My first free web-based e-mail provider was Hotmail. I learned about it through friends so I figured it must be the best around if everyone has it. Now that I've been a presence on the web and e-mail scene for many years, I realized that Hotmail is still in the ice-age of e-mail.

Storage

Hotmail boasts 2MB of storage. Compare that to the 6MB of Yahoo! or the 5MB of Postmark.net. In the age of sending attachments (pictures, documents, etc.), you can count on receiving a message from Hotmail staff about hitting your max pretty quickly aftering using Hotmail on a regular basis. Of course, you don't get rid of some of your e-mails or attachments they will happily delete what they need to to get you back on par.

Shoddy Service

There have been many a time where I could not log on for one reason or another. What good is a permanent e-mail address that you can use anywhere at anytime when there is a possibility of not being able to check your messages? Not to mention the numerous "Delivery Failure" messages you can expect when e-mailing your closest friends.

SPAM

I have tried numerous free e-mail providers: Yahoo (which I use now), Postmark.net, Visto.com, etc. and I have never received the amount of SPAM on those e-mail providers than I do on Hotmail. I still have a few old Hotmail accounts and after 2 days, I can expect to find about 40/50 junkmail messages that need to be emptied on a regular basis. I mean, you don't want to waste a good portion of your 2MB on junkmail, do you?

Advanced Features

Those are virtually non-existent with Hotmail. Forget e-mail forwarding and auto-responders, which are two e-mail features that I rely on heavily. If you want basic e-mail service, then Hotmail does just "enough."

My recommendation ... Hotmail is not longer "HOT." It may have been in the hayday of e-mail but there is better technology out there that goes above and beyond Hotmail's basic service.

Recommended: No