A Comparison of Live Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail

by Michael Arrington on February 8, 2007

The Windows Live team announced today that they’re rebranding their new email beta to Windows Live Hotmail. We haven’t written about the application for some time, and this is as good an excuse as any to compare the current release to Gmail and the new Yahoo mail beta.

The three applications, along with AOL mail, make up the vast majority of the 500 million or so webmail users around the world (see chart included in this post). Most of these users are still using the old, tedious, Ajax-free Yahoo Mail and Hotmail user interfaces, requiring page refreshes for every click. The new applications, along with Gmail, offer a much richer experience, much like Outlook or Mac mail. When these webmail clients are performing well, their speed and ease of use is easily as good as a desktop client.

Overall we prefer Gmail over all other webmail applications because performance (speed) is consistently fast, and emails can be tagged making search much more effective. They also offer more storage and other features, and it’s free. However, Yahoo and Live Hotmail offer more mainstream Outlook-like user interfaces (although Live Hotmail does not allow you to access other email accounts from their application), whereas Gmail takes some time to get used to. If you are looking for speed and tagging is important, Gmail is for you. If you are looking for the closest thing to Outlook online, go with Yahoo Mail.

The following chart compares the services on a feature-by-feature basis. Note that the user numbers for Yahoo and Hotmail include legacy users still on the old platforms.

Gmail

Gmail groups emails in a thread into a single line in the inbox. Some users love this, others hate it. It’s not my favorite feature, but I’ve gotten used to it. The best Gmail feature in my opinion is the ability to tag emails for better organization and search. None of the other services offer this. Gmail also has integrated Gtalk into the GMail interface, and continues to add other functionality as well (such as integration with Docs & Spreadsheets). Gmail is consistently fast, offers the most storage and free POP-in and POP-out, meaning you can use Gmail to access your other email accounts, or access GMail from whatever email client you use. It’s a near-perfect piece of software, and has only occasional hiccups. The fact that Google is paired with Google Calendar, the best online Calendar application, doesn’t hurt, either.

Windows Live Hotmail

The new Windows Live Hotmail will be a welcome change to Microsoft’s 228 million webmail users, but it falls short of the Yahoo and Gmail offerings. They offer 2 GB of storage, better than Yahoo, but there are no POP-in or POP-out features at all. If you want to access your account outside of the web site, you have to do it via Outlook or Outlook Express. It remains the slowest among the three in our tests.

Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail is very good, allowing users to access other email accounts (POP-in), but only offering POP-out access for an additional fee. This is probably due to the legacy users who are already paying for this feature - Yahoo may not want to give up this revenue stream. Storage is on the low side - only 1 GB, which is less than half of what Gmail offers. Still, Yahoo Mail has recently been running very fast and offers an intuitive, Outlook-like interface. Instant Messaging and RSS integration is awesome.

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Comments

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carl0ski - February 11th, 2007 at 4:21 pm PST

I do wonder with some people whether they have actually used gmail

To the individual who complained GMAIL won’t automatically move emails from inbox to a category use Create Filter at the top.

Live Mail IM doesn’t count since it requires external software
Try using your Live external Messenger integration while using an Office or School computer, I and many other administrators block or completely erase MS Messenger.

Gmail Yahoo have a web based IM integrated hence the claim.

Claims people don’t use gmail and sign up just for the services.
Hands up those who signed up to Hotmail just to use MSN Messenger

Even if threaded Emails aren’t your thing it is still a benficial feature.

for years i have used MS Messenger but the fact i shoot 10 emails back and forth with someone resulting in a full inbox of

Re: Re:re: Re:re: Re:re: Re: Important!!
Re: Re: Re:re: Re:re: Re: Important!!
Re: Re:re: Re:re: Re:Important!!
Re: Re:re: Re:re: Important!!
Re: Re:re: Re:Important!!
Re: Re:re: Important!!
Re: Re:Important!!
Re: Important!!
Important!!

really annoyed me as a result i love Gmail threaded look.
now i see

Re: Re: Re: Re:re: Re:re: Re: Important!!

Dirk - February 12th, 2007 at 5:44 am PST

GMail also allows you to integrate your GoogleReader RSS Feeds.
You only need to install GreaseMonkey for your Firefox.
Then you have to login to GoogleReader, click the following link:
http://persistent.info/greasem.....er.user.js
and finally login to GMail.

Micah - February 12th, 2007 at 10:24 am PST

Chad,

As per you comment:
—-
Miticha, since you’re comment is readily available for reading:
“First, if gmail has “pop in” capability, I haven’t found it”

So, this of course means that if you can’t find it, it doesn’t exist? Try going to settings (upper right hand corner) Click fowarding and pop, configure the settings and there you have it.
–—

Right, I know that gmail has “pop out” capability. That’s fine. But I was talking about “pop in” capability, which is certainly not on that page. Again, if gmail has “pop in” capability, I haven’t found it– and I am pretty sure the author was mistaken and that it doesn’t exist.

salsa malaga - February 13th, 2007 at 3:21 am PST

Remember hotmail has IM integrated

Mark - February 13th, 2007 at 4:42 am PST

Have to say I’m a big fan of gmail. I used to rely on a dial up connection before we could get broadband in our area only last summer. It still reloaded with almost no delay. I still hardly notice the ads which is in contrast to yahoo where they’re far too intrusive. The pop is also great for backing up locally.

goldcoaster - February 13th, 2007 at 4:15 pm PST

I must say that although I have and use both gmail and hotmail, I prefer gmail.
Why?
Because gmail is used with my oulook2007, hotmail used to be as well back two days ago when I had Outlook 2003, an upgrade to Outlook 2007 stopped that. It seems that I need to pay AUD$40 per year to MS for that function now - no thank you I will stay with gmail now.

- Goldcoaster

http://goldcoaster.wordpress.com

Rene Horn - February 25th, 2007 at 10:35 pm PST

I have RSS with my GMail. I don’t check my email until my RSS reader says there’s new email to check.

anupam - February 28th, 2007 at 2:02 pm PST

gmail ( can be called the best in comparison)
main attraction is its space …but it is most irritating email service .( it always pop up with a problem with ” please wait ” or ” change to html “..)
it also dont have folders but instead have tags ( i dont like it )
its interface is ridiculous showing all things at once.
gmail is like hotch potch .
the good things is that it offer many service free which are available only to premium user of other service

yahoo is a standerd email service no matter what comes or go it willl always be on its default 2nd position.consistently good.ther also spams involved in bulk and inbox.

hotmail is the most secure service in terms of spams.
i also like the interface of hotmail ..it looks technical .it is a good service( it ruled at its time) but microsoft is doing nothing for its improvement against when looked upon development by others.

then there are some other noticible services ( indiatimes –>it got some unique featutures ) but are full of spam

Craig Mische - March 1st, 2007 at 7:33 am PST

Has anyone been having trouble(no access or very slow access) with Gmail the last 12 hours?

EgbertNobacon - March 11th, 2007 at 6:26 pm PDT

I haven’t been able to access either Yahoo or Hotmail for the last five days (I am in Japan, btw) and so I have decamped to Gmail which is running very fast, although it is taking some getting used to.

I have previously had many problems with the new Yahoo Mail; it can be incredibly slow to load and if it refreshes or times out at the exact moment you send an email, then all content is lost - you can’t even scroll back to retrieve your text. Because of this, I love Gmail’s auto-save facility.