped forward a long time ago, providing a lot of all kinds of communication means, e-mail is still firmly in its positions and is not going to give them up yet. At the same time, in such a small team, they do not impose great demands on the mail server. More often than not, it is enough for the mail to simply work, without any special functional delights. Either a mail client and imap protocol, or a web interface will suffice. It's good if you can set up an auto-reply, create shared folders, a single address book, but you can live without it.

Among all the possible options for the mail service, I single out 3 fundamentally different approaches to the implementation of the necessary functionality:

  1. Services based on free Google, Yandex or mail services.
  2. Your own mail server based on free software.
  3. Exchange server from Microsoft.

Let's take a closer look at each of them.

Free mail from google, yandex and mail.ru

I’ll make a couple of comments right away. I'm not sure if you can register corporate mail for free with Google now. Everyone who signed up before can use it for free, and only paid subscriptions are now available for new users. But this is not fundamental and does not directly relate to the topic of the article. If Google has become completely paid for business, then we will simply exclude it from our list. Yandex and Mail.ru are still definitely free. I myself administered mail domains in google apps and in Yandex. I didn't work with biz.mail.ru, only I know that something similar is implemented there. Somehow I don't like the company itself since the old days. Although now they seem to have turned to face the users, but Amigo is still alive and well, so they have not turned completely yet.

Let's consider the advantages of these mail services.

  1. The most important advantage is that a full-fledged mail is ready immediately after registration. There are no costs for buying hardware and setting up... A more or less advanced user who, according to the instructions on the site, will be able to connect a domain and create mailboxes is enough. And the mail can already be used.
  2. Easy to administer and manage users, the web service provides all the necessary equipment for this. They are convenient and intuitive (although not always) understandable.
  3. Convenient and familiar web interface... Everything works quickly, from anywhere with the Internet and a browser. There is a good mobile application.
  4. Wide functionality ready right after creating the box. Various filters, mail collectors, good anti-spam (from Google) and much more.

Like everything, missed nothing. It would seem that the advantages are obvious and significant. But before drawing conclusions, consider the cons.

  1. You are not in control of this mail. It doesn't belong to you is not on your servers. You don't know what's going on with her. If you have a very delicate and private correspondence, then suspicions and doubts arise about the use of popular postal services. It may sound paranoid, but this is a real concern for users and business owners and should not be dismissed.
  2. You are not immune from system failures and cannot prevent them in any way. And failures, although not often, do happen. Since the services are free, no one will guarantee you anything... And if some kind of force majeure happens and the data disappears, they will simply say sorry to you. If your own IT structure is not very reliable, the likelihood of technical problems on your personal server will probably be higher. But you can control this and theoretically you can build a system with a level of reliability that satisfies you.
  3. Backup methods are not obvious and recovery of mailboxes in such services. There are situations when all letters are deleted from the mailbox. Let's say you can save them in various ways, just by downloading, and then how to return them back to the box, keeping all the dates original?
  4. There is no way to analyze incomprehensible situations. For example, you send a letter, but it does not arrive at the addressee. What to do? In the case of cloud mail, you will not do anything, since you do not have any tools to analyze the situation. Just try to send a letter from another mailbox. Sometimes a letter does not come to you, and you cannot understand in any way why it is not there. And it can be trivial in an incorrectly configured filter. This is a common situation when there are many filters, plus if some other forwardings are configured. It can be difficult to understand the situation without access to the server logs.... And if there is a mail server log, then it immediately becomes clear why the letter is not sent, or what happened to it after receiving it. You can probably find out if the remote server received your letter or not.
  5. There are no easy ways restrict access to mailboxes, for example, only from the local network of the office. Public service mailboxes are always available via the Internet. It is possible to solve this problem in google apps through authorization in third-party services. In Yandex and mail, I have not seen an opportunity to implement such functionality.
  6. You also need to understand that free cheese is known where it is... It is not completely clear how postal services use the information received from users. Well, if only to show them relevant ads. I think not only for this.

When I first started working about 10 years ago, there was no question of which mail to use in the organization. All set up their mail servers and administer them. At that time, free mail services did not provide any tools for business to manage mail. When such tools began to appear, I thought that soon no one would need their mail servers, since they would no longer make sense. And all my torment (I don't like working with them) with mail servers will become meaningless.

I was given the opportunity to administer domains based on public mail services. After that, the list of minuses written above appeared. And for me personally, these disadvantages outweighed the pros, and now I still configure mail servers myself. Ultimately, it is more convenient and reliable when considered together the pros and cons of use and administration.

The biggest disadvantage I see is the lack of full-fledged mail logs and a good backup scheme. It is inconvenient to analyze problems without logs. It will not be possible to quickly and easily restore a deleted message to its original location, although for open source mail servers this is a simple matter.

Free software based mail server

Let's consider the advantages and disadvantages of your own mail server based on free software. In principle, some paid ones can also be attributed here, for example Kerio Mail Server, which is also often used. I think it can also be attributed here, since it provides similar functionality. I am considering all mail servers in aggregate, without highlighting individual representatives. Although in Linux, apart from postfix and exim, I personally have not seen anything in production. I always use postfix myself, as I am used to it and know it well. Let's take a closer look at the advantages of such servers.

  1. You have complete control over all information that comes by mail and is stored on your server. You can restrict access to mail at your discretion by various technical means. You can centrally configure the rules for deleting, for example, private information in letters, according to various criteria that you yourself can set.
  2. The level of availability of the mail service depends only on you. With the right approach, you can provide the reliability you want system operation.
  3. Flexible backup system. There are a lot of funds for its organization, including free ones. It all depends only on your needs, skills and capabilities. You can store various slices by dates, by mailboxes, by domains, organize any suitable scheme.
  4. Almost unlimited functionality... Within reasonable limits, of course :) You can create mailboxes with the possibility of only local correspondence, you can centrally manage the receipt and sending of mail, maintain your own white and black lists. You can configure various restrictions for mailboxes and domains. You can easily centrally manage duplicate mail of the required mailboxes, do all kinds of forwarding and much more.
  5. All server monitoring tools are in your hands. You can deal with any incomprehensible situation with the mail server logs in hand. This service is well logged. I almost never had any problems when it was not clear where the letter went. Most often, traces are found and one can unequivocally say what happened to the letter.
  1. Necessary buy or rent equipment to organize your mail server. In the case of a Linux server, the performance requirements will be small. I usually have enough virtual machines for 4 cores and 4 GB of RAM. Much more important is the disk subsystem. Here, the faster the disks, the better. Don't forget about backup. It also needs hardware resources.
  2. Setting up a full-fledged, multifunctional mail server requires at least average knowledge of linux system administration. That is, just an admin-enikey will not work here. Need a specialist with experience... He should have a decent salary. If there is no such admin on the staff, I recommend hiring someone for a one-time setup job. Most often, after setting up, no special work on maintaining the server is required if you do not change the functionality. It is enough just to keep track of free disk space and manage mailboxes via the web panel.
  3. Convenience of work through the web interface will be lower than free postal services. Whatever one may say, but the same gmail is implemented very conveniently. Quick search, filters, sorting, tags, etc. It's really convenient. I am very used to it and cannot use anything else.

I see such disadvantages of my mail service. The most significant for me is the last one. I myself am used to working with mail via the web. I don't like to use email clients, although I have to. Web interfaces to free mail servers are far from gmail or Yandex in terms of convenience and speed, it makes no sense to compare. Nevertheless, I believe that this is the most optimal option for an average organization.

Pros and cons of Microsoft Exchange Server

I don't have much experience in administering exchange. I tested it a long time ago when I was deciding which mail servers I would work with. I installed and studied the functionality. Then I once set up a mail server for the organization. They wanted exactly exchange. There were no problems, I quickly set up on numerous guides on the Internet. The threshold for entering the exchange mail server customizers is very low. Even an enikey can handle the basic functionality.

For medium-sized organizations, I consider common calendars to be really useful and difficult to replace functionality. And, of course, the convenience of integrating with AD, if any. And most often there is AD, since I cannot imagine administering a network for more than 20-30 people without Active Directory. I think that it makes no sense to save money and you need to buy Microsoft Server.

Let's now look at the pros and cons of Microsoft Exchange Server. I warn you again, just in case. I am telling only my vision, there is little experience with the server, so I would like to receive comments on it myself in the comments in order to have a more adequate assessment of this system. Exchange Pros:

  1. Great functionality with relative ease of setup. Deploy a server with basic functionality for any admin. Moreover, this basic functionality may be more than that of any assembly under Linux.
  2. Integration with Active Directory... You create a new user account and the mailbox is immediately ready for him. No special settings are needed if the user has Microsoft Outlook. The connection to the server is configured in a few mouse clicks.
  3. Comfortable administration tools in the form of ready-made snap-ins of Windows Server. Everything here is traditional for solutions from Microsoft.

The cons of Exchange Server are the same as the pros for most Microsoft products:

  1. Price, price and price again... Microsoft Exchange Server is expensive. It is necessary to count and figure out whether it will be justified to acquire it. To use all the built-in functionality, you will need to buy a Microsoft Office edition with an outlook for each workplace. These are additional costs.
  2. Good performance requires much more powerful iron, compared to Linux servers. And to support large mailboxes, for example, 50 gigabytes, you need very powerful hardware. Although such boxes for the same dovecot do not present any particular problems. In exchange, you will most likely use quotas to limit the maximum mailbox size.
  3. For a backup, you will most likely have to also purchase decent hardware and paid software... Here I just assume, I really don't know what is needed for a convenient exchange backup. I know paid software from popular vendors. Perhaps there is something free.

My conclusion on Exchange Server is that it is good in almost everything, except for the price. If it was free, I would most likely use it. For quite objective reasons, this is impossible. Good and convenient software does not appear by itself. You need to create it, and on this you need to spend the funds that you want to return with a profit.

As of today, given the cost of Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office, I do not use these Microsoft products. Few are willing to shell out the required amount for a mail server. I would like to take a closer look at Exchange in real conditions, at least 60-80 people, in order to evaluate this server more objectively. But so far such an opportunity has not presented itself.

Conclusion

Let me summarize my reasoning about a mail server for a small average organization. Although the conclusion, I think, is already clear. I myself prefer the second option I described - a mail server based on free software on linux. But I would not discount the other two options. Free mail from public services will be uniquely convenient for a very small team - for 10-15 people. There is no point in fencing your server for such a number.

I would recommend using Exchange Server if you have one and don't mind spending money on its purchase. The product is unambiguously convenient, functional and easy to configure and administer. In simple terms, you need to understand that this is conditional. The configurations can be very complex, but in this case I am considering the entry level.

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What is a paid mailbox for, and is it needed at all? Many users use standard e-mail every day without feeling any problems, discomfort or inconvenience. But if you plan to work with serious services, online stores, payment systems, auctions and marketplaces, then a beautiful and personal mailbox will add credibility to you. Judge for yourself, if the company has a website biznes.com, and for correspondence with partners uses a postal address like [email protected], then it looks much more solid than a standard address like - [email protected]

A paid mailbox has many advantages over standard free services, of which there are now a huge number. First is prestige. If you have your own personal address, it is beautiful, informative, then this is a big plus for your partners. And no matter what you do, buy products on eBay, or offer your services to other network users. A paid mailbox is an opportunity to stand out, make yourself recognizable, unique, secure your correspondence and personal data. What are the other benefits of paid mailboxes? Let's take a closer look at them.

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Mailbox as your identity

If you want to create a mailbox like [email protected] then, as a rule, you will need to identify yourself. To do this, I can ask you for scanned copies of documents (passport, driving license, birth certificate, etc.).

Very often, such mailboxes can be allocated to their employees by employers, mobile operator subscribers, or various Internet companies and providers to their customers, and it is also possible to pay for the creation of such a mailbox by the user himself. It doesn't matter where you get such a mailbox, but the fact remains - in any case, your identity will be identified. Anonymously get a box like [email protected] will not work.

Many Internet companies, online auctions and shops know that if their client has a mailing address [email protected] then it is identified. And as a result of any disputable situation, you can contact the company that issued the postal address and request the user's personal data.

Sellers on eBay, or other online auctions, don't always ship items to buyers. It so happens that this or that person raises doubts, and the seller decides to play it safe by refusing to sell. If you have a good email address that identifies you as a person, then this is a big plus. The reliability in the eyes of the seller will increase and the chances of rejection will be significantly reduced.

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If you work with payment systems such as PayPal, the security service also looks at your email address. Of course, many people use standard mailboxes, and there are no problems, but if you want to minimize the possibility of freezing the wallet until the circumstances are clarified, then we recommend using paid mailboxes. All the same, it was noticed that the PayPal security service is more loyal to those accounts that have a contact address such as [email protected].

Also, a paid mailbox can play into your hands when selling at various online auctions. It's clear that if you have a huge number of reviews and a good reputation, then it doesn't matter what email you use. But not everyone can boast of such statistics. Therefore, a young seller will benefit from his unique email address. Buyers are more trusting in those who do not use well-known mail services, those who do not regret a couple of dollars a year in order to secure their correspondence and receive a unique email.

I would like to note that many well-known payment systems (for example or) use email as an account identifier. Believe me, the buyer will be much safer if, upon payment, he sees that the money is being transferred to an account that has the same login as your login at the online auction. This is a big plus for trust.

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A paid mailbox is especially relevant for CIS residents. In our countries, online fraud is at a fairly high level. And if sellers still send goods to buyers from Russia and Ukraine, then buyers are not willing to work with our people, treating them more than wary.

Simply and bluntly, a postal address like [email protected], will give you a plus in the form of respectability. We all remember the saying - "They are greeted by their clothes, escorted by their minds." It is these clothes that can become an e-mail address, which will be information about you, your goods and services (if you act as a seller).

According to statistics, the number of scammers is much lower among those users who use paid mailboxes. As a rule, scammers choose free services, to which the address can be obtained in a matter of minutes without any identity confirmation.

Paid mailbox will save you from advertising

If you use free email services, you may have noticed that the system adds ads at the end of each letter. This is an automatic feature and cannot be disabled. You can ignore it if you are in correspondence with a friend or acquaintance. But if you send a serious business proposal, offer cooperation, advertise yourself and the services of your company, then the prefix at the end of the letter is like “Buy toilet paper at good prices on the site - popa.ru. Discounts for Wholesalers ”may cause a lot of bewilderment for your potential partner. Prestige is what should concern you in business correspondence. And free mail services will not provide you with it.

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Less spam means fewer problems

Very often users of free mailboxes are faced with the problem of spam. It happens that you do not go to the post office for a couple of days, and in the spam folder there are already more than half a hundred letters. And everyone would be fine if a random letter from a colleague or business partner could get lost in this pile of unnecessary information.

Paid mailboxes solve this problem almost completely. Of course, no one will protect you 100% from spam, but it is quite possible to reduce its flow several times. Now not a single letter will be lost, and even if you go on vacation for a week, then you will not have to sort through hundreds of junk letters, looking for something useful and useful among them.

So, you have read everything that we described above. Firmly and finally decided for yourself that you need a paid mailbox. Now the question arises - where and how to register it? And most importantly, how not to overpay for a mailbox, we will buy a minimum of functionality for a maximum of money.

  1. You register your domain, hang it on the hosting, and you can create an unlimited number of mail addresses that will have your domain at the end .. We can create as many mail addresses as we want. For partners, address -, for clients -, for advice, recommendation and questions -

This is how you can do it. Choose a suitable domain name, and then it’s a matter of imagination and needs.

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  1. Such email addresses can be obtained from your internet service provider. Only here, most likely, you will be limited to one or two selected addresses. Yes, and you will use a mailing address with the domain name of your provider. But it's free. All that remains is to pay for the services of using the Internet.
  2. The third option is to rent a mailbox from various services that provide this service. Better to turn to foreign services. You are going to work with foreign online stores and auctions, and sellers will have more confidence in postal services from the USA or Europe.

And at the end of this article, I would like to give a few more tips to help you get the most out of your paid mailbox.

  1. If you are going to sell or buy goods at various online auctions, we recommend using your own name for the mailbox. Write it as indicated in your foreign passport, or on an international payment card. It is advisable to use the same name when registering for all kinds of services, where you need to specify an email address.
  2. It is very profitable to register your domain name and hang it on the cheapest hosting. It will not cost so much, but you can create an unlimited number of mailing addresses for any of your needs.
  3. For each purpose, for each group of addressees, use a different email address. We showed how to do this above using the example of the email addresses of our website.

That, perhaps, is all that we wanted to tell within the framework of this article. If you still have any questions or comments regarding paid mailboxes, then ask them in the comments, and we will try to answer them as quickly and accurately as possible.

It is usually quite difficult for a person who is accustomed to some free service to explain why he should stop using it and switch to another, paid one. Especially if the benefits of a paid service are not so obvious. Owners of online resources with free and premium services, startups, online monetizers and SaaS service providers solve this serious problem every day.

Faced with it at work, we thought about what arguments can be made in favor of paid business mail and how to explain to small and medium-sized businesses why it is better for them to abandon the inconsistency of work addresses on free mail and purchase business mail.

Perhaps, the arguments and arguments we have listed will help you (and us) attract new customers, hold a presentation or training, and at least slightly promote business mail “to the people”. It is enough just to break the mass stereotype, and there will be enough space for everyone on the market.

So, why is paid mail better than free mail?

Before starting the story, you need to make a reservation that we are talking about business mail. This is what Microsoft prefers to call Exchange, hosted at the supplier's facilities, which, in turn, already provides services to end users. Undoubtedly, there are other platforms, somewhere better, and somewhere worse than Microsoft Exchange, but the fact that this is the most massive mail solution is obvious.
These are the main, in our opinion, the advantages of business mail.

Your domain... Any company, even if it has two employees, wants to look solid and trustworthy in the eyes of its customers. Such an image is seriously hampered by mail on free mail hosting services such as Mail.Ru or Yandex, with all due respect to these services. They are perfect for personal correspondence. For a worker, they are not suitable at all, below we give several reasons in favor of this conclusion. Accordingly, it is easy to connect an existing or a new domain to business mail on Hosted Exchange Server, and mail to customers will come from a domain name that matches the name of the company, trademark or other identifier inherent only to you and no one else.

Unified interface. Most people use Microsoft products in their daily work, know their interface and consider it familiar. In all more or less fresh Microsoft applications, a single interface organization is maintained, with tabs and active-inactive elements on them. In paid mail, built on Exchange Server, the web interface is built on the same principle. In addition, nothing prevents you from "screwing" mail into your usual Outlook or any other mail client.

It is convenient to read from the phone. Most modern smartphones, including the iPhone, can work with business mail right out of the box, just enter the required passwords and attendances into the fields. There is no need to install additional applications, the interface is familiar, everything looks almost like on a computer.

Shared tasks, calendars and contacts. As for free systems, there is no such functionality, or it is distributed among different services. Google has a similar integration, but transferring such mail to your domain costs money and, moreover, is noticeably time consuming. In business mail, tasks and calendars are intelligently linked, and if synchronization with a mobile device is configured, appointments, for example, automatically fall into the "regular" phone calendar directly from the mail client.

And finally, the main trump card. Advanced customization options. Free external mail simply doesn't have the features that are important to work for a company. More precisely, a specially appointed person cannot manage all the mailboxes (at least, without the application of titanic efforts like collecting passwords from all and trying to link Mail.Ru, Yandex and Google together with less popular services together). With regular business email, you can set up mailing lists, filter messages from unwanted and unwanted addresses, and regulate changes and deletions. Conflicting situations or even requiring the intervention of the relevant authorities can occur in almost any company. In this case, the correspondence can be viewed and act as a source of both defense and attack. It is not so easy to delete emails after the fact, for example, to hide something.

There may soon be more reasons to favor paid business email over free. Then we will write another post.

Finally disclaimer... Yes, we sell business mail services, as do many other providers. And in terms of its capabilities, mail built on Exchange Server is the same for everyone. The difference lies in the technology platform on which everything is implemented and the level of service. We will also write about this, but a little later. Now we are talking about business mail in general, not necessarily ours.

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Spam, advertisements, an invitation to a new online game, an electronics store promotion, an assignment from the boss, photos from a family holiday - it seems that they have nothing in common. But this is exactly what the "Inbox" folder of a regular email account looks like. Many people recommend using two accounts: work (for business correspondence) and personal (for everything else). But what if you just use Services mail is it more optimal?

Temporary mail

Sometimes you have to register on some site that you plan to visit only once or twice. Without this, you cannot access the information or file that you need so badly. But after registering, you find that your mailbox is full of spam, ads and other nonsense. You can spend time unsubscribing from notifications and filtering settings, but it's easier to use a temporary email address.

Dropmail

The address is valid indefinitely, but only until the user refreshes the page. But even if you accidentally closed the tab or hit F5, don't worry. The service makes it possible to return access to previous addresses:


  • Unlimited disposable boxes.
  • The ability to restore access.
  • Forwarding incoming to another address.
  • Multilingual.
  • Bots for Telegram and Viber.
  • You cannot send messages.
  • Incoming from all addresses go to one folder.
  • The address is tied to the browser tab.
  • Blocked by most filters.

Crazymailing

To access the full functionality, you will have to register using any social network: Twitter, VK, Google+. After that, in addition to temporary mail, you will be able to send messages and simultaneously use up to 10 emails. Each address has an individual expiration date and message folders. Regular user can add 10 minutes per click, registered user can add 30 minutes. Maximum time email service does not limit.

  • Unlimited time extension.
  • Sending messages.
  • Forwarding letters to real email.
  • Support for Russian and English languages.
  • Extension for Google Chrome.
  • 10 addresses for 1 account.
  • Full functionality only after registration.
  • Mail cannot be recovered.
  • Messages are sent with a long delay.
  • The maximum file size you can send is 10 megabytes.

Mohmal

You can choose a random name or come up with one yourself. This allows you to give other people an address that is not random letters and numbers. The action time is static - 46 minutes, which can be reset to its original value any number of times.

  • Choosing an email name.
  • Multilingual.
  • Ergonomic design.
  • There are no additional mailboxes.
  • No forwarding.
  • It is necessary to continually lengthen the time.

Minuteinbox

Best postal service among temporary ones, if you know English at least at a basic level. The main feature is the customization of the working time.

In theory, this box can be used as a permanent one if the validity time is updated once a month. Each incoming message can be downloaded to your computer and opened with any mail program: Microsoft Outlook, The Bat !, Lotus Notes, and so on.

  • Long duration of action.
  • Convenient interface.
  • There is no Russian language.
  • No forwarding.

Permanent email account

To register basic accounts in social networks and online stores, to communicate with friends and acquaintances, and so on, it is better to use permanent mail. This allows you to easily restore access to your accounts if you forgot your password, and to receive up-to-date information about discounts and promotions. There are a huge number of such services, so users prefer most popular postage Services for registration. Consider the most common domestic and foreign services.

Domestic services

At the moment it is the most popular email service in the CIS. At the beginning of 2018, more than 20 million people used its services. To create an account, you must specify:

  • Name and surname. It is better to use real data so that later there will be no problems with password recovery.
  • Date of birth. Better real.
  • Desired account name.
  • Password.
  • The current phone number that will need to be confirmed.

If we talk about security, then the user can set up two-factor authentication and bind an additional mailbox, which will also receive confirmation messages.

The interface has not changed since 2006, but just recently, on June 20, 2018, the Mail.ru team prepared a global update.

It is still in beta testing, but is already available for users at new.mail.ru. In addition to the new interface, the developers added a neural network to protect the account, the ability to pay fines from the traffic police, the Smart Groups system, which automatically sorts all incoming.

  • Simple and user-friendly interface.
  • Multilingual.
  • Cloud storage and unlimited email storage.
  • Other email services allow you to use your Mail.ru account as an additional one.
  • Advertising and spam filters easily.
  • Messages may arrive late.
  • You cannot register without a phone number.
  • Some letters are automatically sent to the "Spam" folder, even if there is no objective reason for this.

The pros and cons are related to the old version, which will be changed soon. With the full release of the update, the information will be edited.

Yandex Mail

The second most popular postal service in the CIS. Registration is no different from Mail.ru. Of the features, we highlight the ability to fully customize the interface for ourselves - from the background to the location of buttons and folders on the page. Reliable email with good automatic filtering and sorting of incoming messages.

  • Fine-tuning the interface.
  • Timeline for searching emails.
  • Good spam protection.
  • The mailbox size is limited (for new users - 10 gigabytes).
  • A telephone is required for registration.
  • The interface looks a little outdated.

"Email retirees"

In the past, these were popular postal services used by millions of people. But at the moment they are morally and functionally outdated, which makes their use irrational. The decline in activity fell on 2010-2014, so the interface in 99% of cases has not changed since those years. These include:

  • Ukr.net.
  • Rambler mail.
  • MetaMail.

If you have a mailbox from this list, we recommend creating a new one (on a different, more modern service) and setting up forwarding of all incoming messages to it. Otherwise, you risk losing all information if the service ceases to exist.

Foreign postal services

International postal services are quite different from domestic ones. In the beginning it is not so noticeable, but after a few months you can already feel the difference. Especially when it comes to security and privacy. Let's look at specific examples.

A Gmail account is access to all Google programs and services. The possibilities and advantages of such an account are so extensive that they deserve a separate article. Therefore, we will focus only on the e-mail box.

The standard interface is quite user-friendly, but you can always customize it as you see fit. Registration is standard, but the phone number can be omitted, which simplifies the registration process several times. After that, you get 20 gigabytes of cloud storage and unlimited mail space.

Gmail's security is very high. If there is any suspicion that the mail is not being used by the owner, the service sends a notification and asks for confirmation. It sounds like paranoia, but given the close relationship of the account with all Google services, these are quite adequate precautions. For maximum security, it is advisable to enable two-factor authentication and configure an additional box for password recovery.

  • Safety.
  • Precise filtering of spam and ads.
  • Support for over 80 languages.
  • Quick registration on most sites through a Gmail account.
  • Nobody likes Google+.
  • In the mobile application, notifications may be delayed.

If you need mail for important personal matters, feel free to use Gmail. It is by far the best service in terms of reliability and functionality.

Hotmail (Outlook)

Hotmail was a free email service with over 350 million users. In the early 2000s, Microsoft bought out Hotmail, and after 2012 it became an Outlook service.

A beta switch was added in 2017 to allow users to test an upcoming change in Outlook Mail. The updated version has faster mailing, more ergonomic interface and the ability to search by Emoji.

  • Poor spam filtering.
  • The mobile application is unstable.

Elite mailbox

When registering an email with a regular service, you can choose only a login, not a domain name. No, there is a certain choice, but it is limited to 3-4 options. For example, let's say you decided to create an account in Outlook. Then the address of your mailbox will be:

If you choose the right username, the address looks good. But think about how many accounts in the world with the domain name "@ hotmail.com" or "@ outlook.com". Thinking? Okay, now imagine that you are the only person in the world with such a domain. Your messages will be immediately recognized, your email address is difficult to enter incorrectly, and you want to do business with you. How do you get a unique box?

The process itself is simple, but such an email will cost money. In most cases paid mail services are used to create corporate (business) mail, but you can also for personal use. Paid accounts are free of ads, spam is reliably blocked, and security is at the highest level. The only drawback inherent in most paid services is the lack of the Russian language.

We will not consider G Suite, Yandex.Mail for Domain and other services that require the user to have their own domain, to which the mail will be linked.

1and1

The most famous paid mail with millions of users. Provides services at several rates, the cheapest is $ 1 per month for the first year of use. For this money, you get your own domain name, as well as 2 gigabytes of space for letters.

  • Simple registration.
  • Convenient interface.
  • 24/7 support.
  • There is no advertising and spam.
  • In a year, the cost of the service will increase significantly.
  • There is no Russian language.

Fastmail

Leads top mail services with paid registration. You can choose from more than 40 domain names for $ 3 per month or your own - for $ 5 per month. It is more expensive than other services, but there is a monthly Trial version.

  • There is no Russian language.
  • High price.

Runbox

Norwegian email launched in 2013. The data centers are located in Norway, which guarantees the non-disclosure of personal data by the service. An excellent choice if you work with confidential documents and / or information. You can pay only for an annual subscription - from $ 20 for a regular account (1 gigabyte for mail, domain only from the list) to $ 80 (25 gigabytes for mail, any email address, up to 25 boxes per account).

  • Security and privacy.
  • Monthly Trial version.
  • Wide functionality.
  • Convenient interface.
  • There is no monthly payment.
  • There is no Russian language.

In this article, we examined more than 10 email services. Some are better, some are worse, but they are all reliable and trusted mailboxes with an audience of millions. If you need an e-mail box, you can choose any one, but we advise:

  1. Dropmail.me - temporary mail for registration.
  2. Gmail.com is a free mail account that covers all Google services.
  3. Fastmail.com is a paid e-mail box for working and transmitting important information.