email a/c - do you have a favourite?

fitzroy

I want to ditch my hotmail a/c which I've had for 12 years but the service is not so good these days and junk mail is finding it's way into my inbox.

victor2

gmail seems to be pretty good, but you'll get spam whoever you use once you start registering the email address with websites.
If you want to have more control, and possibly a more memorable email address, register your own domain and you can have whatever name you like in front of the @. You can also set up forwarders so that you register on websites with a unique address, such as [EMAIL="mse@mydomain.co.uk"]mse@mydomain.co.uk[/EMAIL]. Then if you start getting junk to that address you can just delete it and you'll know where it initially came from.
Doesn't cost a lot to register a domain with email support, and most services come with webmail. Plus because you're paying, you don't usually get bombarded with adverts in the webmail interface.:)

oldagetraveller

I closed my Hotmail account for the specific reason of "junk" and "phishing". Totally inundated with the stuff.
I've used Yahoo Mail for some months since and not received anything other than expected messages.

Katexx

I've used Gmail with no problems pretty much since it was started. I get plenty of spam but it almost always goes to my spam/junk folder...maybe 1 in 200 spam emails get through to my inbox (probably less than that) and it's easy enough to click 'spam' and further ones from them get redirected after that.

paddyrg

+1 for GMail - you swap your privacy for services effectively, as you get targetted ads in a column at the side of your email.

It is, however a great email system - you will take a few days getting used to not having folders but finding you can simply search on keywords in your emails like any other web search is a revelation. You can use labels much as you'd use folders, except an email can be labelled several ways with several labels, plus stars, importance, etc. It is worth exploring.

The spam filter is excellent and always bang up to date. I get so few spam mails it's no longer an issue.

Best of all is the 'Priority Inbox' - again you'll take some time getting used to it but it *learns* what is important to you, and presents you with a mailbox split into things it thinks were important and unread, stuff you think is worth starring/marking as stuff to do later, drafts, and everything else (excluding spam). It is brilliant - takes some getting used to, but if you use priority mailbox you'll find you're not bothered so much by stuff you don't care about, your phone doesn't ping each time you get some newsletter, life is generally quieter and better.

HeadAboveWater

Love my gmail account

Yahoo has served me well in the years too, although starting to get more spam with entering comps. With yahoo you can create 'disposable' email addresses which is a nifty feature. Use this to sign up for stuff, and when you start getting too much junk, just delete the email address.

pinkteapot

I have a paid-for account with Fastmail, which costs $20 per year (around £12-15 per year depending on the exchange rate):

https://www.fastmail.fm/mail/personal.html

Found them excellent for several years now and I still get virtually no spam - the filters are really good.

I started paying for my email account because at the time the free providers didn't give you IMAP access, which I like to have. I'm considering switching to Gmail as it has IMAP but I've been with Fastmail for ages now and like them and the cost is minimal.

Notmyrealname

GMX.com. Don't get all the hassle from forums who don't accept signups from Hotmail/Yahoo/Gmail accounts.

Stooby2

I have a yahoo account that I use for signing up to stuff with. It deals with all the spam and rubbish and Outlook does a good job of dealing with the spam.
I registered my own domain name through one.com (plenty of others out there) and you can be a bit flash here - if you have an 'a' in your name..
for example if you are "Jonathan Smith" you could register https://www.nsmith.org
Then set an email account up on it jonath@nsmith.org
I have something similar - daft I know, but what the heck.

I only use that address for friends - a bit like my private home phone number.

fitzroy

Thanks to all who replied and I'll read carefully what's been suggested. I read somewhere that mozilla thunderbird is worth looking at - anyone recommend this?

pinkteapot

I use Thunderbird with my Fastmail account. Just to be clear, Thunderbird is software for reading/replying to emails (like Microsoft Outlook). It's not an email account provider.

I mentioned IMAP access. The two ways that software like Thunderbird can access your email account for you are POP and IMAP. The main difference is that if you use POP, the software will download the message from the server to your computer. Then, if you log in to your email account a different way (e.g. webmail), that message will no longer be there for you to read. With IMAP, you are viewing the emails on the server, rather than downloading them. They stay on the server when you close Thunderbird and you can see them however you then log in.

I use IMAP access to my account on Thunderbird on our two computers at home and my iPhone. I also use Fastmail's website when I'm on other computers. All my mails and folders are there because I'm solely using IMAP access.

I hope that makes sense! And sorry if you're a techie and didn't need to be told any of that. In that case - Thunderbird's great and does everything I need. Only thing that annoys me is that the default setting for replies/forwards is plain text, but you can get around that by holding down shift when you hit reply or forward, and then it will compose in HTML.