What is the best email service?

Nobody changes their address twice. Free giants, encrypted holdouts and paid inboxes that screen strangers — which one deserves the next twenty years?

1

Gmail

Google's email service, launched on April Fools' Day 2004 with a gigabyte of storage nobody believed.

2

Outlook

Microsoft's mail service, the default in most offices and the successor to Hotmail.

3

Proton Mail

Swiss end-to-end encrypted mail, built so the provider itself cannot read the messages.

4

Yahoo Mail

One of the first free webmail services, still holding hundreds of millions of legacy addresses.

5

iCloud Mail

Apple's mail service, quietly built into every Apple device and Hide My Email.

6

Fastmail

An independent Australian provider that sells speed and no ads instead of a free tier.

7

Zoho Mail

Ad-free business mail bundled with a full office suite, popular with small companies.

8

Tuta

German encrypted mail, formerly Tutanota, with encrypted search and calendars.

9

HEY

Basecamp's opinionated paid email, which screens every new sender before it reaches the inbox.

10

GMX

A long-running German free mail provider with generous storage and aliases.

11

AOL Mail

The service behind "You've got mail", and still running decades after the dial-up era.

12

Mail.ru

One of the largest webmail services in the Russian-speaking world, bundled with a full portal.