Rediffmail should definitely be credited with carrying the indian flag among the free email providers. Regarding its quality and features it offers we need to analyze a bit deeply
1: SPEED : A plus but of late has become unreliable. I work on a broadband connection and still sometimes it takes considerable amount of seconds to open up.
2: THEME and STYLING : Hasn’t changed since ages. I’m using it for 3 years now and can surely say that i’m big time bored with the uninspiring style rediffmail. And unlike yahoo you cannot change the colours and all.
3: FEATURES : Big big downer. You almost don’t have any flexibility. You can’t change the number of messages the inbox shows in a single window( fixed at 10). This combined with a lousy spam protection makes clearing your inbox(if inundated with 50 -100 spams) a nightmare.
And you don’t enter directly into your bedroom as soon as you open your house ..well that’s what you feel when you get the inbox directly on logging in which causes particular discomfort if you are checking the mail in a crowded place.
There is no automatic routing of mails to custom folders.
You have to click a button to know your account size
4: SECURITY
BEWARE. You cannot trust rediffmail here. For the uninitiated there is something called encryption, which makes it difficult for the prying eyes, data sniffers to get into your personal things. Now, as browsers need to decrypt the data to show it in in readable form, it becomes slow(the reason why hotmail is slow but secure), and since speed is the brand ambassador of rediffmail, I don’t see it being incorporated in near future.
It isn’t that rediffmail is not trying to improve. Untill sometime back crackers(not hackers) could get paawords out by sheer brute force(i.e., repeated guessing), now they can’t..so there is some light at the end of the tunnel.
There is no SMTP support in version 2.0 which only increases your telephone bills if email checking is your prime hobby.
Multiple language support is exciting but using the language converter is a tedious effort by no means.
No formatting is supported in version 2.0 .
Version 3.0 offers few excellent features but that’s only offered on trial for a month. Don’t buy in that period, you are reverted back to version 2.0 . I would never shell out 350 odd bucks if hundreds of other free email services are available.
Overall a good service if you consider writing/checking emails more of an essential evil and/or use narrowband connection.
Not for people for whom emails are a passion.
I don’t know much about hotmail but yahoo is the best for me.