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General discussion

What are the pros and cons of Web-based e-mail systems?

Jun 22, 2012 9:11AM PDT
Question:

What are the pros and cons of Web-based e-mail systems?


Hi Lee & friends, I really appreciate the advice and opinions that you
share with us in the Topic of the Week. Here's a question on which I'd
appreciate some advice: What are the pros and cons of using a
Web-based e-mail system such as Gmail instead of a system where I use a
mail client such as Outlook and my e-mails are stored on my computer?

I currently use Outlook, but find that the Webmail app provided by my
ISP is very unreliable and slow. So accessing my mail when I'm away
from home is not easy. (I'm not into iPhones, iPads, etc.) Presumably,
using a Web-based system would mean I don't have to worry about
backing up my e-mails any more.

The wisdom of community members on this issue would be very welcome. Thanks.

--Submitted by: Rob B. of Sydney, Australia

Discussion is locked

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I Use Yahoo Mail
Jun 29, 2012 12:40PM PDT

I have been using Yahoo mail for more than 10 years without any problems. I use web-based mail because it is easy to set up, and the E Mail address is permanent. Yahoo mail has developed to the point where it is basically an application within your browser. As an aside it uses a lot of memory to run. And because of the ads on the side, it is best to have a large screen otherwise the messages get squeezed in between the menus on the left and the banner ad on the right.

The second reason is security. I've always been afraid that if mail is automatically loaded on my computer, a virus will get through and run all over my system. Web-based email gives me the choice of what to open or not to open. I've only gotten a handful of viruses over many years, and none came through E mail.

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E-mail
Jun 29, 2012 12:50PM PDT

No matter what they say about privacy all e-mail is on someone's server before it gets to you even if it is a private account from your ISP nothing is private, even if it is deleted from the server's there is probably a backup copy of your e-mails somewhere as the major ISPs probably do server backups daily of all files...and that would include e-mails just in case their server would go down and they would have to restore from a backup. That said I use Gmail quite frankly I feel they have the widest range of services offered from online spreadsheets, word documents. databases, calendars, pictures and now their new Google drive which you can use like a thumb-drive and access on any computer anywhere. Once you really get over the privacy thing...and realize that it doesn't exist you can enjoy the many benefits of online e-mail

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Yahoo and outlook
Jun 29, 2012 1:51PM PDT

I have used yahoo since at least 2000
Its never really been that bad
The early days we got lots of spam but I get very little these days that are not filtered out.
I use Outlook as well to ensure I have a backup.
Its worked well for me over the years and have no reason to change.

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Only use Outlook for the last 10 years
Jun 29, 2012 2:20PM PDT

I personally do not like nor use web based mail for different reasons, one has to go on-line, go to the site and so on. Also there are issues of storage space (not any longer with Yahoo).
I still have an archive of e-mail going back 10 years, try that on web based mail. OK, my file is greater than 1 GB already but what the heck, I have over 7 TB of storage (professional photographer). I have Outlook setup in such a way that it leaves a copy on my server. Another advantage of Outlook is that one is able to setup a lot of rules directing the mail to different folders. I did change computers and OS over the years but it is enough to copy the Outlook.pst file to transfer ALL the e-mail AND contact info.
I still am able to access my web mail if I am away from whatever computer, the one does not exclude the other. And oh, I DO NOT have a spam filter, find it too dangerous to miss mail which has been labelled spam by error. It is sooo easy to delete them in Outlook.

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Yeah I have a take on it.
Jun 29, 2012 3:54PM PDT

I like my live account, and I use it with windows live essentials. Honestly it don't matter which one you use in my opinion, unless your a private kind of guy and you don't want people know what ISP you have and most importantly your email to your ISP.

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gmail
Jun 29, 2012 4:58PM PDT

I have a work email account which I access via a range of different mail clients depending on what device and where I am. We use an IMAP4 based system so I use Thunderbird, pine, AppleMail(iPad) and K9 mail Android.

We get a quota and I live in the quota. I never create folders which are local, preferring to keep all my mail on the server accessible from anywhere. Its company mail.

When I needed an email account for me personal use some 10 or so years ago I went with googlemail and have stuck with them. I think its a good idea to have an email account independent of your ISP. Its painful to switch across and notify everyone, but in the long run I think its a good thing. That way if you decide to change ISP, you don't have to go through all the pain each time.

Gmail and Yahoo are large well established candidates and some larger ISP's OEM the yahoo and google systems anyway.

My vote for gmail is based on usability - it really is the best email system I have used since I started using unix command mail in 1984.

It does all the usual things but the strength of the search is key. It doesn't have folders per se, but uses labels which are more powerful (one mail can have multiple labels). However search underpins it. I just have one big inbox in which I sub search to find things. I personally find this much easier than using folders. Sure most email clients have some kind of search, but this typically relies on downloading mail to be indexed locally.

I have never been a user of Outlook so I'm not sure what the differences are, but gmail seems to have everything I need and more. Of course it does support IMAP4 so I could access it from a IMAP4 client (AppleMail, Outlook) and that would work fine, but I would loose that server-side search capability which I find essential.


I have server-side filters set up to sort and auto-trash some mail and the benefit is that these are run on the server when the mail arrives, so no matter which client I use to access the mail, its been sorted. many mail desktop clients have filters but they only 'fire' when that client accesses the account, so not as good for mobile or roaming use.

Sure my Trash is full of spam and I get the occasional phising or spma mail in my Inbox, but actually its fairly rare, . I'm a good citizen at reporting spam/phishing through gmail so maybe that helps.

I don't backup my gmail, maybe I should , and I could if I used thunderbird or applemail as a client. A compromise might be to label some mail as 'Valuable' which flags that up as a singleIMAP4 foder which I could then backup.

I can even use pine against gmail - pine is an old school "green screen" terminal mail client, but an extremely functional one, and sometimes I take it for a spin, and always enjoy how fast I can plough through email with it.

So my vote is for gmail

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Benefits of Web based Email
Jun 29, 2012 9:20PM PDT

If you use Gmail, you can retain your email address even when you change ISP. You can also access it using computers away from home so long as you take normal security measures such as unticking the box to automatically sign you in. You can still use Outlook to download and store your email on your computer. I use Gmail and Outlook 2010 and access my email using IMAP which downloads email to my PC and leaves a copy on Gmail. I have also set up files for particular emails for which you can set up rules to automatically save new emails in should you wish. These files also appear on Gmail.

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Getting mail when you have no internet
Jun 29, 2012 10:17PM PDT

Thank you for the corrections on IMAP, these features change all the time and it is hard to keep up with them.

Yes, you are correct in that you can NOT get any NEW email messages if your internet is down with any form of email. However, when you are using an email client such as Outlook, you can at least work with previous messages that came in, check your calendar and even create new or reply to messages that were already in your email box. And even though changes made will not go out until your Internet connection is back up, you can at least still get some work done.

For me this, is invaluable. I spend many hours per day responding to emails and to be able to work, even on old emails, when I don't have an internet connection is a real plus.

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2 e-mail related questions
Jun 30, 2012 5:15AM PDT

I apologize if these questions are too far off-topic... But they do relate to e-mail choices.

1. A lot of web-based e-mail programs require that you login periodically to keep the account active. Does a "send/receive" from an e-mail client (like Outlook, Outlook Express) count as such a login? Or do you have to log on via their web page to keep the account active?

2. Occasionally I make posters or flyers using Word, that include a photo or graphic. I want to both print and e-mail the flyers. When using an e-mail client like Outlook or Outlook Express I am able to Select All and Copy the Word doc contents and Paste it into the body of my e-mail message, and everything is fine, the photos/graphics are there, and I can send out the e-mail.

However, if I paste the same Word doc content into the web interface of a web-based e-mail program like Hotmail, or gmail, the text pastes fine, but the photo does not get pasted - it is missing. This is a problem for me - and why I continue to use an e-mail client. Anyone know why? Or, know a web-based e-mail program with a web-based interface that will work with pasted word doc content including a photo/graphic?

(I know I can always send the doc as an attachment - but in this case I want the flyer in the body of the e-mail - folks will often skip opening an attachment. I also know I could re-create the flyer in the web e-mail user-interface, but trying to avoid that extra work. I'm still using Word 2003 in case that makes a difference.)

-thanks.

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1 answer
Jun 30, 2012 5:39AM PDT

1. That depends on the policies of the owner of that particular e-mail service. Technically speaking, accessing the mail server to download mails from the inbox to a client on your PC involves a login. But only their customer service can tell if this counts as a login to keep the account active.

I can't answer your second question. I don't have much experience with webmail.

Kees

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Outlook
Jun 30, 2012 6:38AM PDT

Hello:

1 -"send/receive" does indeed log-in but that does not affect your web based consultation of your mail.

2 - I know that is a problem. Even though you send them in the body of your mail, many, if not most of the web based mail will put it as an attchement in the case of a picture. They probably will keep your Word generated text, as it sees it as text but anything graphic will be converted to an attachment. Experiment sending documents to a web mail, if you have one yourself or of a friend and check how it arrives.

Hope this helps, and, I see absolutely NO reason to use webmail, a client has soo many advantages and ease of use, and if you get your own domain you are no longer married to the ISP for your addresses, you take them with you when you change, simple procedure to be requested and done by the ISP

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I only use Outlook
Jun 30, 2012 6:29AM PDT

I use Outlook since about 10 years, never had a problem with it. The advantages are that everything comes into your own computer, I have it set up to download all attachments, picutres included. Norton always took care of the naughty ones and did not miss one. A big advantage is: Outlook starts with my computer and stays on for the whole time, duly checking and eventually downloading my mail every ten minutes. No spam or other filters as spam amounts to less than 10% and it is so easy to delete it, just click on the cross, recurring spam.

I wonder often why people still want to use webmail, none of the arguments are valid in my eyes and can justify the hassle of webmail versus the ease of a client like Outlook (Outlook express was a watered down version which was not great neither)

I still am albe to check my mail from anywhere as it stays on the server for a few days after it is retireved. I do have my own domain(s), two of which are on a server where my site is, even those can be read "on the web"

Over the years I changed motherboards and OS serveral times, it sufficed to copy the Outlook.pst file to transfer ALL the e-mail AND contacts. Used to have to transfer also the Archive.pst file in the Outlook folder. This way I have an archive of all my e-mail of the last 10 years, true the file is over 1 GB but what the heck, I am a professonal photographer and have over 7.5 Tb storage in my computer.

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thats fine
Jul 1, 2012 9:20PM PDT

unless you have a break-in and your pc is stolen / have a fire / crashes etc

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Can someone suggest a change for me?

I have Verizon and last year I could log in using an Ipod (which uses Safari) and I could log in using a Wii which uses Opera as its web browser. I tried to log in this year and it would let me log in but I couldn't view my inbox.

I also have a Kindle Fire and i've talked to Verizon's tech support and it isn't a browser they support. I can't view my email with my Kindle Fire.

I was able to get on the web on vacation at a motor lodge with my Kindle Fire. There were periods when the internet was working and periods when the internet was not working. One of the things I found out was when I went to play the music I purchased, I found out I couldn't because the music was stored on the cloud and I had to wait until the internet was working.

I'm besides myself because I want privacy on the internet when choosing an internet provider and I want to be able to get into my inbox. Verizon changed their services from a text inbox that I could read with an ipod to rich text and I'm not able to get into my inbox online with an iPod or Wii anymore.

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I posted this everywhere and sent it to my email address boo
Jul 1, 2012 8:56AM PDT

CHECK YOUR JUNK MAIL...Lately, my email contacts, strangely enough, the ones from the right side politically, have been moved to 'Junk Mail'......by Hotmail.

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Why not have the best of both worlds?
Jul 19, 2012 7:06PM PDT

There are quite a number of good reasons to have web based e-mails vs e-mails on Outlook.

1. All your e-mails are backed up on large corporation servers - Far less risk of e-mails disappearing from say hard drive failure, or security being compromised by virus attack. Of course that's not to say it doesn't happen, it's just a lot less likely.

2. All your e-mails are available online at any computer system, tablet, or smartphone you can get your hands on, even going into the library or something.

3. It doesn't take up that much space on your hard drive as it's all stored on line.

Of course there are some bad points.

1. If someone manages to obtain or guess your password they can then gain access to and see all your e-mails online. In the case of them being on your computer if someone was to gain your username and password for that then the only thing they could see would be the most recent e-mails that have been sent to you.

2. It uses data whenever you go in and view and e-mail. Not too bad if your on an unlimited data usage plan, but if you've got limited data usage or are charged per megabyte (like some mobile networks do) you can quickly rack up a huge bill.

3. It uses bandwidth each time you want to read your e-mail. Again not too bad if your on a super-fast broadband connection (well here I have 2mbps connection and I find that more than ample enough for accessing my e-mails), but if your on a slower connection (like maybe 56k dial-up) then you may see speed issues, or if your sharing your internet with a number of other devices at the same time.

Alternatively there are a few ways you can have the best of both worlds. You can have it that you have both your e-mail as webmail and going through the internet and there are two ways to do this.

The easiest way is to setup your e-mail system, like Outlook, to connect to the e-mail server through IMAP rather than POP3. The settings differ depending on who you use for your e-mail, and in Gmail there is an option to enable IMAP. IMAP is far better than POP3 as it connects to your e-mail server the same way as POP3 but it downloads all your online folders and messages, so if you've got filters in place that will send emails to various folders, or you file certain e-mails in various folders, IMAP creates the folder structure online, whilst still allowing you to view your e-mails through Outlook. The good thing with this is that when you login to your online e-mail account you will find that any e-mails you've filed away in various folders on Outlook will mirror exactly what is on your webmail account so you will know where everything is (this is as long as you create the folders within the main account folder - e.g. in the case of something like Gmail the "Gmail" folder). In addition to this any e-mails you may have already downloaded via Outlook, if you use drag and drop you can drag and drop them onto the account folder, and they will be uploaded back into webmail, so even if you change you can easily put your existing e-mails into webmail with very little trouble.

You can use an IMAP connection with many e-mail clients out there such as Outlook, iPhones, Android, Windows Mobile/Phone, Blackberry, iPads, Tablets, webmail, etc and they'll all recreate the same folder layout as each other which is really good if you use e-mails on numerous devices.

The other option is to still use POP3, but in POP3 there is an option to leave the messages on the server. You need to click Tools and then Account Settings and go into the Advanced Tab to change these settings. If you tick the box in Outlook to "leave a copy of messages on the server" and "remove messages from server when deleted" then Outlook will leave your messages on the webmail account until you delete them from outlook (or until you delete them from the webmail - the only problem with this is that if you delete them from webmail you also need to go back and delete them from Outlook as well. If you use the IMAP route above then it will sync both Outlook and webmail at the same time and the message will be gone from both).