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The Bottom Line
While Yahoo! Mail is generally a joy to use, free-form labelling and smart folders would be nice, and the spam filter could catch junk even more effectively.
Pros
- Yahoo! Mail integrates email, instant messaging and SMS text messaging
- Keyboard shortcuts, a desktop-like interface and attention to detail make Yahoo! Mail a joy to use
- Yahoo! Mail comes with unlimited online storage
Cons
- Yahoo! Mail's spam filter could be more effective
- You cannot label messages freely (and with multiple tags) and lacks smart folders
- Yahoo! Mail does not offer IMAP access for desktop email programs
Description
- Yahoo! Mail offers free email accounts with unlimited online storage at the yahoo.com, ymail.com and rocketmail.com domains.
- In addition to email, you can send SMS messages and exchange instant messages with Yahoo! and Windows Live contacts.
- Yahoo! Mail automatically collects junk emails in a "Spam" folder, and you can report unwanted emails the filter missed.
- Up to 15 filters automatically file incoming mail. You can also block email addresses and instant messaging contacts.
- Yahoo! Mail allows you to collect mail from additional POP accounts, and you can send from their addresses, too.
- Acting as a kind of social network, Yahoo! Mail lets you connect to other users, whose mail then gets extra treatment.
- Virus scanning and Yahoo! Mail's not downloading remote images or other content in emails protects you from much online harm.
- Keyboard shortcuts, drag and drop, tabs, address auto-completion and more lend Yahoo! Mail desktop-like qualities.
- Applications can expand Yahoo! Mail to let you edit pictures, for example, or send money and big files easily.
Guide Review - Yahoo! Mail - Free Email Service
Space, with Yahoo! Mail, is no issue: you can accumulate as much email as "unlimited" storage will hold.Of course, you'll want to organize all that mail. Yahoo! Mail offers folders (to which you can drag and drop messages) to hold and decent search (you can use a number of operators to specify senders or dates, for example) to find mail. All folders let you focus on mail from people you've befriended via Yahoo! profile connections easily — and their emails appear on the "Welcome" page, too.
Unfortunately, search categories cannot be saved as smart folders — Yahoo! Mail does come with filters that automatically file incoming mail, though — and you cannot freely apply multiple labels to messages. You have to put emails into multiple folders for that kind of organization.
Speaking of filters and folders, Yahoo! Mail comes with solid but, alas, not stellar spam control. It could do better in that area. Of course, Yahoo! Mail scans for viruses and will protect you from web-bugs in unknown senders' messages.
While Yahoo! Mail Plus comes with a few goodies such as POP access and larger messages, IMAP access is missing from all but iPhone Mail. Instead of reaching out to email programs, Yahoo! Mail integrates instant messaging (Yahoo! and Windows Live Messenger) and SMS messages.
In day-to-day use, it is the details that make you love or loathe an email service, of course. Yahoo! Mail not only brings a sleek interface and tabs and drag-and-drop oomph but also keyboard shortcuts around every (round) corner and well-thought-out solutions to many a practical program (such as addressing messages).
