The best Gmail al­ter­na­tives

Gmail has been the most-used email portal worldwide since 2012. The email platform from the search engine giant is pre-installed on almost every Android smart­phone and can be linked directly to other accounts – for example, YouTube.

One big weakness of the Google service is its poor data security. Even the general terms and con­di­tions of the search engine service have short­com­ings that make it possible to pass on user data. For example, according to the Gmail terms of service, the provider is allowed to search through user emails for ad-related keywords. Due to this problem, Gmail has received low rankings in security as­sess­ments.

A good email service is char­ac­ter­ized by the ease with which it allows you to send and receive data, messages, and images – prefer­ably at any time and from anywhere. Data security is also an important point of concern for most users. After all, very private in­for­ma­tion – including ap­pli­ca­tions, bank in­for­ma­tion, or account data – is sometimes sent via email. Ease of use is also a major factor for the success of a portal that can set the email service apart from its com­pe­ti­tion.

Outlook.com is the successor of Hotmail, the former “free” email services from Microsoft (in 2013, Hotmail was replaced by Outlook). Much like Google, this al­ter­na­tive provides 15GB of storage to store your messages. In addition, the Microsoft service includes a mail collector to collect address books and email addresses. Another benefit of Outlook.com is that you can import contacts from social networks such as Facebook.

If you use the paid email service Posteo, you can rest assured that your con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion will never be seen by a third party. This is because this premium al­ter­na­tive to Gmail protects your data via com­pre­hen­sive en­cryp­tion and two-factor au­then­ti­ca­tion. Saved data can also be encrypted. Beyond that, Posteo allows you to create an email address without providing any personal in­for­ma­tion.

Es­pe­cial­ly in terms of data security, Posteo far outdoes the email service Gmail. On the other hand, Gmail has a slightly more user-friendly design.

No adverts, no spam, no tracking – that’s what Gmail al­ter­na­tive Mailfence promises. To that end, the Belgium-based email service uses two-factor au­then­ti­ca­tion as well as message en­cryp­tion in the browser. Each email is digitally signed and shows re­cip­i­ents who the sender is. What’s more, you can create, import, launch, and manage simple OpenPGP keys using the solution.

Though Yahoo Mail had some dif­fi­cul­ties getting started, the mail portal can now easily keep up with the best Gmail al­ter­na­tives. Like many other al­ter­na­tives to Gmail, Yahoo is also usable on various iPhones and iPads as well as Android and Windows devices. Contacts can easily be imported from social networks – Yahoo even provides an im­pres­sive 1TB of storage space. The service also offers a manually con­fig­urable spam filter and a chat function with which you can receive SMS messages, among other things.

One of the top email providers since its high-profile launch in the 1990s, AOL Mail remains a popular al­ter­na­tive to Gmail. The service is available for free with the creation of an AOL account. Mobile access to AOL Mail is available for both Android and iOS users via the AOL App, or through the browser. Users can add their buddies into AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) chat service directly through their inbox.

GMX, like Outlook.com, also offers a mail collector as an extra. With GMX FreeMail you can send at­tach­ments up to 20MB in size. Beyond this, GMX features a so­phis­ti­cat­ed anti-spam module that can scan incoming messages for viruses or trojans. The Gmail al­ter­na­tive uses various backup services to secure and protect data.