Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail Comparison

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 23, 2009
Updated • Mar 16, 2017
Email, Gmail
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27

Have you ever asked yourself how you did end up with the email account that you are currently using? Chance is that you have at least one account at one of the three most popular web based email service providers Gmail, Yahoo Mail or Windows Live Hotmail (now known as Outlook).

Update: We have updated the information in this comparison article to reflect changes as of March 2017.

This question might have become insignificant in recent years as all three email providers have started to follow suite if one of them improved a limit, or introduced a new service. But not everything is equal, and some email users might be surprised if they take a look at the differences between these email providers.

Did you for instance know that a free Yahoo Mail account expires after four twelve months of inactivity but is the only one to offer 1 Terabyte of storage space for emails?

Gmail on the other hand is the only email service that is not expiring the account after a certain time of inactivity.

It is on the other hand the email service that is offering the least amount of free storage space if you take Microsoft by the word that they increase the Windows Live Hotmail storage space automatically if the limit of 5000 Megabytes is reached (update no longer true).

Take a look at the following chart to see how the three email providers compare.

email providers
outdated information, see below for update

The chart should be up to date. If you spot an error let me know and I fix it asap.

Update: Below is an updated chart (as of March 2017).

Feature Gmail Outlook.com Yahoo Mail
storage space 15 GB 15 GB 1 TB
additional storage yes, paid yes, paid no
message limits 50 MB, Google Drive for larger files 25 MB (option to add storage accounts) 25 MB (100 MB attach large files feature)
custom from address yes yes, paid only yes, paid only
domain name customization yes yes, paid only yes, paid only
access options POP3, IMAP, WEB POP, IMAP, WEB POP, IMAP, WEB
ads yes yes yes
virus scanning yes yes yes
account expiration no 12 months 12 months
mobile apps Android, iOS Android, iOS, Windows 10 Android, iOS
remarks crawls emails for ads paid version, without ads, extra features paid version, without ads, extra features

Back to the original question: Which email provider are you using primarily and why? Here is my answer..

I mainly use email accounts that have been created for my web projects. I also use a Gmail account; Primarily because it is linked to other Google services that I need to use. I do have a Yahoo Mail and Microsoft Live Hotmail account but I barely use them. Mostly for services that require such an account.

Summary
Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail Comparison
Article Name
Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and Yahoo Mail Comparison
Description
The comparison looks at the three popular email providers Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo Mail, and how they compare to each other.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. JMGG said on January 19, 2012 at 8:25 am
    Reply

    You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?

    1. BalaC said on January 19, 2012 at 9:42 am
      Reply

      I think its thunderbird

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on January 19, 2012 at 10:15 am
      Reply

      It is Mozilla Thunderbird.

  2. Salaam said on September 24, 2012 at 9:52 pm
    Reply

    Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.

  3. Claud said on December 19, 2012 at 2:08 am
    Reply

    If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.

    1. Lynda said on February 12, 2013 at 3:37 pm
      Reply

      THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!

    2. Chad said on November 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm
      Reply

      Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…

    3. Ivan X said on January 21, 2021 at 4:50 pm
      Reply

      Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.

  4. Andrew said on October 26, 2013 at 7:06 am
    Reply

    This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)

  5. Charles said on December 7, 2013 at 7:23 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.

  6. garth said on November 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm
    Reply

    You are a god – thank you!

  7. Faisal said on February 9, 2015 at 10:09 am
    Reply

    thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)

  8. Simon said on March 24, 2015 at 11:36 pm
    Reply

    Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers

  9. Olu said on April 14, 2015 at 1:35 pm
    Reply

    Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
    Thank you

  10. Coenig said on July 23, 2015 at 7:36 am
    Reply

    Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)

  11. Fali said on January 20, 2016 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.

    1. MIki said on January 10, 2019 at 11:54 am
      Reply

      I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!

  12. Christina said on January 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm
    Reply

    Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007

  13. Oz said on July 22, 2016 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    Great tip! Thanks!

  14. Tracy said on September 1, 2016 at 4:48 pm
    Reply

    Worked for me, too – thank you!!!

  15. shawn said on September 9, 2016 at 10:25 am
    Reply

    It’s Worked for me, too
    thank you very much!

  16. Jari said on October 31, 2016 at 11:53 am
    Reply

    I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!

  17. Michel H said on November 30, 2016 at 11:08 pm
    Reply

    Thank you so much. Solved!
    Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
    Thank you again. M

  18. Ziad Bitar said on January 9, 2017 at 2:00 am
    Reply

    This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.

    Thanks.

  19. Anonymous said on February 15, 2017 at 5:24 pm
    Reply

    Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.

  20. Rochelle said on March 6, 2017 at 11:59 am
    Reply

    Thank you, this worked !!!!

  21. anom1234 said on May 20, 2018 at 11:20 pm
    Reply

    Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!

  22. JC said on October 12, 2020 at 2:14 pm
    Reply

    Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!

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