MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, GMail, AOL and similar types of widely-used (and free) e-mail accounts are popular and easy to set up. However, despite their popularity, such e-mail accounts present their users with a number of inconveniences.
Users of these free e-mail accounts may have to deal with any of the following types of inconveniences and annoyances:
- With mass-market e-mail accounts, including MSN Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail users share their e-mail domains (e.g., “@hotmail.com,” “@msn.com,” or “.yahoo.com”) with millions of other users, which makes it impossible to create a truly unique e-mail identity for you and/or your business.
- Users of Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. are frequently being pestered with unwanted and intrusive on-page advertisements. Ad placement is one of the main reasons that these providers can offer their services for free.
- Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail users are more likely than most other e-mail users to be blitzed with electronic spam.
- Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail networks are prone to attacks by phishers, pharmers, hackers, crackers and other cyber crooks who attempt to steal sensitive information or plant e-mail worms, Trojan Horses and other malware.
- Online merchants might refuse your order. Much Internet fraud – the vast majority, in fact – is associated with mass-market e-mail accounts, such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail. Some merchants simply refuse to accept orders that originate from them.
- You might lose your account if you do not use it within a certain time. Sure, that is not a big deal if you use it only for casual, occasional contacts. But it is crucial if you used it to register at Web sites, for example. If there are problems with your account and your e-mail address is expired, you’re out of luck.
- It is next to impossible to get an e-mail address that is easily useable, let alone memorable. Because of the large amount of users that share these domains, the risk of selecting an e-mail address that is already taken is very high. There are simply too many variations in circulation. In many cases, users are forced to find an alternative address as addresses like “you@msn.com,” “you@hotmail.com,” or “you@yahoo.com” may well be unavailable.
- Some of these e-mail accounts may include unwanted advertising insertions in your outgoing e-mail. Do you really want to be advertising an e-mail provider’s promotions when you are applying for a job, or registering a complaint, or communicating with friends?
- Because users of Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail accounts share their Internet domains with millions of other users across the Web, they run the risk of having their e-mail addresses accidentally blacklisted by recipients that decide to block entire domains from their inboxes, rather than just specific e-mail addresses. Such blanket blacklistings thus may hurt users that aren’t guilty of spamming or any other netiquette breaches.
The Best Alternative
The best alternative to the inconveniences of Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, and similar e-mail accounts is to sign up for one of our personalized e-mail accounts, which allow you to pick the exact e-mail address you want, including your own personal domain name that you may use for your Web site, as well as your e-mail account. All of our e-mail accounts are 100 percent ad-free and include generous disk space, Webmail access, as well as state-of-the-art anti-spam and anti-phishing technology.
A personalized e-mail account enables you to create your very own, instantly recognizable e-mail address – e.g., “you@YourPersonalDomainName.com.” As well, if you sign up for a multi-mailbox e-mail account, you will be able to create multiple e-mail addresses for your domain name. If you are running an e-business – or any other type of business, personalized e-mail accounts allow you to use your company name as your e-mail domain, which allows customers, business partners and other recipients to immediately recognize your incoming e-mail messages’ origin. The generic “@msn.com,” “@hotmail.com” and “@yahoo.com” domains do not provide e-mail senders and recipients with this convenience.
A personalized e-mail account further ensures that no one will mistakenly put you on their e-mail blacklists as part of blanket blacklistings of entire domains. Thus: You are unlikely to be blacklisted unless you actually do distribute spam or have made yourself or your communication unwanted somehow. In short, a personalized e-mail account — unlike the free accounts offered by MSN, Yahoo!, et al — allows you build a distinctive, unique Web presence for yourself or your business. As well, a personalized e-mail account will shield you from the spam barrages Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail users are forced to live with.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves. I hate to see a web site with their main contact email address as you@yahoo.com or you@gmail.com. This just looks very unprofessional. A personalized domain name adds credibility to your web presence, professionalism and brand recognition. If you have a web site you should have an email address associated with your domain name. If your domain registrar doesn’t automatically include one with your domain name, I would recommend moving your site to another registrar.
So, if you are relying on MSN Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or a similar e-mail account, it’s time to reconsider. We recommend selecting one of our robust, unique, personalized e-mail accounts that work with and promote YOUR domain name. All of our domain names come with one fee email address. You also can upgrade this email address to include more space or add on additional email address for a nominal fee.
There’s something in the air … something that makes this time of year more emotional, more special, more joyful. The holiday spirit moves us all.
