When I first thought about this category, I was thinking only of the installed programs we use regularly – Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. (Opera Mail is another installed program we have tried a couple of different times, but it is too limited for our regular uses, so I have uninstalled it.)
I like both Outlook and Thunderbird quite well, taking advantage of the different options and features they provide. Our desktop has Microsoft Office 2016 (a version that includes Outlook) so that is the default email program on that machine. My laptop has Thunderbird as the default program. When upgrading to Office 2016, I did not want to pay for the full version for the laptop, so got the Home and Student Edition. That meant choosing another email option and Thunderbird is by far my preference over other options I’ve looked at over the years.
After more thought about what to include in this category, I’ve decided to discuss all the myriad other online email providers here also. They could be considered services as well, but since they provide the basic email function, the primary focus of this post, I’ll include them here.
For various reasons I won’t bore you with here, I use numerous different providers and maintain many email accounts, some more than one with a provider. The one attribute I require of a provider – it must be free. Almost all the ones I use also allow POP3 access without charge. A few I rarely use anymore have never allowed POP3 or now charge for that service.
The most heavily used are:
- Mediacom – my cable/internet/phone provider
- GMX – an online provider based in Europe
- Gmail
- Microsoft Mail (Windows 10)
- Riseup – a very secure provider focused on support for activists’ email and newsletters. It is located somewhere in the northwest of the United States, but for security reasons, they will not say exactly where. It is free, but to get an account one has to submit a statement of the activist work you are involved in.
The full list of others I still have active:
- Hotmail
- Yahoo
- GishPuppy– no free POP3 access, actually an alias account that auto forwards to your real account without giving the sender that information
- Hushmail– no free POP3 access in free version, but no tracking
- Juno – no free POP3 access in the free version (I have had this the longest of all and just use it occasionally as the second email option for other accounts)
I have been using various email options for well over thirty years, so have a little experience with some of the earliest programs. CompuServe was my first private account. Around the same time, the university I worked for began setting up online email for employees only. It was Unix-based and Pine was the program that we used accessed via dial-up.
I never used Prodigy and tried AOL for a while, both competitors then with CompuServe, but never really found them what I liked.
A few years later, I changed institutions and the college I worked for had a similar dial-up system for email. For my private, home email I used NetZero and Juno – both free dial-up servers. Soon after, the college switched to using Pegasus Mail on their network. Because it was free, I installed it at home right away, and that quickly became my favorite for many years. I tried Outlook Express but did not really like it.
Another change of colleges and I had to learn a whole new set of programs. The new college was migrating from a Novell network and software to Microsoft. I was used to using Novell and Corel Word Perfect, Quattro Pro, Presentation, etc. so the learning curve was a bit steep at first. Eventually, I decided it would be easier to have the Microsoft Office at home as well, so bought it with the educator discount – a substantial savings over the retail price. Ever since, Office has been a staple in my computer use. With improvements in later versions, Outlook is now a very powerful program, and probably my preference overall.
In that new location, Cox cable was the provider for my home service, and that was my first experience of having email accounts through a cable provider. It worked well most of the time, so when we moved to our current location, Mediacom became my primary email provider and still is.
For now, that concludes the saga of my email use.
Tech Muddler 