What's best free email service?

What's the best free email service that has the following characteristics:

1. free and fast
2. easy to use
3. webbased, not local ISP, so I could retrieve/send email from any internet terminal
4. has ability BOTH to check email online without downloading and ALSO to download messages so that email can be processed offline
5. virus/spam checker

In the past, JUNO email has met all of these requirements. Now, however, Juno has started to charge for downloading messages, so I am thinking about changing services. Hotmail is an obvious possibility, but is less easy to use than Juno, in my opinion, and has so many ads that it loads slowly on dialup.
Plus, I could never figure out whether Hotmail could download messages to my PC or not. Is there a better alternative??

thanks for any comments.

 

Roger at CCCC--You say you want a webbased email service. Starting December Juno will charge to download email to your computer, but you can still read message sent to you at Juno's site for free and send messages from there as well. Of course you will need Internet access, but you can still use free Juno for that.
The only real change is that time spent reading and writing email will count toward the 10 hours free Internet Access from Free Juno.

 

Suggestion...

You might find something here that meets your needs ....a tad outdated, but an extensive list none the less ...

http://www.freebyte.com/email/

Cheers
Jake

 

Another Suggestion

You might also try Postmater.co.uk Here
or what about Yahoo mail Here

 

Thanks for all your suggestions !! They are very helpful and I am investigating the various alternatives.

Does Yahoo mail allow message downloading and offline message reading and creation? I haven't used Yahoo for a long time and couldn't tell from the Yahoo mail description.

 

Yahoo charges for message downloading to POP3 accounts...Such as OE, etc.

 

ePrompter

You could also try using ePrompter to check your webb based email, it can be used with single or multiple accounts such as Hotmail or Yahoo and its free, you can get more info and download it Here

 

Thanks again for your comments. But why are supposedly "free" email providers all charging for downloading mail? It has been mentioned that Hotmail and Yahoo mail do that, and, as I said, Juno email is starting to do that. Why are these companies all doing that? Surely it doesn't cost them anything more to allow users to download their email. Or is the real reason to insure that users have to look at the advertisements on their website?

 

It's a bottom line thing....They're just trying to make it a little more aggravating for people to answer their e-mail, and they hope that you will pay the price for the added convenience.

 

Well, sillly me - in the course of investigating things, I discovered that my very own Internet Service Provider provides 5 email addresses, not just one, so I can take my Juno stuff to a second email address on my ISP. They also provide Web access, which is a new feature, AND even a small amount of disk space for a personal web site. So I am all set right here at home. Thanks again for your comments and sorry I didn't know this before I asked the question!!

 

What is your ISP?

 

My ISP is Iowa Telecom - iowatelecom.net

And I couldn't believe the following event: I asked a question to Technical Support via email about 9 am Saturday morning and didn't expect an answer until Monday. However, a tech support person called me personally on the telephone to answer my question two hours later!!!

So I'm a happy camper right now here in Iowa.

 

www.fastmail.fm

Incredibly powerful web interface and access through an email client using the IMAP protocol which is much more powerful than POP3 mail.

 

Juno Charges $9.95 per year

Juno will still allow "free" email if you pay $9.95 per year for their MegaMail service which also provides for a much bigger inbox and attachments.

 

RockFox--You may want to see my earlier post. Juno email is still free on the web--at least it is for those with existing accounts. They just do not download anymore, and time spent on Juno web (using Juno as the ISP) counts toward the 10 free hours/month. Use of Juno as the ISP is also still free--at least for the first 10 hours/month.

 

Juno MegaMail

Welshjim - I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear. I know that Juno email is still free on the web. But is you want to use the Juno email client or Outlook Express or some other client then you can subscribe to the Juno MegaMail for $9.95 per year.

I have helped several senior citizens get started with email and I found that the Juno email client is the easiest for new users to learn. I have it installed on my XP Pro SP2 system and it works great. Problem is that Juno no longer has a download site for this client.

 

Gmail is going to change email as we know it. I have a couple of invitations left, if anyone wants to try it out.

Johanna

 

Johanna, I've heard about Gmail for months but not seen any announcement about it. When is it going to become available? I'm not really interested in trying out something that is unfinished and still buggy. And is Gmail as easy to use as Juno was??

 

Johanna - I think Google is about to take over the entire world.

I may just have to jump on their band wagon a little harder so yes, please. An invite would be appreciated.