Best Practice – What Email Provider to Use?

Email is a huge piece of life these days. You’ll need an email for virtually everything, and failure to keep up can cost you.

Choosing the right provider can make your life easier or harder. Here’s a quick rundown.

Gmail – Powered by the tech giant, Google. Gmail gives you access to the entire Google ecosystem as well as some amazing filtering, anti spam controls and a plethora of integrations to make your life easier. Gmail is best viewed on its web interface at gmail.com or in the Gmail app on your iPhone or Android.

Google Workspace – This is the Gmail for business. It’s got the same interface as Gmail, but kicks in feature sets for business such as archival, priority support and fine tuned permission controlling. Also accessed via gmail.com, but signed in with your custom domain – IE: [email protected] instead of [email protected].

Outlook – This is the personal version of Microsoft’s email system. Outlook.com or Live.com. This was also previously Hotmail. Microsoft’s web interface is classic and mimics the Outlook application to an extent. Microsoft has potentially better outbound deliverability, but worse inbound deliverability and filtering than Gmail.

Office 365 with Exchange – The business version of Outlook. Accessed via the outlook application or outlook.office365.com. Much more in depth controls and convoluted controls on the backend. Same interface and same limitations of the personal Outlook.

AOL, Yahoo, iCloud, Any ISP (Cox, Verizon, Comcast, etc), any not on the list above – AOL and Yahoo are legacy providers, they lack the came controls, reliability and deliverability. iCloud, while maybe not legacy, lacks the same abilities and will actually become unusable on the web interface with larger inboxes. ISP emails should never be used due to security, deliverability and the fact that if you change ISP’s you lose your email. Just save yourself the headache and avoid.

Encrypted Email Providers – Providers such as Proton Mail offer an additional layer of Privacy (not Security). Generally speaking, you lose features and flexibility with providers like this and at the time I don’t have a reason to recommend these for general use.

Which to Choose? I’ll always recommend Gmail over Outlook for the filtering and lack of needing an external program to have the best feel, reliability and experience. It takes some getting used to if you’re oldschool, but for those I’ve transitioned, they haven’t looked back.