I thought I should add a brief profile of each provider :
Yahoo !- Space = 1 Gb.
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= No/No
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Quite powerful
Hotmail- Space = 3MB.
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= Yes (HttpMail Access , Outlook Exp or Outlook Only)/Yes
- Speed=Crawling
- Spam filters= Fair enough.
Rediffmail- Space = 1 GB
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= No/No
- Speed=Lightening
- Spam filters= Do they have any spam filters ?
MyRealbox- Space = 10MB
- Ads= No
- POP3/SMTP Access= Yes/Yes (Imap protocol)
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Quite powerful
Indiatimes- Space = 1 Gb now.
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= No/No
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Sheesh .. They send their own spam.
Coolgoose- Space = 10 MB.
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= No/No
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Never used.
Gmail- Space = 2 GB and growing...
- Ads= Yes
- POP3/SMTP Access= Yes/Yes
- Speed=Lightening
- Spam filters= Quite powerful.
Spymac- Space = 1 GB.
- Ads= No
- POP3/SMTP Access= Yes/Yes
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Quite powerful
Bluebottle- Space = 250 MB
- Ads= No
- POP3/SMTP Access= Yes/Yes
- Speed=Fast
- Spam filters= Okay.
Most of these providers have a Pro service which is Pay and gives all those services that are not provided for free.
[Edit]Updates :
[1]Hotmail is now offering a Beta service called Windows Live Mail which has 2 GB webspace. The interface is quite nice and I hardly get any spam on it. WLM will eventually replace Hotmail untill Feb 2006.
[2] MyRealbox have stopped new registrations.
[3]Bluebottle was down for some time in 2004 and since then I stopped using it. Its back again though . ..