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This is the age of information explosion where there is an unprecedented growth of communication technologies, which in turn has shrunk the world into a global village. This credit is due to the Internet, which has penetrated almost all fields of our lives. Today, we cannot imagine even a single day without computers or the Internet.

One of the most significant uses of the technologies provided by the Internet are mediums to stay connected with people all around the world like email, chatting, web conferences, etc. Almost everyone has an email account today. It has become common and essential like the telephone. Taking advantage of this demand for quality email facilities, many free email providers have sprung up in the market. These provide you with free emails and let you stay in touch with people who matter. They can be a boon for any business as they help you to go global without paying any price.

Let us look at a few examples for free email providers:

Gmail' developed by Google, this email facility offers most probably the highest storage capacity of about 2 GB. There are many unique facilities provided here, like archiving and labeling options using which you can store your messages in a separate place, not necessarily in your inbox. You can easily customize these labels and name them according to your needs.

Yahoo mail'once and even now acknowledged as one of the best email providers offering quality service like spam filters, anti-virus scanning and protection, etc.

Hotmail'offers space of 2 MB with spam-blocking facility.

Lycos'similar to the above-mentioned providers and can be upgraded from the standard 5 MB space to a larger one.

Excite'provides storage space up to 10 MB and you can also enjoy huge file attachment size of 4 MB. It holds its own place among free email providers.

Mail.com'carries similar features to others along with options for customizing.

HotPoP'even though the allotted space for email messages is only 500 KB, it is one of the few email providers that offer easy setup and function considerably well.

In fact, the list of free email providers is quite long and you need to select a good email provider by checking for a few features:

Choose an email account with an appropriate interface. A web-based email account can be accessed from anywhere if you are connected to the Internet. But, you are likely to be nagged by free banner ads and pop-ups. On the other hand, some email providers offer the facility of POP3 mails, which means all messages are stored in a remote server from where you download them to a local system. There are also IMAP email services through which you can have very good control over your emails as you can view the subject of emails and also easily synchronize email folders.

Some providers offer email facilities in other languages like French, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese, etc. This further adds to the utility value of free email providers.

Choose a provider that fulfils your needs by providing the appropriate mail options.

To attract more users, some providers offer reminder services to remind you of special occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, etc. Some providers also enable you to have large address books, sometimes with photos too! Isn't this wonderful? Other common email options are multi mail forwarding, filtering of incoming messages, email notification, an auto-reply when you are on vacation, etc. Such facilities make your job easier and ease much tension from your life, whether it is business, workplace, or home-based jobs.