POP3 or Webmail?

I am writing this more as a review and a short story rather than a survey, despite the question mark in the title. Along the years, I was put in the position of using many mail software applications, from the early versions of the classic Outlook Express to the useless-featured IncrediMail. However, I had a computer at that time that was the best source of troubles I have ever seen. Everything was going down so fast, and despite my backups, I was losing my e-mails, contacts and important information. I was living in an era when CD-RW’s were highly expensive, and my internet connection was dial-upped. My ISP was providing a 1MB e-mail address and I thought that’s more than enough for what I needed. Anyway, enough with the story. I’m trying to evidence the ups and downs of the POP3 compared to the webmail.

If I would have been asked this years back, I would have taken a strong moral stand in favor of POP3 because it seemed like the best option, unlimited space (I had most of my HDD to extend to), offline browsing (dial-up access was a luxury) and I could customize my client just the way I liked it. I had about 20 filters against spam, even if I was receiving about 5 e-mails/week and just a few more spam messages. Like I was saying, despite of the fact that I was losing my mails regularly due formatting, viruses and such, I still was a fan of OE and other POP3 applications.

On the other hand, today, when you are subscribed to so many forums, registered on so many websites and talking on so many e-mailing lists, the 1MB storage space would have been too little. Luckily, they all realized that and increased the storage space over time. Another important aspect is mobility and I got to realize that as soon as I needed to access the Internet from somewhere else (work, school, friends), but I also needed my e-mails. *poof*. Suddenly, the whole webmail alternative wasn’t looking so bad.

And then, there was the breaking of the dotcom bubble, and Yahoo launched it’s webmail service. I was like.. “Wow, I could access this from everywhere. And look, I’ve got 4MB to store my e-mails.” Along came Gmail, in 2004 with its practically unlimited storage space and with its features, and we’ve been unseparated since.

Today, I chose Google’s webmail as primary e-mail feature, because I can redirect all of my addresses to a single place, because I can take e-mails with me everywhere (even on my mobile phone), because practically in 3 years I haven’t lost a single e-mail and because the quality of service is one of the highest. Overall, I’m eagerly awaiting the moment when they will allow all of the users to retrieve e-mails from another POP3 server.

This is just about it. These being said, I’d like to hear your opinions and comments, along with an answer for the question in the title.

Featured tags: mail pop3 reviews

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Posted in Internet, Software, Reviews by Bogdan Boghiu