Web-Based Email Comparison

IT/Redux has an updated summary of it’s Office 2.0 Roundup with a review of 10 online email applications. The review focused on services that have been registered in their database, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, FastMail, Jubii, Zimbra, Webmail.us, WebExMail, Mailroom, Tamadaa. As they noted there are a lot of email players so narrowing the field to a reasonable number to review is tough although I would have probably replaced a couple on the list with established players Load.com and BlueTie.  

I’m a big fan of the IT/Redux site, the only thing that I believe the Office 2.0 Roundup leaves to be desired is a perspective of application suites. Some of the tools listed encapsulate multiple functions and while they may not be the best at each individual function there is something to be said about their ability to integrate functions together and provide efficiency.

Why ‘Free-mail’ Has a Bad Reputation

Hey everyone, sorry about the little hiatus, I was on vacation (still am) and despite best intentions did not spend any time posting over the last week or so. I suppose that’s a good thing.

I do now want to write about an article on the Washington Post site regarding Web-mail. The gist of the article is that Google is the best of the ‘Free-mail’ options compared to Yahoo and Hotmail. The article ends with three points:

“But what if you plan to employ a Web-mail account as your primary e-mail address? That can be a complicated value judgment. Gmail’s ads are generally in good taste, but do you want every bit of personal correspondence to arrive with its own marketing payload?”

Is Google forgoing potential business customers by continuing to display ads in the email client? Could they possibly be making money with these ads? Until just now, when I went to look specifically, I had never even looked at the ads. I knew they were they but never looked at them and never even considered looking at them. I’m there do get things done, read my mail, respond, are these ads really adding revenue at the expense of users?

“There’s also the nagging issue of Gmail’s developers not considering the service “done” after 33 months of effort — thought it may be comforting to learn that Google employees themselves use Gmail.”

Can we stop exploiting the word ‘Beta’ now? Look 33 months, millions of people use it every day and anyone can get access and use it, it’s not in Beta anymore. Beta use to be cool, now it’s just a gimmick. Google’s not the only one diluting the definition of Beta, of course. Now we are going to have to have different levels of Beta, ‘Limited Beta’ (which means it really is in Beta and not just anyone can use it), ‘Beta’ (the company is trying to be cool), ‘Perpetual Beta’ (the company has no idea how to monetize the product and needs to keep the investors on the line).

And finally, here’s the one I don’t understand: 

“But the real sticking point may be whether you want to trust your most important messages to any free service at all.”

I don’t know what this means. Why wouldn’t I want to trust my messages to a free service? What is the opposite of a ‘free service’ and why should I ‘trust’ them?

Replace Microsoft Outlook?

Offline access is an active topic for web-based products today. I’m curious what all of you think about how to handle offline email. This has some up in a couple of conversations over last few days and Scalix had an interesting post closely related to the topic yesterday. Say you provide web-based email, BlueTie, Zoho, Load.com, Webmail.us. Many say that people would like very much to have a good Outlook alternative but do you think that companies like those mentioned should focus on high quality, very effective integration with Outlook for offline support or look to develop thier own offline client (which may still work within a browser but offline)?  We’ve got a great community of industry insiders and enthusiasts here at SaaS-a-fras, it would be great to exchange (pun intended) thoughts on this topic.

Slowing Down for the Holiday

Well we’ve reached the bottom of the PR trough with the holiday coming next week. The blogs are slowing down, the only press releases that come out will be the ones they don’t want you to read. Alternatively, who will want to make the first splash of the new year? Who will have the first press release of the year? Zimbra, Zoho, Foldera? I’ll provide what link bait I can for whomever’s first. Just don’t tell Google, otherwise I might have to add a ‘NoFollow’ tag….

 Here are a few other things I’d like to see in 07:

A comprehensive chart of who offers what in terms of applications for business; email, ’word’ documents, spreadsheets, powerpoint, project planning, etc. Any volunteers? You should be able to get a lot of links for something thorough. 

Will storage size stop being used as a product differentiator in 2007? Can someone please do a survey for us and let us know if customers really see this as a key factor?

How many new products will Zoho launch in 07? Raju or Arvind, is there a Zoho Mail coming?

Do those ratios in Nichebot really work? (Keyword campaign in progress.)

Foldera Launch….. Still skeptical Oliver & Dave…. you can send my beta login to catchyaintit [at] yahoo.com  

Who will have a mash up for Goowy first?

Which conference, related to our topics here, is THE one to go to for 2007?

Will the expanded features of products like Zimbra, HyperOffice and others begin to make a serious dent into the Hosted Exchange market? 

What do you think will be interesting with everyone in 2007, basecamp, bluetie, everyone.net, foldera, fusemail, hyperoffice, intermedia.net, load.com, mailsnare, mailstreet, MI8, myoffice.net, norada, runbox, scalix, sherweb, simplicato, solodox, swishmail, thinkfree, usa.net, webmail.us, zimbra, zoho…

What else needs to be covered?

Our visitor stats are growing pretty strong so please help tell your story, provide some thought leadership and expand the dialogue to keep people coming back. We can all benefit from more content, more links and more exposure.

Radicati Reports

The Radicati Group seems to have some interesting reports for email and hosted exchange companies. I’d be curious to hear from any of you that have gotten any of thier reports and if you find the information accurate/valuable? This recent report includes an evaluation with ASP-One, Everyone.net, Intermedia.net, Mailstreet, Mi8, USA.NET, Webmail.us and others. It’s certainly an incomplete report as I would have expected it to include BlueTie, Load and Zimbra and possible a couple of others.

SpamTrap

This is an interesting approach. One from Webmail.us called the SpamTrap. You send Webmail an old email address that doesn’t get ANY valid email and they use them to build thier block list for spam. It’s an interesting idea but am curious if it will really work. Undoubtedly people will submit email addresses they no longer use but forgot to change some of their subscriptions for and thus are receiving valid emails but they can’t see the forest for the trees so to speak. Then, of course, those legitimate senders get blocked for all Webmail users. Anyone know of another company that has done this? Did it impact much legitimate mail?