PhoneBoy Reviews: Web-Based Email Services

Web browsers are becoming pretty ubiquitous on computers these days. Any new computer you are likely to buy includes a copy of Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. There are even cafes and such where, for a small hourly fee, you can sit down and get on the web. There's no doubt the web is just about everywhere these days. And email seems like a natural application for the web. It's possible to read things via the web, certainly. Using forms in HTML and programs on the web server, it's possible to get input from a user and have stuff done with them (like, for instance, send out an email).

There are many technical hurdles with getting email on the web. First of all, the web is generally a stateless medium. It requires a bit of work to build "state" into a website. These "stateful" mechanisms would be used to keep track of things like who you are, what you've read, what you've deleted, and so on. Second of all, it has to be secure. Not anyone should be able to access your email. State and security sort of have to go hand-in-hand. Third, a web interface is somewhat limiting, though definately pretty standard across web browsers. You basically only have buttons, text fields, check boxes, and menu items. And any time you make any "changes", you need to reload the entire web page unless you use JavaScript in the site. JavaScript is a programming language that runs in the browser and allows you to do a variety of things, including change the active window. JavaScript is embedded with web pages and browsers that don't understand JavaScript will happily ignore it.

Web-based email does have some important advantages, though. You can access it from any computer with a web browser. Upgrades to the email software are done one place -- on the server. If you maintain an email account on a web-based provider that is independent of your ISP, you can move ISPs without changing your email address.

The first commercially successful attempt at web-based email at a consumer level was done by the folks at Hotmail. Their basic goal was to make an email system that was globally accessable via the web and is free to the end user. If I can ever find the interview I recorded with these guys, I'll put it up on the web to listen to. Commercial solutions are also becoming available for use on a corporate intranet to increase the accessability of email to end users and reduce the maintenance costs associated with email software.

All of the web-based email services out there, aside from being a service on which you can send and receive email, have a feature set that is similiar to your favorite email client. Aside from the ability to read and write email, they include the ability to download POP email, save and sort messages into folders, view and send attachments, spell-check your messages, and even filter incoming mail into seperate folders! But all these services have one thing in common -- advertising. Advertisers pay to have their banner shown on every page you "view" when you use the email service. The fees they pay subsidize the services, keeping them free. The ads are targeted based on the demographic information you provide to the provider, which is asked for as part of the signup process for these services. The advertisers like being able to "target" their ads.

Here are six sites that offere web-based email to the masses: HotMail, RocketMail, MailCity, MailExcite, FreeMail, and NetAddress. Each of these services offers something different.

HotMail

HotMail was the first web-based email service available to the general public and really pioneered the whole web-based email idea. Having been doing the web-email thing for over a year, which is a long time in web-years, they've got their interface very well honed. They've also had a lot of time to test the service with a variety of browsers. Almost all the features of the service work well in any browser. For browsers that don't support uploading files via the web, HotMail lets you know that the browser you are using does not support that feature -- a very nice touch.

Aside from the ability to spell-check any outgoing email message before you send it, the service allows you to filter incoming mail based on who the mail is from, who the mail is to, and what the subject of the message is. One really nice feature of the service is the "Block Sender" button that appears next to the sender's email address while reading. Click the Block Sender button and all future email from that person will be routed to the Trash Folder.

There are only three things about this service that I don't like. First, it always adds an advertisement for the HotMail service. The second is that, on occasion, I get "Server Errors" when loading pages. I think that is because the service is a bit overloaded, probably because it's so popular. Third, there's a limit of 1 megabyte for all attachments sent. Actually, this last one isn't really such a bad thing -- most mail gateways don't support large email messages anyway. And in reality, email is not a good means for transferring large files to people.

MailExcite/MailCity

These two services are basically different "brands," but they are basically the same service as they have the same interface. For my purposes, they are the same. Three things stand out about this service. One is that the service allows for something called a "vacation reply." The vacation reply, a long-time feature on Unix mail systems, will automatically respond to messages while you are away letting people who send you messages know that you won't be able to personally respond for a while. Another cool feature is the ability to "download" an email message as a file that can easily be saved on your hard disk. Third, the pages have fewer graphics on them, making for quicker page load times.

Two downsides to this service: One is the trailer add for the MailExcite/MailCity service that gets added to all outgoing messages. The other is that, if you try and use the attachment feature with a browser that does not support it, the browser "hangs". There appears to be no detection of an attempt to use the feature by browsers that don't support the necessary features. Otherwise, the service is quite a contender in the web-based email service competition.

FreeMail (freemail.co.za)

Personally, I don't know why I bothered going to this service to check it out. It was such a disappointment, that I could never see myself using the current version of this service. First off, the service doesn't allow you to send attachments with your email. The address book function is confusing, to say the least, as is most of their user interface. There is no online help, they're banner ads "change" every few seconds, and the servers are obviously running on Windows NT. Knowing how unscalable NT is, I don't see this service being terribly reliable and would avoid it at all costs.

RocketMail

The only really "bad thing" about RocketMail is that you need a recent version of a web browser: Netscape Navigator 3.0 or Internet Explorer 3.0 because it uses Frames and JavaScript. These features, however, are put to really good use on this service and it is well worth the experience. The best use of JavaScript on the site has to be the spell checker. Each word the spell check does not recognize is "boxed" and you can access a pull-down menu right on the word that suggests possible replacements for the word.

Other great features of RocketMail include: filtering mail on headers and message body, an extensive address book function with tie-ins to the Four11 service (which is a sort of "white pages of the Internet"), built-in spam protection (it uses the list of known spammers maintained by America On-Line), and it will also append the services "Quote of the Day" to your outgoing email. And the interface is probably the nicest of the bunch.

NetAddress

The folks at usa.net started out providing a service where people could get an email address that was permanent. You could give out a single address that would forward email to you wherever you happen to be. Then they started a web-based email service that incorporates the forwarding service with a web-based email service called NetAddress. Aside from the forwarding feature, NetAddress incorporates a basic email filtering, the ability to email yourself reminders of certain events, and it will even automatically fetch email from a POP3 server.

On the downside, you can not send attachments through this service. The Address Book has a nasty habit of erasing the message you're working on should you decide to query it for an address during message composition. Finally, the online help is empty in some places. But this is a generally adequate service for most users.

Summary

Of the services, I use HotMail the most, mostly because they're service seems to work in any browser and it has an easy-to-use "block sender" feature.. RocketMail looks to be the next up and coming contender for king of the web-based email services, though the dependence on a recent browser bothers me. MailCity/MailExcite have a good balance of features and accessibility. NetAddress is good if you want a permanent forwarding address.

HotMail
    http://www.hotmail.com

RocketMail
    http://www.rocketmail.com

MailExcite
    http://www.mailexcite.com

MailCity
    http://www.mailcity.com

NetAddress
    http://netaddress.usa.net

FreeMail
    http://www.freemail.co.za

Last Update: 11 September 1997
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