1. Gmail
Unique Feature: Native File Collaboration
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: anyone who already uses and loves the rest of Google’s products.
It might seem like an obvious top pick, but Gmail is just too versatile to not award the first slot. Gmail has the second-highest email provider market share (behind Apple iPhone’s native email app), according to Litmus Labs. And ironically, one of the reasons Gmail has become so popular is because of all the communication options in your inbox that don’t involve email.
Gmail is an everyday email inbox you can sign up for by registering for a Google account. But it’s built into Google Suite, a group of free apps that allow you to chat, video-conference, and share files with the people in your contact list.
Google Hangouts, available from your inbox’s left sidebar (or the right — you can customize how you inbox is displayed), lets you text and video chat with other Gmail users for the things that might not warrant an email message. Like most other email accounts today, Gmail also has an intuitive calendar where you can set meetings and reminders.
2. AOL
Unique Feature: Unlimited Storage
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who use email for most of their communication.
America Online (I feel nostalgic just typing those words) has quietly kept up with today’s standards for a good user experience. The classic AOL is now once again one of the best free email accounts available to you.
Purchased by Verizon in 2015, AOL delivers you email from its classic news-driven homepage, and comes with the contemporary spam filters and virus protection you’d expect from your email provider. You can also send text and instant messages from specific windows in your email inbox.
3. Outlook
Unique Feature: Multiple App Integrations
Sign up here.
Type of email: Email client
Who should use it: people who use many different platforms to connect with others.
If you ever cringed at the sight of a “Hotmail.com” email address, you can thank Outlook for this outdated domain name. But there’s good news: Microsoft has reinvented its longstanding email service, and your free Outlook.com email address has many progressive features waiting for you.
4. Zoho
Unique Feature: 25 Business Addresses
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: startups and small businesses.
This is the first of the lesser-known free email accounts to make our list, but it holds a lot of potential for businesses.
The first thing you’ll notice about Zoho is its user-friendliness. From integrating with Google Drive, Box, and other cloud-based file managers, to its built-in task manager, this email service offers a simple way to accomplish all of your daily tasks.
The real difference-maker, though, is the ability to customize the domain name for up to 25 connected email addresses. Want to replace “@zoho.com” with the name of your business’s website? You can do so under Zoho Lite, which gives you 5 GB for free — all under username@yourdomainname.com.
5. Mail.com
Unique Feature: 200 Custom Domain Names
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: small businesses, freelancers, and the self-employed.
It doesn’t get more self-explanatory than “Mail.com,” does it? This email provider knows its audience — or should I say, audiences.
Right off the bat, you’ll probably notice Mail.com doesn’t have stellar storage space compared to the options above: only 2 GB. But what this webmail service lacks in gigabytes it makes up for with … drumroll …200 free custom domain names. You can replace “@mail.com” at the end of your username with just about anything that describes you.
6. Yahoo! Mail
Unique Feature: Media and attachment history
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: creatives and those who send and receive attachments frequently via email.
Yahoo! Mail, another well-known platform, sits just behind AOL in storage space with a whopping 1 TB (that’s a terabyte) for free, along with a few key social media integrations.
7. ProtonMail
Unique Feature: Encrypted email
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who send and receive sensitive information.
ProtonMail offers just 500 MB of free space, but for the worthy trade of encrypted email, allowing you to send messages that nobody else can see, and disappear after a month.
8. iCloud Mail
Unique Feature: Label senders as VIPs
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who use Mac and want everything on one system.
If you’re a Mac user, you may want to consider using iCloud Mail as your email provider. Their free email account comes with 5GB of storage that you can use to sync your photos, files, or email. It’s important to note that storage is shared between all of your apps and devices — so if you take a lot of photos on your iPhone, you may eat into your email storage allowance for the month. Upgraded plans start at $0.99/month and go up to $9.99/month.
9. GMX Mail
Unique Feature: Alias email addresses
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: people who need multiple emails with one central inbox.
While you may not have heard of GMX Mail, it’s been around for quite a while (since 1997) — and it has a bunch of features that make it worth considering. First off, GMX offers 65GB of storage. That’s a lot of storage for a free email service. In fact, they claim that allows you to keep nearly half a million messages in your Inbox!
10. Mozilla Thunderbird
Unique Feature: Customization features, and the ability to open multiple emails in tabs
Sign up here.
Type of email: Email clients
Who should use it: anyone looking for a simple, but customizable email inbox.
Thunderbird, a free email application from Mozilla, known for Firefox, offers a quick email inbox setup and a simple, easy-to-use user interface.
The app offers customizable features, such as theme settings and app extensions that can improve your email experience. The email app also allows you to open multiple emails in tabs, similarly to how you would open multiple web pages in Firefox browsers.
11. Yandex Mail
Unique Feature: 10 GB of free cloud storage
Sign up here.
Type of email: Webmail
Who should use it: anyone seeking a free email with additional storage capabilities.
Yandex is a Russian web company that offers a global email tool. With the tool, you can sign up for a free account, link it to your Facebook, Twitter, or Gmail accounts, and personalize your email inbox.