Electronic mail is a method of transmitting and receiving messages using electronic devices. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, mail. Email is a ubiquitous and very widely used communication medium; in current use, an email address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
Webmail is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Examples of webmail providers are AOL Mail, Gmail, GMX Mail, Mailfence, Outlook.com/Hotmail.com, and Yahoo! Mail. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.
Hushmail is an encrypted proprietary web-based email service offering PGP-encrypted e-mail and vanity domain service. Hushmail uses OpenPGP standards. If public encryption keys are available to both recipient and sender, Hushmail can convey authenticated, encrypted messages in both directions. For recipients for whom no public key is available, Hushmail will allow a message to be encrypted by a password and stored for pickup by the recipient, or the message can be sent in cleartext. In July, 2016, the company launched an iOS app that offers end-to-end encryption and full integration with the webmail settings. The company is located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Yahoo! Mail is an email service offered by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! Small Business brand, before it transitioned to Verizon Small Business Essentials in early 2022. Launched on October 8, 1998, as of January 2020, Yahoo! Mail has 225 million users.
AOL Mail is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo! Inc.
Xtra was a brand used by New Zealand telecommunications provider Spark for its Internet service provider subsidiary from 1996 to 2008. At its inception, Xtra provided only dial-up Internet access, but began providing ADSL service in 1999.
An email hosting service is an Internet hosting service that operates email servers.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English.
The public history of Gmail dates back to 2004. Gmail, a free, advertising-supported webmail service with support for Email clients, is a product from Google. Over its history, the Gmail interface has become integrated with many other products and services from the company, with basic integration as part of Google Account and specific integration points with services such as Google+, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Hangouts, Google Meet, YouTube, and Google Buzz. It has also been made available as part of G Suite. The Official Gmail Blog tracks the public history of Gmail from July 2007.
GMX Mail is a free advertising-supported email service provided by GMX. Users may access received GMX Mail via webmail, or using POP3 or IMAP4 protocols. Mail is sent using SMTP. Founded in 1997, GMX is a subsidiary of United Internet AG, a stock-listed company in Germany, and a sister company to 1&1 Internet and Fasthosts Internet. In addition to an email address, each GMX account includes a Mail Collector, Address Book, Organizer, and File Storage. Every user can register up to 10 individual GMX email addresses. Popup ads are displayed to all users, including premium, at login; as of 2021 GMX was the only large email provider using popup ads.
Outlook.com, formerly named Hotmail, is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services.
The Gmail interface makes Gmail unique amongst webmail systems for several reasons. Most evident to users are its search-oriented features and means of managing e-mail in a "conversation view" that is similar to an Internet forum.
mail.com is a web portal and web-based email service provider owned by the internet company 1&1 Mail & Media Inc., headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. 1&1 Mail & Media Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet Group, a publicly listed internet services company based in Montabaur, Germany.
Fastmail is an email hosting company based in Melbourne, Australia. In addition to its Fastmail-branded services, the company also operates Topicbox, a mailing list service, and Pobox, an email service it acquired in 2015.
EmailTray is a lightweight email client for the Microsoft Windows operating system. EmailTray was developed by Internet Promotion Agency S.A., a software development d.
A Microsoft account or MSA is a single sign-on Microsoft user account for Microsoft customers to log in to Microsoft services, devices running on one of Microsoft's current operating systems, and Microsoft application software.
Bigfoot International, Inc. was a New York City based holding company, which developed email communications, marketing automation and customer interaction software products during the dot-com era. Founded in 1997 by Lenny Barshack and James Hoffman, it grew out of Bigfoot.com, a free e-mail provider and Web directory. It eventually developed into a group of three subsidiaries: Bigfoot.com, Bigfoot Interactive, and Neoplanet, Inc. The company ended in 2000.
A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf.
Larry Drebes is an American businessman and the co-founder of Janrain, Four11 Corporation, and Desktop.com. He was also an early leader of the OpenID initiative, which was widely supported by Google, Yahoo!, and other providers of online identity.
