Which is the best web based email service?

This is pretty easy? The answer has to be from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail. Isn’t it? But then which one will come out as a winner? Hotmail is the one of the oldest free web based email services. Gmail, while relatively new has been growing by leaps and bounds since last couple of years. So, who wins this battle?

In its one of the public reports released in September 2011, Comscore crowned Hotmail as the winner with a user base of 361.7 million followed by Yahoo! Mail with 273.1 million users and Gmail trailing behind with a user base of 193.3 million.

That was all in September 2010. Come 2011 and the tables have changed. Renowned email  marketing and newsletters company MailChimp has come up with an analysis that gives quite a fair idea on  the widely used web based email service. This study is based on the emails that are sent through MailChimp application to the email addresses with the following web based email services:

• Hotmail
• Gmail
• Yahoo! Mail

The reason why this analysis is worth to be considered is:

• MailChimp is a big player in the email marketing vertical. As per a stats released on August 1, 2011, MailChimp deleivers close to 2 billions emails a month.
• MailChimp functions upon double opt-in feature before adding any email address to the database of a MailChimp user. This is a clear indication that these email addresses will be active and existent.

As per this study, the trend since last couple of month testifies the fact that Gmail has beat down Yahoomail and is close to leave behind Hotmail, the largest web based email service in terms of user base. If this trend continues, Gmail is all set to become the market leader in the web based email services.

Good Luck Gmail!

Image Credits - http://www.themagazine.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/hotmail-gmail.jpg