A friend of mine at AOL emailed today to suggest I take a look at the new AOL email beta, called Cayman. An overview of the new features was published in late February on the AOL email blog, and the product itself was released last Friday. New and existing users can sign up for the beta at beta.webmail.aol.com.
Cayman is admittedly a huge step up from the previous (effectively unusable) AOL webmail product (click on the image below for a larger view). The interface has been redesigned, and includes useful Ajax components that significantly reduce the frequency of page refreshes. But drag and drop webmail applications have been around for years, now it is a far cry from being even remotely cutting edge compared to Gmail and Yahoo’s competing offerings.
To be more specific, AOL is effectively last in every category we used in our recent comparison of the Yahoo, Gmail and Live.com webmail clients. AOL does offer 2 GB of free storage, more than Yahoo and equal to Live Hotmail, but less than Gmail’s current 2.6 GB. Also, AOL does not support email tagging, does not integrate RSS feeds or IM, does not allow for message forwarding, or POP/IMAP of email into the service (although they do provide IMAP out). Search is so/so, and speed and reliability were very poor in my testing, with a service collapse at one point.
Readers of this blog will not be impressed. And while existing AOL webmail users will certainly be happy with the changes, I wonder why the team that built this didn’t try to create something a little more special than this.
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This might appeal to the less tech savvy user but as you mentioned it wont appeal to any readers of this blog
Mike,
Do you sleep at all….Now at 2:50am ? unless you are on road….
Or do you time articles in advance
AOL is at least trying after years of absolutely awful efforts…but they’re so late to the game in this that they really needed to do something to wow people like 10 gigs free email storage or maybe 20.
instead new users will keep flocking to Gmail and Yahoo Mail, and rightly so.
gmail doesn’t have drag/drop like the other futuristic webmail apps do. what keeps me coming back is the labels/conversations/search capabilities. they all make organization so much simpler.
Quote: I wonder why the team that built this didn’t try to create something a little more special than this.
I don’t think this is strange. They just had to launch damn fast to fix the monstrous product they had before.
I believe they have IMAP free
Interesting review Mike and I would have to disagree with your analysis. I am not at all a fan of Google’s Gmail. I had my account hacked and data lost and had no one to turn to for help at Google as they offer little to no support to these types of issues. I also find the way Google does not offer folders to organize your mail to be a bit of a pain. I think the new AOL Mail Beta is pretty slick and would opt to use it over Yahoo Mail Beta. I think it responds more quickly to common functions than Yahoo Mail Beta. Additionally, AOL is offering users the ability to create their own email address domain making it easy for mainstream users to get a personalized email account. Of the email products mentioned who else is doing that?
RSS is on the way. I’ve been in contact with one of the devs and they know it is important … this is still a very early beta …geez, give them a little bit of a break.
As for the storage space, Who really cares if Gmail gives you 2.6GB? …whoopie! What’s next? Live Mail gives you 2.9GB? 99% of email users never even approach the 2GB mark anyways.
Its a shame that Mike is a little biased to Google and the other free mail services, as it is evident that he did not do a very thorough investigation of the feature sets offered by AOL mail.
One simply incorrect statement in the posting is that AOL does not allow “POP/IMAP of email in or out of the service.” This is flat wrong. AOL has provided (the arguably more advanced) IMAP protocol for at least 5 years for free (unlike some of AOL’s competitors).
Other statements are a bit of a stretch as well in terms of a real comparison. E.g. Mike blasts AOL because it has only 2GB of storage which is so much “less” than Google’s 2.6GB. Like we all know that no more than 0.5% of the universe even has that much mail in their mailbox (trust me, I know). I don’t think this is much of a deal breaker for not using an AOL mailbox.
I will admit that AOL has bungled a lot over the years and the company has a bad rap in techie circles. But I am not sure this should excuse Mike and others from using facts in articles like this.
Mike - please check your facts when you compare services. It is a disservice to your readers when you don’t, on an otherwise very informative site.
AOL sucks, my father-in-law still thinks that aol is the “internet” and the only way that one can connect to it.
They didn’t build a better mail product because they had no incentive to do so. Why work any harder than you have to when you don’t have any equity? This is why we don’t see any innovation happening at large companies. In my opinion fortune 500, 1000 companies provide little more than decent paying dead end jobs for those who do not want to innovate and spend most their lives having meetings about meetings.
Frank: and at what point do you disclose that you work for AOL?
Labels are much better than folders, AOL is playing catch-up and they aren’t very good at it
Gmail has a service outage almost everyday, just not for everyone at once. I don’t think anyone here can claim they haven’t seen the “Gmail is temporarily unavailable” error message at least once.
AOL is so dumb …. one example.They try to sell their broadband on top of existing cable broadband - you pay comcast and also AOL .
I agree with Carl. You got your facts a little wrong Mike.
AOL does provide IMAP (I get my daily TechCrunch emails on AOL IMAP-Apple Mail).
AOL is far better SPAM control. My Gmail and Yahoo mail boxes are flooded with SPAM whereas AOL is not even 1-2 SPAM mails a day!!!. I haven’t tried the AOL product yet but Yahoo and Gmail has serious shortcomings. Yahoo interface is full of adds (unless somebody is paying dollars for their POP service). If you have more than couple of hundred of emails in inbox folder, Yahoo’s AJAX interface sucks. It is too slow. Gmail does not have a drag and drop functionality and people who love folders are still still not comfortable with Labels. Other features which AOL has and are not provided by rivals:
1. Integration to calendar from within the e-mail interface, a feature launched by yahoo much later than AOL.
2. Direct blogging (only AOL journal) facility from any e-mail you are reading. This does not make them great but well in competition with others.
3. Any email can be added to Task or Calendar directly as an event or task.
4. You can add more than one screen name in a single user login and you can swap back and forth seamlessly.
5.My personal favorite is to be able to hide the side bar for a bigger and much better interface to read e-mails.
AOL is not that far behind others. Like other techies, you are totally biased against AOL.
AOL mail and AIM mail have supported IMAP/SMTP mail clients for a few years. With Plaxo sync of address books, Outlook and AOL address books stay in sync so that webmail and Outlook address books are in sync and with IMAP/SMTP, the mail also stays synced.
Thomas,
I figured people already knew that I work for AOL, so I didn’t find it necessary to add a disclosure. I am pretty transparent about what I do and regularly review products (more than just AOL products) on my blog, Somewhat Frank. But since you asked, here you go:
Disclosure: I work for AOL, not on the AOL Mail product but I am the product manager for two other AOL products.
AOL timewarner was terrible idea.
Now, People have problem with AOL email beta. They spying emails. They calm “No no no no. We follow privacy policy. ” Yeah right!!!! Cause you graduate MBA degree and still can’t read their own company’s policy.
They will read very personal emails. I’m switching Gmail and Yahoo.
Better luck next time AOL!!!
AOL should be appoarching CNET, Business News, and other publishers. But… Why is AOL beta mail stuff doing on Techcrunch news since AOL isn’t startup company?
Gmail has been down since last night (I noticed it around 9pm est). As of 10:10 am the following morning it is still down. This is the error I get:
[quote]arse error. unterminated string literal at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 196:
” PF_cache_[PF_prefetchUrl_]);Parse error. missing ) after argument list at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 197:
} catch(e) {Parse error. ‘try’ without ‘catch’ or ‘finally’ at ./cs/caribouroot/java/com/google/caribou/ui/fin/jsdata/prefetch.js line 217:
TL_UpdateLabelCounts(threadid);[quote]
I don’t use AOL email but I’m sure it doesn’t go down as often as Gmail does.
Alan. heheheh
Lol…. How many graduates actually work the largest corporation and use BETA or ALPHA labels on the web?
Their goal is trick people’s heads.
mike…
your comments aren’t necessarily true…. AOL could have simply amassed enough information on their users to determine that the functionality that they’re offering/will offer is what the majority of users use…
microsoft excel has had serious functionality over the years, that the vast majority of users never use…
every hosted email provider doesn’t have to provide/offer the same technology for their user base. and simply because you (or your readers) may not use it isn’t in and of itself an indication that the offering won’t find great acceptance and usage among the targeted userbase.
people who drive high end mercedes benz vehicles probably wouldn’t be caught driving in low end/middle of the road toyotas.. but i’d be happy to have the market share that toyota has if we’re talking about pure users…
the readers, and this site are decidedly biased for more techy things/functionality!!
peace…
@Frank, I didn’t know you worked for AOL, but your original post makes more sense now, thanks.
@Pankaj, You should probably admit that you work for AOL as well because only an AOL employee would have to deal with customers that need folders.
I met a few AOL folk (Dulles and Phoenix) recently while on vaca in MX. They seemed smart and liked to party, but were certainly of the 9-5 mentality. Not the type you find sleeping under their desk.
AOL is for people like my mother and corporate slug’s father-in-law, which is no small market. The boomers are probably the largest population segment in the US today. The question is how many actively use the internet daily. This segment does not want the most innovative web features.
@why?, Would you like English lessons?
bdb telling it like it is. Amen.
I switched to GMail and sticking with it. Free POP and IMAP. Labels are better than folders. It’s like placing an email in one or more folders. The search is better. Integration with Google Apps and the Calendar. Forwarding, receiving, answering emails with other email addresses. What more can I ask for?
My son recently showed me how to sync my Google Calendar to my iPod. Yahoo and AOL can’t do that.
Mike you may want to correct this “But drag and drop webmail applications have been around for years, now it is a far cry from being even remotely cutting edge compared to Gmail and Yahoo’s competing offerings. ”
Yahoo Mail just got drag and drop in the new beta.
Hotmail got drag and drop with new live offereing.
GMail does not have drag and drop support
There are lot of things missing in Gmail
Gmail does not have any drag and drop support.
Gmail does not have hierarchial folders
Gmail does not support Outbox
Gmail does not tag clusters
No S/MIME support
Storage is not a feature of e-mail application, It is feature of the e-mail service.
The point of upgrading/building a service for AOL like this isn’t likely to be for the purpose of recruiting new members and users, but to make sure current users don’t see a great gap between the features they are using and what is available elsewhere.
For example, the implementation of RSS is basically unimportant to most users. No one cancelled their AOL mail account today and went to Yahoo! just b/c AOL doesn’t have RSS. If they implement these kinds of things over the next few months (or even years), the goal or retaining current users will likely be achieved.
Who uses AOL these days? computer ilit users? i like gmail over any other webmail cause its light and fast
You should review the new infinite storage Rediffmail. Though the number of ads are very high and the usability poor, it is still better than the new AOL Mail.
I’d love to see what Mike has to say about this half-assed write up.
The problem is, there isn’t really any innovation. So what, how many people care about the extra storage (2-5%)? Why should I switch when I won’t even use 20MB of that storage? Let’s see some REAL innovation. E-mail seems to be the only service stuck in the pre “2.0″ era.
@bdb - You got it slightly wrong. I work for Yahoo and they also have to deal with customers with a crush on folder type organizing of their e-mails. So far people are happy with this. I wish we could add labels too.
Sleeping under the desk does not produce anything. I am sure somebody at AOL or Yahoo or Google did enough at some point that we have such a vast and mature internet today.
Yahoo is the biggest today, not because they revolutionized e-mailing (they had same old interface for years) but because there was nobody good enough.
Gmail became a hit because they provided huge storage space and obviously then people started liking their labels and all.
@xxdesmus: You are right.
Mike, you certainly do not want people to blindly believe you.
Its clear that there are some things that are not true about the analysis.
So please step in to cool it a little bit
@Ed: Google has free POP/SMTP not IMAP/SMTP. Click above for the answer in the GMail FAQ.
Did u ever see rediff.com …. Its supposed to provide unlimited webspace. And I feel it has the fastest and best web interface. Though the colours are not of my choice.
I disagree Mike. I briefly tested out the new AOL mail yesterday, and while nothing could move me away from Gmail, I do think the new AOL email is a step in the right direction. If they could clean up their visual design and make it a bit more appealing, while fixing some of the smaller IA issues. I’d rather use the new AOL email then Yahoo mail. I really like their interactions for reading a new email.
It kills me that Yahoo only allows you to look at mail in their default 3 pane view. I know you can kill the preview, but to me, Yahoo Mail would be so much more usable for those of us with large monitors if they just went to a 3 column layout similar to the new Live Mail. If they did that, I think I might actually consider a switch from Gmail.
@Ed Folders will always be better than labels and GMail’s system is by far the most unreliable. They are the potatoes without the meat.
I personally have used yahoo mail for years now, but only because it was free. Even with their anti-spam features I still get tons of spam. Their system seems to have slowed down allot lately too. No matter what location i’m connecting from (home work), i’m waiting 8-12 seconds per screen on most days.
Now that AOL is making all of their services free and catching up in the features area, I may have to try them out. I sure wouldn’t mind having my own domain for my email addy. They definitley have the most comprehensive user environment/culture overall. I tried for years to pull people away from them, because you don’t “need” AOL for most of the stuff they offer. I later realized after many conversations that the community itself and their development of it are what makes it special.
Two quick things - I could not find any support for imap in or out, so please point me to it and I’ll update. drag and drop has been around since oddpost, long long time ago.
i love the comment that says i am biased towards google.
Granted, I only have four emails in my AOL inbox but the little mouse over delete function is really smooth. Other people should take that idea and run with it… like for spam reporting.
The four emails in my inbox a testament to how effective the spam filtering is — or my distinct lack of popularity.
i think aol is past its prime - it’s best days were in the past
There is no setting inside the mail interface but here are some pointers to set it up.
http://about.aol.com/faq/openmailaccess
Mike,
http://www.postmaster.aol.com/imap/outlook00.html
Charlie
what a boring conversation, this whole launch is a non-event and most of what is being said here is just innacurate (this whole drag+drop thing, and no other mail app supporting calendars - what are these guys smoking)
AOL need a major strategy shift, you can’t put them in the same camp as Goog, Y! and MSFT - those guys are each putting out their own innovative products, what we have here is an old company with new colors trying to play catchup
For most of us, AOL will always be the drunk embarresing uncle of the web world
bdb
As matter fact, I do…. AOL have bunch of MBA jerks who don’t know how to read and write AOL’s privacy policy. All they do is invade and read people’s privacy email. [period]
I read articles about AOL privacy scandals. Explain to people… Why do you want to read People’s credit card and social security number?
What is your excuse?
P.S. AOL is for losers!!!
Let’s try to keep this thread’s quality high and product focused rather than company-bashing.
Wow, did you even try searching? A quick google for “AOL IMAP” brings up a bunch of sites but the official appears to be here:
http://about.aol.com/faq/openmailaccess
It’s not new to this release, it’s been there for years.
And yes, I work for AOL but that really has nothing to do with searching for the info on IMAP access.
IMAP - I couldn’t find it anywhere in the product itself, under settings or otherwise.
This is not a good product. Like everything else AOL has released recently, its a poor me-too. If you want the respect of bloggers, attacking in comments isn’t the way to go. Building great products is.
Anyway, I’ve updated the post. In my opinion, adding these instructions to the product itself would be helpful.
These AOL guys certainly are touchy. Maybe you guys should take criticisms here as constructive and use them to improve your product instead of bashing the messenger. If someone can’t find a feature maybe there’s an issue with the product design. I’m pretty sure no one here would use an AOL product anyway - this isn’t exactly the internet-on-training-wheels crowd that AOL spent so long marketing themselves to be.
Who on earth said that gmail had imap?
All I know is that no one has yet to come up with a good a combo as outlook/exchange for online/offline email and PIM. Sad but true.
I work for AOL (not the mail product).
A few things. I think folks that are hutring on AOL are thinking about AOL in the old dial-up-client-pay-to-access kind of way. AOL isn’t that company anymore, learning and change are hard and sure, and there are stragglers within the company that are resisting, but by-and-large it’s just not the way AOL thinks anymore. And since it’s only been a handful of months since this sea change it’ll take some time to see the effects of that on the Web. One of the negative effects this change has had at AOL is particularly evident in the Mail product. It’s relying on legacy platform which has a huge impact on performance and other nuances that will continue to make AOL Webmail not quite as competitive as it can be. But don’t think for a minute that AOL doesn’t know this or isn’t working on it… and please don’t make the assumption that a company with over 8 billion in revenue can’t hire smart people that look at gmail and yahoo mail and don’t see what’s happening there. I like folders, lots of folks do, if you take them away I’ll be pissed. So give me a choice, Gmail or AOL Mail and I’ll take AOL Mail because it’s got stuff that I want. Cool doesn’t get my work done any better or faster. And of course we all know that AOL has free IMAP support.
I think what I’m saying is that just because AOL was slow to embrace the Web doesn’t mean you should discount what AOL has to offer just because of perceived truths. I bet a lot of folks would be surprised at what they find on AOL today and even more surprised on what they’ll find at AOL tomorrow.