The best email services are usually ones you have to pay for, but there are plenty of great free email providers out there. The trick is finding them. That’s because free email providers often make you pay with your privacy. Depending on the company, they could use your emails to serve ads, track you across the web, or even use the text in your emails to train AI.
It’s a tough balance. In general, you’ll have to pay real money for a truly privacy-focused email provider. You can even set up a private email server of your own, if you’re so inclined. If you’re not ready to sign up for a paid email service yet, then here are your best free alternatives. You’re not even limited to one option—it’s a good idea to create multiple email accounts and use them for different purposes, so you should mix and match based on your needs.
Gmail is the best email provider for most people
Credit: Joel Cunningham
Gmail is the best email service for most people, hands down. It’s reliable, filters spam well, and gives you 15GB of cloud file storage for free. Plus, it’s practically unavoidable. It’s hard to be on the internet and avoid Google entirely, and at some point, you’re probably going to need a Google account. From setting up most Android phones to accessing a shared Google Doc, Gmail serves a wide range of audiences pretty well.
Your Gmail account also comes with unlimited addresses, which is a great way to check if a service sold your email ID to spammers. The biggest argument against Gmail is that it’s owned by Google, which makes money by selling your data to advertisers. If you are privacy conscious, then this isn’t the right email service for you.
Pros: Ubiquitous, easy to use, feature-rich, integrates with other Google products
Cons: Lots of advertising based on mining your data
Outlook is the best Gmail alternative for most people
Credit: Joel Cunningham
For those who don’t want to use Gmail, but are looking for a similar service, Microsoft’s Outlook is the best option. Just like Gmail, Outlook is backed by a tech giant and will almost certainly be around for years to come. Plus, you get up to 15GB of email storage and 5GB of additional OneDrive storage for free. It’s a reliable alternative to Gmail, but once again, it’s not the email service you want to use if privacy is your top priority.
Pros: Backed by a major tech company; a feature-rich Gmail alternative
Cons: Like Google, Microsoft doesn’t care that much about your privacy
Proton Mail is the best email service for privacy
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Proton Mail is the best free email service for privacy-conscious people. It offers 1GB of storage, a limit of 150 emails per day, and up to 10 aliases for free, which is good enough to get started. My Gmail account is over a decade old and it still uses less than 1GB of storage, so it’s possible to manage with that storage limit for quite a while. Proton Mail also gives you a fair bit more than mail, even if you aren’t spending a dime. You’ll get a free VPN for one device and a free password manager as well.
Proton Mail’s biggest advantage is end-to-end encryption, which means your messages cannot be intercepted or read by Proton Mail or third parties. This is a great privacy feature as long as you’re communicating with Proton Mail users or people using other end-to-end encrypted email providers, but it’s not as effective if you’re communicating with people on ad-supported email accounts. Everything could be totally private on your end, but your friend’s email service could read the contents of your email pretty easily. If you’re ready to pay, Proton Unlimited offers great value with more email addresses, more storage space, and advanced privacy features like dark web monitoring.
Pros: Great for privacy; end-to-end encryption
Cons: Only 1GB of storage and a daily sending limit
Yahoo Mail is the best free email for free storage
Credit: Joel Cunningham
If you want the maximum possible storage on your free email account, believe it or not, Yahoo Mail is your best bet. The provider lets you use up to 1TB storage (yes, that’s 1,000GB) for free. The catch is that it still limits you to a maximum of 25MB of attachments per email, so you can’t start attaching 4K movies to your emails. It also comes with other useful features, such as an easy way to unsubscribe from newsletters. However, Yahoo Mail also shows you ads in your inbox and isn’t really the service you want to use if you’re concerned about privacy.
Pros: Tons of free storage
Cons: As ad-heavy and invasive as other services, plus you have to have an “@yahoo” or, worse, “@aol” email address. (Certain people will judge you, if only subconsciously.)
AOL is the best free email for unlimited storage
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Sometimes 1TB of storage isn’t enough for people. The next best thing is unlimited storage. Another throwback, AOL Mail, is a good alternative to Yahoo Mail, with a similar feature set and size limits (they’re owned by the same company). AOL is user-friendly, lets you organize and personalize your inbox, and offers a spell-checker, calendar, and a to-do feature on top of the features most emails have. It’s compatible with Android and iOS apps and you can transfer your contact list from CSV, TXT, or LDIF files.
Pros: Unlimited free storage
Cons: You’re limited to 25 MB for your email attachments
Zoho Mail lets you use custom email address domains for free
Credit: Joel Cunningham
The biggest problem with almost every free email provider is you have no control over the domain name associated with your email address. You’ll be stuck with email addresses that end in @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, @outlook.com, etc.
If you want to use your own domain name with your free email, check out Zoho Mail. Its free plan lets you add up to five users to your account and offers 5GB of free storage per user. There are no ads, but you won’t get IMAP or POP3 sync features for the mobile apps, which means there may be delays in receiving mobile notifications for new emails. The service will still work pretty well on your desktop browser.
Pros: You can use a custom @
Cons: Only 5GB storage and no IMAP or POP3 syncing
Neo is the best free email for small business owners
Credit: Daniel Oropeza
Small business owners, freelancers, or anyone who wants to see how their emails are performing and how many people are actually reading them can see basic email analytic tools like CTR (click-through rate) and open rates with Neo. It’s also a great alternative to Zoho since it lets you choose a domain for free and has up to 100GB of storage. You can use an AI feature for writing emails, but you don’t get five user accounts like Zoho. However, if you run into trouble, be warned that Neo’s support isn’t known to be the best.
Pros: See CTR and Open rates
Cons: The support isn’t very responsive
