Should you use web based email / webmail?

Webmail (or web based email) can be very useful for some people who travel (so they can login from web cafe's etc.) or use multiple computers (for instance at college / university).

There are a large number of webmail providers but perhaps one of the most exciting is Google's Gmail service - currently in 'beta' but looks to provide a huge capacity and aims to be FREE (subsidised by content relevant adverts to the side of your emails. Some of the older webmail services (Hotmail, Yahoo Mail etc.) provide a good service but none are promising anywhere near the size of mailbox Google offer.

One other webmail service of note is UKwired - a much smaller service but offering a better choice of available email addresses and some really useful features - for instance the ability to also collect your email via POP3 which is not available from some webmail services. In addition there are no adverts (a definite bonus for many people!) but instead it is subscription based with a small annual cost.

But a lot of people do not like webmail and prefer to use a standard email client like Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express to send and receive their email. Usually collecting their email (POP3) is not a problem but these users frequently experience problems (relaying denied errors etc.) when trying to send mail out because traditional SMTP (outgoing mail servers) will only accept your email when you are using that ISP to also connect to the Internet.

For people who want to continue to use a normal email program and use multiple ISP's, travel or experience other problems sending mail we recommend you try an authenticated SMTP mail service like AuthSMTP.