6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why.

email.jpg

I’m not going to start off like everyone else, saying that we live a time when anybody needs an e-mail address, because technology is advanced, blah, blah, blah… If you’re reading this, you surely have an e-mail address and you know what it’s all about, so I’m not going to explain the principles of electronic communication.

Lately, I’ve seen an explosion of websites that offer e-mail services, just to get some extra visitors, or some recognition, but I myself don’t even bother checking them out, because I think they’re all the same.

If you’re the type of person that likes innovative and diverse things, you might want to read what follows. Each person should have, in my opinion, at least one of the following six e-mail accounts:

Yahoo! Mail

Why?
Because it’s one of the most widely spread e-mail providers out there, and its services are always expanding. Cool interface (which the Yahoo! Mail Beta has made cooler), more than enough space (1.0 GB will suffice, if you only deposit e-mails), lots and lots of other things you can do with your Yahoo! Account.

GMail

Why?
Simple. Because Yahoo! and GMail are the largest rivals out there, and they will always compete for your appreciation, by giving you newer, cooler things. As opposed to Yahoo’s mail system, GMail has the advantage of controlling several e-mail addresses from the same account, a larger storage space (almost 3.0GB; if that doesn’t satisfy you, what will?), and a better interface. The one slight disadvantage is that you can’t register your account directly from the website, you have to be invited by a friend. But don’t worry, there’s bound to be somebody willing to help (if not, ask me and I’ll invite you).


The world’s longest Alphabetical Email Address

Why?
Because it’s funny as hell. Even as they advertise it: everybody will think your e-mail account is bogus; email software cannot be configured; web forms are unable to read your email address; people have a hard time even typing your address. Let’s be honest, it’s not meant to be effective, it’s meant to be funny. And it is. What’s the address, you ask? Let me take a deep breath. Here it goes: http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghijk.com/ . Woah.

10 Minute Mail

Why?
Because it’s simple and very very useful! Did you ever find yourself wanting to register an account somewhere, and that somewhere asked for your e-mail address to confirm something? You know you’re gonna get spammed by doing it, but you don’t have any choice – you need that account now; maybe in ten minutes you won’t, but you will now. That’s where the 10 minute mail comes in handy. Go there, register an account (a random one will be provided), the confirmation will come, and you won’t have any problem registering your account. After that – the e-mail is just deleted, no questions asked. If you still need some time, it can be extended by another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes, for as long as you need.

Goowy

Why?
Because it’s the nicest I’ve seen in a long time. In fact, it’s not only an e-mail service. It’s your own personal online desktop, filled with games, IM, Email, contacts, File Storage, even mini widgets. I’m not going to say any more, hoping that you become curious and check it out yourself. Trust me – it’s worth it!

FreeGabMail

Why?
Because you can easily send videos and audio recordings to all your friends, without having to register an account. Simple design, simple idea.

Well, that’s that. Which one of the above did you like? Which account do you already own? I must confess that I’ve got accounts on all of the above, and all impressed me in some way.

47 Responses to “6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why.”

  1. Alex says:

    Just so you know, today G-Mail was released to the public (that has a cell phone), so if you go to http://mail.google.com you can sign up. The only caveat is that you need a cell phone that gets text messages. I guess they are using that for authentication.

  2. Mark says:

    you should check out PookMail the email address that doesn’t stay longer than 24 hours.

  3. stan says:

    you really need to rid this site of those horrid, useless, blurry popup mouseovers

  4. DaMan says:

    I like tempinbox.com you dont even have to sign-up just fill in any email address (ie. whatever@tempinbox.com) in the website that requires registration
    It will accept mail for any @tempinbox.com address.
    You just go to http://www.tempinbox.com and type in the name you used (ie. whatever) and see your mail.
    Downside is no password but after you get the email you can delete it and no one can see it.

  5. dan says:

    you forget mailinator.com :)

  6. Ron Dotson says:

    I’m appalled that you neglected to mention SPAMEX.COM

    They are by far the best anti-spam service I know of because they let you create, disable/enable, and delete as many email addresses as you want very easily. I have hundreds of valid disposable Spamex.com email address and usually create a unique email address for each of my correspondents so that if I start getting Spam from that address, I know who put me on the Spammers lists and I simply disable or delete that particular email address and never have to worry about getting Spam at that address ever again. Note: I have no affiliation with Spamex except as a happy customer.

  7. Andrew says:

    10 Minute Mail is a poor rip off of Mailinator, which has been doing the disposable-spam-catcher thing for years. The difference is that you don’t have to sign up at Mailinator, send a mail to an address @mailinator.com, and the account is created as soon as the mail reaches their servers. Spam Gourmet is an evolved version which takes a little more set up than Mailinator, but offers superior features to either.

  8. Mike says:

    Stan-
    What pop-ups? Oh, you’re using IE…

  9. Eli says:

    I believe you forgot one of the most significant e-mail servers out there. Hushmail http://www.hushmail.com. 2048-bit encryption and its free.

  10. Etherfast says:

    @stan

    The plugin stays, as it was agreed by the majority of the staff. The popups are not blurry and especially not useless.

    As for the others, thank you for suggesting the rest of the e-mail services. We intend to review them in a future post.

  11. I think FastMail belongs on this list, simply because it is an extremely powerful online e-mail client for your demanding online e-mail needs. It’s forgotten a bit too often in my opinion, maybe because of it’s lack of Ajax ;)

  12. p4r4d0x says:

    Gmail is OPEN to the public now. No need for an invite or cell phone authentication. You might want to edit your story to reflect this so that more people will feel encouraged to use Gmail.

  13. Andy says:

    What about hushmail, the world’s most secure and anonymous webmail?

    http://www.hushmail.com

  14. Ben says:

    Just spend the $99 for a year of .mac mail

    amazing

  15. t3hSmartKid says:

    Gmail plus addressing works too. if your address is “joe@gmail.com” you will get email from “joe+abc@gmail.com” and “joe+***@gmail.com” and anything else after the plus. You can then apply filters to the mail.

  16. Kinjal says:

    I guess advantage of GMAIL over YAHOO is Popup and forwarding as well as ability to manage different account from one account.

    http://www.dodgeit.com is also worth trying to avoide spam.

  17. Pixelbox says:

    No Hotmail?

    I kid, I kid.

  18. Simon Boyd says:

    What about Perthmail.com I had a spam filled account for several years, with a mighty 6mbs of storage, Then they charged us $20 a year. What an experience, i still check it just to see what new spam i have, good news is its free now, but with no support, but just as much crapola arriving daily.

    My main choice of email is Yahoo over hotmail for the simple reason i can “easily” open messages in multiple tabs or windows, any service that does not support this should be shot. Hotmail allows it but is awkward, yahoo seems to be great, the new yahoo mail beta was great but had issues with using backsapce key while typing, this may be browser dependant and only sometimes an issue but it sent me back to the traditional yahoo. I avoid Google as they are too huge and hold too much of your data. and are slowly taking over the world… And thats a bit scary!

  19. Brian S says:

    Two services I’ve been using that’s similar in concept to 10 minute mail, mailinator and pookmail (my previous favorite) are http://www.trashmail.net and http://www.jetable.org. Why these? Because they provide Firefox plugins that create disposable email addresses on the fly. For those wanting fast, disposable emails that redirect to your real account, I recommend giving these a shot.

  20. John says:

    i see nobody’s commented about gabmail. i found it last month when someone sent me one. i’ve used it a lot since then but it’s gabjam that’s intensely cool. it’s more like social networking than email.

  21. tike says:

    i just checked out all the anonymous e-mail services mentioned, and my conclusion is that none of them are as good as the one i already use:

    http://www.2prong.com

    instructions:
    1) go to 2prong.com (new addy generated automagically + copied to clipboard)
    2) use addy to register for whatever
    3) go back to 2prong window. mail pops up as it arrives.

    the implementation is slick as hell, just check it out.

  22. […] 6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why. » Our Picks – News, articles and reviews interesting look at email accounts. (tags: computer accounts email google cool interesting internet) […]

  23. […] A collection of several e-mail services, starting with the old, well-known Yahoo! and GMail, and ending with some that are less known, but far more interesting. Which one do you like best?read more | digg story […]

  24. shind jander says:

    What always amazes me is that major email providers – whether it be hotmail (Microsoft) or your local telephone ISP ( the telephone companies use to be the bearer of high technology) cannot seem to provide levels of service or upgrades like smaller operations who often are in 3rd world countries.
    It used to be the other way around.
    When gmail was introduced with its large capacity , followed by Yahoo it took Microsoft forever and with a lot of problems just to update the capacity of its email boxes.
    It is often better to use one of these 3rd parties.

  25. LEMONed says:

    what about an @cia.com mail? :D

    http://www.cia.com

  26. divsh says:

    just yahoo and gmail are the email services to choose from and rest described here sounds of no use. the one of 10 min email sounds the most bogus, 10 min too less a time to make use of an volatile email id.

  27. Zoran Juric says:

    Alternative: http://mail2rss.org

  28. Mike says:

    “http://www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz abcdefghijk.com/” is not an email address, it is a URL.

  29. Juan GT says:

    http://dodgeit.com/ free recieve only mail to any address you want… without even having created it…

    just go spamming-site-a@dodgeit.com and just check them lata

  30. John says:

    I like http://spammotel.com for disposable emails. They offer email that will not expire and great management of your account/disposable emails.

    I also like gmail’s +identifier feature. For example, you can use your.gmail+our-picks@gmail.com to create a relationship to manage your gmail inbox.

    Yahoo has a better mail service than google though.

  31. Ben says:

    I use German provider gmx.de for my static and personal mailadress. It’s good for webmail and 2GB storage as well. 10 Minute Mail is for absolute bogus adresses and i might give Spamex.com (or one of the others mentioned here) a try.

    But what i would realy like is an invitation for GMail. Where I live (the Netherlands) it’s still the only way to get on that wagon.

  32. kNox says:

    The GMail issue can be solved, Ben, just give me an e-mail :)

  33. […] 6 email accounts worth having, and why […]

  34. Vizstik says:

    I mostly use http://www.nospamfor.us, works great.
    Displays mail much beter.

    Grtz

  35. SforU.com says:

    What about a 30 GigaByte Mailbox

    at http://www.30gigs.com

    ——————–
    SforU.com
    NotChrysler.com
    GamesCheatForums.com

  36. […] 6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why. » Our Picks – News, articles and reviews Posted in bookmarks | Trackback | del.icio.us […]

  37. […] 6 E-mail accounts worth having, and why […]

  38. Steve Case says:

    I like tempinbox, but I found a site that lets you send mail to an address before it is created:
    http://www.buyusedlibrarybooks.org/

  39. Tom C. says:

    I use a new application called SnapBuild – http://www.snapbuild.com – awesome application, very secure & reliable.

  40. Leroy Roa says:

    This one makes sence “One’s first step in wisdom is to kuesstion everything – and one’s last is to come to terms with everything.”

  41. warren says:

    goowy isn’t accepting any new members. sir, you are a tease.

  42. john p lamore says:

    We are no longer accepting registrations for the goowy webtop client. If you have an existing account you will still be able to log in and use the service however we intend to migrate our goowy webtop to the AOL webmail client over the next 60 days. We will have more details on this shortly. Thanks for your understanding and support.

  43. john p lamore says:

    this sucks AOL Sucks

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