I don’t use branded webmail systems a great deal. All my mail is handled by my hosting provider, which provides a thoroughly adequate web-based mail service for times when I am not using an email client. Still, with all the web ramblings about Google’s Gmail service, I thought I would review some of my web-based mail services and see what was in them and realised that most of the accounts have long since been removed or disabled due to lack of use.

To my mind, the premier web-based service is Fastmail, which is a very well thought-out and usable mail service. If you’re looking for a new mail provider, you should seriously consider them, and there’s no advertising!

The only other service active is Yahoo Mail – simply because I have had that for ages, and it used to be my way of reading normal mail accounts in a browser. Some of my mailing service lists still go here. Today I logged on and reviewed some of the settings and cleared out some of the junk, and I realised it is an excellent mail service. I really like their new feature AddressGuard, which allows for disposable email addresses that can be removed if they receive too much spam.

So, will I sign up for a Gmail account to compare it? You bet I will.

On this day…

• 2004: Can You Say Verulamium?