What’s The Best Email Service in 2024? Best Clients Ranked

It is essential to determine how the email will appear on all devices before sending it to hundreds or thousands of recipients. To succeed at email marketing, you need to learn why email clients render messages differently and what you can do to make your messages seem nice to various clients.

To ensure that your emails appear consistently across all clients, you must optimize for the most widely used email providers. Statistically speaking, Gmail and Outlook are two of the most successful email providers. Apple mail gets a lot of market share as millions of people use Apple devices. As they are not accessible to everyone, they don’t have a place in the list of the best email services.

The amount of emails received each day is expected to rise to 376.4 billion by 2025, according to Statista. Here’s a rundown of the most widely used email clients in case you’re interested in customizing your message layout to work with each one.

Email Service Providers | anyaberkut via Canva (licensed)

1. Gmail

Gmail Interface

As evident as it is that we’d pick Gmail as our top pick, the service’s adaptability forced us to give it the nod. Gmail is the most widely used email service, with over 1.8 billion users worldwide. In a twist of fate, Gmail’s meteoric rise to prominence can be attributed partly to the presence of features other than the email within the inbox.

Since its inception in 2004, Gmail has amassed a large and loyal user base due to its many endearing qualities: its ease of use, robust security against spam and malware, and ability to work in tandem with other Google products like Drive, Docs, and Calendar.

Due to dynamic mail, Gmail may now be interacted with right from the inbox, whether it is to fill out a survey or reply to a comment on Google Docs. You can quickly find the information you need by having messages automatically sorted into tabbed categories like Primary, Social, and Promotions.

You can use the same interface to handle several accounts (Outlook, Yahoo, and any other IMAP or POP email). You get 15GB of space for your inbox, Drive, and photographs, plus advanced spam prevention to keep only the messages you want in your inbox.

Notable features:

  • Un-send an Email: Provides the option to un-send an outgoing email. When you accidentally send an email, the “Undo” button immediately appears in the corner of your screen.
  • Plenty of free space: You get a free email service with 15GB of space. Worrying about hitting any restriction while you save thousands upon thousands of messages is unnecessary.
  • Accessible to everyone: Available on any device with an internet connection. The same goes for every browser. Email clients might be picky about which operating systems and devices they work with, but Gmail can be accessed from everywhere.
  • Perfect spam protection: Spam and malicious emails are blocked at a rate of 99.9%. It could be argued that Gmail’s spam filter is too strict.
  • The Smart Compose feature: Textual recommendations that facilitate the drafting of emails in a shorter amount of time. The Smart Compose function in Gmail uses machine learning technologies to forecast your next words as you type accurately. Whether or if you decide to implement the recommendations is entirely up to you.

2. Outlook Mail

Outlook Mail | Microsoft Outlook Office

Outlook.com, initially launched by Microsoft in 1996 under the name Hotmail, is a web-based suite of email, contact, task, and calendaring services and is often regarded as the most formidable Western competitor to Gmail.

Outlook, like Gmail, features an intuitive and well-designed user interface. As far as free email services go, it’s right up there with Google’s or even a close second. There are already over 400 million users of Outlook.com, and many of them use it in connection with other Microsoft products like Xbox, Windows, Skype, PayPal, DocuSign, and more.

With Outlook’s mail rules feature, you can also choose certain conditions under which new messages will be automatically filed, labeled, tagged, or forwarded.

Focused Inbox is the most advertised addition to Outlook.com. When enabled, Outlook.com will sort your incoming emails by how urgent they are using machine learning. The most pressing emails will be displayed in the Focused tab, while the others will be relegated to the Other tab. It only takes one mouse click to toggle between the two tabs.

Notable features:

  • Focused Inbox: With the help of machine learning, Outlook sorts incoming emails in order of relevance, allowing you to get the information you need quickly. Instead of showing all your emails at once, only the most crucial ones will appear on the Focused tab.
  • Calendar: Outlook’s built-in calendar makes it easy to schedule meetings, appointments, and other events.
  • Contacts: Maintain and manage your list of contacts with ease in Outlook
  • Accessibility: With its accessibility features like voice navigation and other assistive device support, Outlook is an excellent option for the visually impaired.
  • Quick Parts: Users can copy and paste portions of text at their leisure using a feature called “Quick Parts.”

3. ProtonMail

Proton Mail Interface

One more service that brags about its secure procedures is ProtonMail. Rest assured that your data is in secure hands with ProtonMail, which was originally marketed as “the only mail server the NSA can’t hack.”

The company began in 2014 at CERN in Switzerland and is still legally registered there. Therefore, it is protected by the Federal Data Protection Act and the Federal Data Protection Ordinance of Switzerland, two of the most stringent privacy laws in the world.

However, an essential feature of ProtonMail is its client-side encryption, which safeguards messages before they even reach ProtonMail’s servers. Because of the way their infrastructure is set up, ProtonMail cannot access your communications.

Notable Features

  • End-to-end encryption: Only you and the recipient can read your messages due to ProtonMail’s end-to-end encryption.
  • Zero access encryption: In addition, your messages are encrypted using ProtonMail’s proprietary Zero Access Encryption system, which not even ProtonMail’s developers can break into.
  • Secure contacts: ProtonMail’s secure contact storage features include encrypting contact details such as names and email addresses.
  • Anonymous Email: When using ProtonMail, you can send and receive emails without disclosing your true identity because of the service’s “anonymous email” feature.
  • Secure message expiration: The emails you send with ProtonMail can have an expiration date set, at which point they will be removed from both your inbox and the recipient’s mailbox.
  • Two-factor authentication:  ProtonMail offers support for two-factor authentication to protect your account further.
  • Custom domain support: With ProtonMail, you can use your domain name for your email address, giving you a more polished and reputable appearance.
  • Custom filters and labels:  ProtonMail’s superior filtering and labeling capabilities make it simple to sort and file your email correspondence.

4. Yahoo Mail

Yahoo Mail Interface

Yahoo Mail, founded in 1994, is one of the few companies to have survived the dot-com boom and bust. Yahoo! has seen a decline in its once dominant market share in the search engine and email service industries. However, the company continues to offer valuable resources at no cost to its users and consistently ranks highly in user satisfaction surveys.

Yahoo! Mail is the American subsidiary’s email service. If you’re looking for a reliable email provider, look no further than this one, which ranks among the best and offers a free account with 1 terabyte of storage space. Compatible with Facebook, POP, and IMAP for easy texting.

Equally important to Outlook is Yahoo’s robust attachment support. Yahoo Mail’s users have the distinct advantage of being able to retrieve any attachments they’ve ever sent or received.

This can seem like a fantastic idea for artists who frequently collaborate by sharing documents. Embedded or inline attachments within an email can also replace file attachments with minimal disruption (or vice-versa).

Notable features:

  • Quick views: Emails can be sorted into categories like “purchases,” “travel,” and “financial,” among others, with the “Quick Views” feature, making it much simpler to locate certain messages.
  • Mail appending: The accuracy of your contact list can be improved with the help of Mail Appending, which can fill in blanks like phone numbers, addresses, and work titles.
  • Mail right rail: This panel can be interacted with to see things like maps, weather, and news stories relevant to the email you’re currently reading.
  • Mail avatar: You can give your email account a more individual feel by uploading a custom avatar with the “Mail Avatar” function.
  • Mail print: Mail Print is a function that lets you print any email or attachment without first having to save it to your device.
  • Mail notepad: If you prefer to take notes digitally, Yahoo Mail includes a built-in notepad that you can use to jot down ideas and store them in your inbox for later reference.
  • Mail keyboard shortcuts: Email management is sped up and simplified with Mail’s keyboard shortcuts, which let you access often-used functions with the press of a key.

5. Zoho Mail

Zoho Mail Interface

If you’re looking for a professional email service with a wide variety of useful extras, go no further than Zoho Mail. Zoho Mail is an advanced and flexible email service since it allows for custom domains, collaborative features, and the migration of old emails.

The ability to personalize Zoho Mail is a noteworthy feature. Users have complete control over their inboxes, from the ability to add personalized labels and filters to the design of their outgoing messages. Due to the high degree of personalization available, handling a huge number of emails while maintaining a well-organized inbox is simple.

Your emails and other data are safe within Zoho Mail because of its high level of security. Spam filters, two-step verification, and encryption feature all come standard, giving you peace of mind while sending and receiving emails.

The intuitive layout of Zoho Mail is another great feature. The mobile app delivers a smooth experience for customers on the go, and the clean and straightforward design makes it easy to explore and manage your emails.

Notable features

  • Custom domains: With Zoho Mail, you can utilize your own domain name for your email address, making it a more credible and adaptable service for enterprises.
  • Collaboration tools: Zoho Mail’s shared inboxes, calendars, and tasks are only the beginning of the collaborative features that make it simple for groups to work together and organize their projects.
  • Email migration: Migrate from another email provider to Zoho Mail with minimal disruption to your inbox, contacts, and other settings with the email migration feature.
  • Advanced filtering and labeling: Zoho Mail’s sophisticated filtering and labeling features make it simple to sort and file your inboxed messages.
  • Clean and Simple Interface: You can easily access and manage your inbox with Zoho Mail’s simple layout.
  • Mobile app:  Zoho Mail’s mobile app is available for both iOS and Android devices, so you can check your inbox wherever you go.
  • Zoho office suite integration: You can access other Zoho Office Suite apps like Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, and Zoho Show from within Zoho Mail due to the suite’s integration with Zoho Mail.
  • Spam protection: Zoho Mail has built-in spam protection to prevent unsolicited communications from clogging up your inbox.

Final Thoughts

The best email provider is the one that best fits your needs and interests. Top email providers like Gmail, Outlook and ProtonMail each have their own set of advantages and perks for their consumers. Regarding email, few services can match Gmail’s popularity and flexibility, with its 15GB of free space, dynamic inbox, and myriad communication possibilities.

Microsoft Outlook is an email service that also includes a calendar, contact storage, mobile access, and a rapid reply function. ProtonMail is a Swiss-based encrypted email provider that places a premium on user privacy. Regarding email, all options cover the basics, so picking the right one comes down to personal preference.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kamil Anwar


Kamil is a certified MCITP, CCNA (W), CCNA (S) and a former British Computer Society Member with over 9 years of experience Configuring, Deploying and Managing Switches, Firewalls and Domain Controllers also an old-school still active on FreeNode.