I remain an Outlook user because I have years invested in managing contacts, email, calendar, a tasks in one common location. I migrated some of the data to Plaxo to assist in automatic updates, but it ties directly back to Outlook. Still, it's easy to see that most people could get by without Outlook and find something free with almost as much power. What's most interesting in this category is three of the top seven solutions in this category are Web apps. Here are the most popular email solutions chosen by readers in this year's reader survey.
Reader's Choice: Thunderbird made a strong showing in the email client category with 51% of all readers selecting it as a favorite. Coupled with free calendar add-in Lightning it's nearly as powerful as Outlook without any of the baggage associated with buying the Microsoft Office suite. Email can be managed for individual or multiple accounts. Contact management is built in. By default there's no calendar, but Lightning is a simple downloadable extension, similar to Mozilla's Firefox extensions. Thunderbird also acts as an RSS reader if you choose to use it that way. Working on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux also makes Thunderbird a plus, especially since data is fully portable between all three versions.
2) Gmail is a distant second in this category with 12% of reader's choosing Google's Web mail app as their favorite. In some ways I'm surprised it didn't rank higher due to it's widespread popularity. GMail offers great keyboard shortcuts for navigating the application, it can be extended further if you're into Grease Monkey scripts. Gmail does an excellent job at filtering junk mail, the Web client works well on an operating system and if you need desktop integration there's POP3 and IMAP access too.
3) Windows Live Mailreceived 7% of reader votes, which surprises me because of how clunky it is in comparison to GMail or Yahoo Mail (Scott Dunn from Windows Secrets has a nice comparison of Web email services). Live Mail is the evolution of Hotmail and as such it does a solid job of integrating Calendar and Contacts in a manner consistent with the Web version of Microsoft's Outlook. If I were choosing a Web email solution, my own vote goes to Gmail. Live Mail supports mail sorting after a fashion, which is slightly better than the labeling used by Gmail, but not enough to make use it.
4) Yahoo Mail predictably arrives 4th in this list with 3% of reader votes. Yahoo offers the most space of any Web mail product offering "unlimited" email storage, while Live Mail and Gmail only offer 5GB each. My Outlook PST file is well under 5GB, so I don't consider space a point of comparison, but your mileage may vary. I personally find mail sorting and the reading pane in Yahoo Mail to be the easiest of any Web service, which is consistent with the review from Windows Secrets mentioned above.
5) Outlook Express places 5th on the list, with 3% of reader's votes and just a couple short of Yahoo Mail. I find Outlook Express to be incredibly frustrating to use because it does many things wrong. If you need a decent newsgroup reader, it's acceptable, but for mail I'm voting 'No' despite what reader's have said. My suggestion, download Thunderbird.
AOL, PIM Xtreme, EssentialPIM, Pocomail, and Eudora all received slightly more than 1% of reader votes with 64 other email clients rounding out the list.
