Saturday, March 20, 2010

Yahoo Mail versus Gmail: feature comparison

I've been a long-standing user of Yahoo Mail.  Gmail was a different way of thinking so I was hesitant to use Gmail.  Now that I'm using both their web clients and also accessing the accounts in Zimbra, I'm starting to see each of their advantages and disadvantages more clearly.

Yahoo Mail Gmail
Conversations Not available with the web client although Zimbra does try to collect email into conversations, but sometimes does not associate the correct emails together Yes, available.  With more use, I've grown more accustomed to it.  Will continue to evaluate.
Search Yahoo's search is no slouch.  Searches attachments and allows you to further filter by folder Haven't used enough to judge but I remember when my wife searched her Gmail (in 2009?), PDF attachments weren't peeked into; could be fixed by now
Contacts Recently (as recently as early 2010), access to Contacts seems to be unstable such that addresses that are in my Contact are deemed to be missing and direct access to the Contacts list is occasionally not available So far, seems stable
Folders versus Labels/Tags Folders; simple to understand and use but can have limits since a piece of mail can only exist in one folder at a time Now that I am using Delicious social bookmarking, starting to understand the power of tags as a piece of mail can now have multiple tags.  More flexible but can be more "work" to organize
Synchronization with phone Not available with my Windows Mobile phone as far as I knowYes, via ActiveSync for Windows Mobile so able to sync mail, contacts and default calendar.  For other devices
Open to other email clients Other than Zimbra, don't know of any other clients Openly uses standards such as IMAP and SMTP so any email client that understands these protocols can access Gmail
Security Only on login By default, uses a SSL connection (i.e. https) through-out.  Although that doesn't mean you can send/receive confidential information as others might be using less secure email clients
Archiving Equivalent to moving to a folder (can be viewed as both tagging and archiving) Explicitly available

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