Choosing one of the many email providers is often a challenge. There are three categories of email providers; free, packaged and paid.

The most widely used are free email providers; these are great for fist time, casual or temporary users, the biggest and most well-known is Hotmail. The main draw back of such email providers is the availability of email addresses, often big compromises have to be made. Secondly these email providers earn their money through advertising which means that you are bombarded with ads and often have ads tagged on to the bottom of each email you send.

Email addresses are often packaged in to services by broadband providers for example; Orange, BT internet, Tiscali, Virgin Media, AOL broadband etc. These are widely used but have two big disadvantages email address availability and the inconvenience of having to change your email address every time you change broadband providers.

Paid email providers are becoming increasingly more popular and have many advantages. Personalised email addresses have no advertisements within emails nor the providers name. This is also important for business email users who need a professional image. Reliability is also much better and in most cases there are a full range of services including Webmail, POP, STMP, IMAP, Anti-virus and Anti-Spam. A popular advantage for personal email users is less spam and the ability to keep the same email for the rest of their lives.