You demand an email account — whether it's for networking, job recruitment, downloading resources, transferring files, setting reminders, meeting with colleagues, or something else.

Even with the rising of office conversation platforms, you still depend on email for a surprising number of things. Just unfortunately, not every electronic mail service is completely complimentary. And even the gratuitous ones might not exist the easiest to apply or have all the features you need.

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It can be a challenge to find an email service provider at no toll that balances the correct features with usability. To aid brand your search easier, nosotros put together a list of the different types of e-mail accounts you can ready, followed past the best electronic mail service providers you can host your account on right now for complimentary.

Types of E-mail Accounts

There are two main types of electronic mail service providers to choose from: Email clients and Webmail.

Let's briefly go over these dissimilar types of providers.

Email clients y'all've likely heard of include Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and iCloud Mail.

Examples of webmail providers include Gmail, Yahoo! Postal service, and Hotmail.

At present, take a look at six of the best costless electronic mail service providers (and five of the all-time email accounts for privacy) you can get your hands on today — both webmail and email clients included. For each e-mail service provider, nosotros've highlighted a unique feature to help you find the best fit.


one. Gmail: Best for Offline Accessibility

Best Free Email Accounts: Gmail

Unique Characteristic: Native File Collaboration

Sign up here.

Blazon of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who already uses and loves the rest of Google'due south products.

It might seem similar an obvious top pick, but Gmail is just too versatile not to get our first slot. According to Litmus Labs, Gmail has the second-highest email provider market place share (behind Apple tree iPhone's native e-mail app).

Ironically, one of the reasons Gmail has go and then popular is considering of all the communication options in your inbox that don't involve electronic mail.

Gmail is a regular email inbox tool you tin can access once you lot accept a Google business relationship. Since information technology's built into Google Suite, you tin also access a group of complimentary apps that allow you to chat, video conference, and share files with the people in your contact listing.

Google Hangouts, available from your inbox'due south left sidebar (or the right — you tin can customize how your inbox is displayed), lets you text and video conversation with other Gmail users for the things that might not warrant an electronic mail message.

Like most other email accounts today, Gmail too has an intuitive agenda where you tin can set meetings and reminders.

Pro Tip: You can as well use a free product like HubSpot Meetings to easily schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails.

Unlike other email accounts, you tin can use your Gmail accost to log into and manage your YouTube business relationship, as well as collaborate on shared documents and spreadsheets right from a cloud-based Google Drive.

Offering a generous 15 GB of free electronic mail storage, Gmail does everything it can to make your inbox less cluttered, including advanced filters that automatically button emails into dissever folders as they arrive. And none of these functions costs a dime.

Notable Features:

  • Allows you lot to un-ship emails
  • 15GB free e-mail storage
  • Attainable from whatsoever cyberspace-connected device
  • 99.9% protection from suspicious/spam emails
  • Texts suggestions that assistance you lot write emails faster

2. AOL: Best for Interface Organization

aol best free email account and service providerBest Free Email Accounts: AOL

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Unique Characteristic: Unlimited Storage

Sign upwardly here.

Blazon of email: Webmail

Who should employ information technology: Anyone who uses email for almost of their communication.

America Online (I feel nostalgic simply typing those words) has quietly kept up with today's standards for a skillful user experience and is at present in one case once again ane of the best free email accounts available to you.

Purchased past Verizon in 2015, AOL delivers your e-mail from its archetype news-driven homepage and comes with the contemporary spam filters and virus protection you'd expect from your email provider. You can also send text and instant messages from specific windows in your electronic mail inbox.

AOL does take something over Gmail, though: unlimited storage. Additionally, yous can import e-mail contacts from a CSV, TXT, or LDIF file, then you're not creating your "buddy list" (go it?) from scratch.

Notable Features:

  • Unlimited storage
  • Highly customizable
  • Offers a spellchecker to reduce errors

3. Outlook: Best for Multiple App Integrations

Best Free Email Accounts: Outlook

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Unique Feature: Multiple App Integrations

Sign upwards here.

Type of email: Email customer

Who should use information technology: Anyone who uses many dissimilar platforms to connect with others.

If you lot ever cringed at the sight of a "Hotmail.com" e-mail accost, you can thank Outlook for this outdated domain proper noun.

But at that place's good news: Microsoft has reinvented its longstanding email service, and your costless Outlook.com email address has many advanced features waiting for you.

While it touts a agenda and bulletin filter similar to Gmail, Outlook too integrates with several other popular communication apps.

For example, y'all can connect Skype, Facebook, PowerPoint, PayPal, and even task-management software such as Trello — making it very easy to reach and piece of work with non-Outlook users without leaving your inbox.

Outlook offers fifteen GB of free storage for each user, along with a super-make clean interface.

Notable Features:

  • Like with Excel or Word, you can use Add-ins with Outlook
  • Easy admission to other Microsoft apps like Skype
  • Provides aliases that add anonymity to your e-mail
  • Excellent e-mail organization
  • Bang-up search feature

4. Yahoo! Mail: Best for Lots of Storage

Best Free Email Accounts: Yahoo Mail

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Unique Characteristic: Media and attachment history

Sign up here.

Blazon of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Creatives and anyone who sends and receives attachments frequently via email.

Yahoo! Mail, another well-known platform, sits just backside AOL in storage space with a whopping 1 TB (that's a terabyte) for costless, forth with a few central social media integrations.

You can have custom background themes and search for key data from your inbox with Yahoo! Mail.

Yahoo! Mail makes it easy to find every photo, video, and document you lot've ever attached or received via e-mail in their tabs on your inbox's sidebar. This makes the platform especially appealing to those who share documents regularly or simply want an album made of every photograph they've ever had shared.

Notable Features:

  • Connects seamlessly with Yahoo Calendar
  • Outstanding e-mail organization
  • Customizable themes
  • Instant notifications for new emails
  • Decent security to keep your business relationship safe and secure

five. iCloud Mail: All-time for Data Encryption

Best Free Email Accounts: iCloud Mail

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Unique Feature: Label senders equally VIPs

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: people who use Mac and want everything on one system.

If yous're a Mac user, you lot may desire to consider using iCloud Postal service every bit your electronic mail provider. Their free e-mail account comes with 5GB of storage that you tin can employ to sync your photos, files, or e-mail.

However, it's important to annotation that storage is shared betwixt all of your apps and devices — so if you take a lot of photos on your iPhone, you may eat into your email storage allowance for the month. Upgraded plans start at $0.99/month and go upwardly to $ix.99/calendar month.

One of the most pregnant advantages of using iCloud over other email providers on this listing is the ease of integration. Apple builds its desktop and iPhone mail apps with all email clients in mind, just it pays special attention to making the experience delightful for iCloud users.

Notable Features:

  • Search functionality
  • Ability to label senders as VIP to automatically filter important messages and save time
  • 1-click "Unsubscribe" feature
  • 5GB free electronic mail storage

6. Mozilla Thunderbird: Best for Managing Multiple Accounts

Best Free Email Accounts: Mozilla Thunderbird

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Unique Characteristic: Customization features and the power to open multiple emails in tabs

Sign upwards here.

Blazon of email: E-mail clients

Who should use it: Anyone looking for a simple simply customizable electronic mail inbox.

Thunderbird, a free email application from Mozilla, known for Firefox, offers a quick email inbox setup and a simple, easy-to-use user interface.

The app offers customizable features, such every bit theme settings and app extensions to improve your electronic mail experience. The email app as well allows you to open multiple emails in tabs, similar to how y'all would open diverse web pages in Firefox browsers.

Notable Features:

  • Information technology has a large extension library
  • Integrates with Google Agenda to make task and coming together scheduling easier
  • Smart email organization to reduce cluster

7. Zoho

Best Free Email Accounts For Privacy: Zoho

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Unique Feature: 25 Business Addresses

Sign upwardly here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: startups and small-scale businesses.

This is the showtime of the free email accounts for privacy to make our list, only information technology holds a ton of potential for businesses.

The offset affair you'll notice about Zoho is its user-friendliness. From integrating with Google Bulldoze, Box, and other cloud-based file managers, to its built-in task manager, this e-mail service offers a simple way to attain all of your daily tasks.

The existent divergence-maker, though, is the power to customize the domain proper noun for up to 25 continued e-mail addresses. Want to supervene upon "@zoho.com" with the proper name of your business'due south website? You can do so nether Zoho Calorie-free, which gives you lot 5 GB for gratuitous — all nether username@yourdomainname.com.

Notable Features:

  • Doesn't browse your inbox for advertisement purposes
  • Emails are in an encrypted format
  • Notifies yous if your messages don't deliver
  • Integrates easily with the Zoho CRM

8. ProtonMail

Best Free Email Accounts For Privacy: ProtonMail

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Unique Feature: Encrypted email

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who sends and receives sensitive data.

ProtonMail offers just 500 MB of free space, but for the worthy merchandise of encrypted email, allowing you to send messages that nobody else can see and disappear after a month.

What'southward the catch? Is the service difficult to use? ProtonMail is easy to use on whatever device without whatsoever software needed to encrypt your emails, as with about webmail platforms. Its inbox interface is equally easy to understand at a glance as the other e-mail services on this list.

And the tool offers quick color-coded labels to help you further organize which emails deserve the most care and protection.

Notable Features:

  • No personal information is required to open an account
  • Uniform with other electronic mail providers
  • Optimized inbox to heave productivity
  • End-to-end data encryption

9. GMX Mail

Best Free Email Accounts For Privacy: GMX Mail

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Unique Feature: Alias email addresses

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who needs multiple emails with 1 central inbox.

While y'all may not have heard of GMX Mail, it's been around for quite a while (since 1997) — and it has a bunch of features that get in worth considering.

Commencement off, GMX offers 65 GB of storage. That's a lot of storage for a free email service. In fact, they claim that information technology allows you to keep nearly half a meg messages in your Inbox!

Another feature worth noting is the ability to transport large attachments. While many services have low caps for your email attachments, GMX Postal service allows you to send files up to 50MB. That'southward great if you share a ton of photos, presentations, or other large files from your account.

Simply the feature of GMX Mail that actually sets it apart is the ability to ready up to 10 alias email addresses all from within one account. This can be useful in many situations — both personally and professionally.

On a personal annotation, you could use one allonym for all of your online purchases and logins — to keep marketing emails separate from your individual messages. From a business perspective, multiple email addresses tin assistance manage part-based emails such equally support@yourdomain.com or sales@yourdomain.com.

Notable Features:

  • Spam filter to protect your inbox from suspicious messages
  • Piece of cake-to-use inbox direction templates
  • Mail collector for keeping all your emails (even from other service providers) in a unmarried place

ten. Trustifi

Best Free Email Accounts For Privacy: Triustifi

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Unique Feature: Data loss prevention

Sign upward hither.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who doesn't want to cull betwixt having a secure and functional inbox.

Trustifi combines the best of a productive and secure email provider in ane identify.

With available whitelisting and blacklisting options, you tin can easily choose who you lot allow to send you messages. Trustifi is also compliant with HIPAA/HITECH, PII, GDPR, FSA, FINRA, LGPD, CCPA, and more, so you don't have to worry well-nigh losing your account overnight.

You can even use the Trustifi add-on to add an extra security layer to your Gmail or Outlook inbox.

Notable Features:

  • Ransomware and fraud detection
  • Power to set death dates on sent emails
  • Seamless integrations with other email systems or service providers
  • End-to-finish email encryption

11. Mailfence

Best Free Email Accounts For Privacy: Mailfence

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Unique Feature: Legal protection

Sign upward here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use information technology: Anyone looking for a secure electronic mail account that integrates with other tools.

Mailfence is a secure browser-based email service provider based in Belgium. Given the laws in Belgium, all your data is locked away from any third-political party access.

Their gratis programme gives you 500 MB of email space. But to truly enjoy the all-time of Mailfence, y'all'll have to hop on a paid programme that starts at €2.l/month.

You'd be able to create up to 10 aliases on the paid programme and have 5GB of email space, among many other features.

With Mailfence, information technology'south easy to organize your day and business because you'd be able to easily integrate your email account with your contacts, calendar, and documents.

Notable Features:

  • Quick integration with a suite of tools
  • True OpenPGP end-to-end encryption

How to Make an Email

No matter which provider yous cull, creating an email is a simple process. But, information technology'due south still of import to know best practices so you tin take one that fits your needs the best. The purpose of an email is to provide a space for you to have easy, secure communications. Follow the steps below to create an email:

i. Choose An Email Provider

Select an email provider based on your needs as a user. Think nearly which features, such every bit height-tier security, email scheduling capabilities, or integrations, are the most important to yous. Also, consider how much storage you volition need and what type of provider works best.

2. Cull a Username

Select a username based on the purpose of the business relationship. If it is a professional account, then your name with a meaning number will do. The name of your business will do if it'south a concern business relationship. You might too consider your name@businessname.com for professional accounts.

3. Create a Password

Email providers generally have minimum requirements for how secure your password must be. These often include a number or a special character. Follow these guidelines and choose a password that is very unique and has a variety of messages, numbers, and characters to make information technology very secure.

iv. Secure Your Account

Many email providers include means to add together extra security to your business relationship. Take advantage of these features to continue your account and information safety. Setting up ii-factor hallmark is a great place to offset.

5. Write a Signature

Set up an electronic mail signature for your business relationship. This saves a lot of time as you are writing emails and helps continue your closing consistent. Include information similar your name, your title, and your contact information.

Making the Most of Your Email

And with that, you have some of the best options for free email accounts this year. But who knows? Your side by side email address could be entirely different while giving you just what you need to succeed.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in March 2018 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Easily create your own professional email signature with our free Email  Signature Generator here.

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Originally published Jan 12, 2022 10:00:00 AM, updated March 23 2022