12 Best Free (& Private) Email Accounts & Service Providers of 2023

You need a free email account — whether it’s for networking, job recruitment, downloading resources, transferring files, setting reminders, meeting with colleagues, or something else.

Even with the rise of office chat platforms, you still depend on email for a surprising number of things. But unfortunately, not every email service is completely free. And even the free ones might not be the easiest to use or have all the features you need.

It can be a challenge to find an email service provider at no cost that balances the right features with usability. To help make your search easier, we put together a list of the different types of email accounts you can set up, followed by the best email service providers you can host your account on right now for free.

Types of Email Accounts

There are two main types of email service providers to choose from: Email clients and webmail.

Let’s briefly go over these different types of providers.

What are email clients?

Email clients are software applications you install onto your computer to manage the email you send and receive. To access this email, the client interacts with a remote email server.

Email clients you’ve likely heard of include Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Apple Mail.

What is a webmail?

Webmail is a form of email you access exclusively from the internet and so it exists primarily on the cloud rather than your computer. Instead of an installed application fetching your email, you manage your inbox right from your internet browser.

Examples of webmail providers include Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Hotmail.

Now, take a look at the best free email service providers (and the best email accounts for privacy) you can get your hands on today — both webmail and email clients included. For each email service provider, we’ve highlighted a unique feature to help you find the best fit.

Best Free Email Accounts

Gmail: Best for Offline Accessibility
AOL: Best for Interface Organization
Outlook: Best for Multiple App Integrations
Yahoo! Mail: Best for Lots of Storage
iCloud Mail: Best for IMAP
Mozilla Thunderbird: Best for Managing Multiple Accounts

1. Gmail: Best for Offline Accessibility

Unique Feature: Native File Collaboration

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who already uses and loves the rest of Google’s products.

It might seem like an obvious top pick, but Gmail is just too versatile not to get our first slot. According to Litmus Labs, Gmail has the second-highest email provider market share (behind Apple iPhone’s native email app).

Ironically, one of the reasons Gmail has become so popular is because of all the communication options in your inbox that don’t involve email.

Gmail is a regular email inbox tool you can access once you have a Google account. Since it’s built into Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), creating a Gmail account is more than creating an email account. It gives you access to a full suite of free applications, including Google Play, Calendar, Google Docs, and more, that allow you to chat, video conference, and share files with the people in your contact list.

For example, Google Hangouts, available from your inbox’s left sidebar (or the right — you can customize how your inbox is displayed), lets you text and video chat with other Gmail users for the things that might not warrant an email message.

Like most other email accounts today, Gmail also has an intuitive calendar where you can set meetings and reminders.

Pro Tip: You can also use a free product like HubSpot Meetings to easily schedule meetings without back-and-forth emails.

A few things to know about setup: First, privacy settings are built into the user agreement. So, if you have specific security preferences, be ready to take care of these before you start using your new email account. After you create your email address, you’ll be redirected to a home page with more privacy settings.

This section also asks about your YouTube preferences because the platforms are connected through your Google account. Unlike other email accounts, you can use your Gmail address to log in to and manage your YouTube account. You’ll also use this account to collaborate on shared documents and spreadsheets right from a cloud-based Google Drive.

Offering a generous 15 GB of free email storage, Gmail does everything it can to make your inbox less chaotic, including providing advanced filters that automatically push emails into separate folders as they arrive. And none of these functions costs a dime.

This email service also has extensive options for customizing. And personalizing your inbox is more than selecting graphics or themes — it lets you decide how you want your email inbox to function. So, you can choose whether you want a reading pane, which emails show up at the top of your inbox, and more.

Core Features

Allows you to un-send emails. Within seconds of sending an email you didn’t mean to send, a handy “Undo” button will pop up in the bottom-right hand corner of your screen.
15GB free email storage. You can store thousands upon thousands of emails without worrying that you’ll soon reach an upper limit.
Accessible from any internet-connected device. And on any browser, too. While email clients vary in terms of compatibility with operating systems and devices, Gmail is available on whatever device you have on hand.
99.9% protection from suspicious/spam emails. Some might argue that Gmail’s spam filter is oversensitive — I myself have had perfectly legitimate emails routed to my spam folder.
Texts suggestions that help you write emails faster. Gmail’s Smart Compose feature uses machine learning technology to predict what you’re writing with high accuracy. Whether you use the suggestions is up to you, of course.

What We Like

Each Google account comes with a range of helpful tools and resources.
You can use “Labels” to create folders to organize your inbox. This is helpful if you get a lot of email or if you’re using your Gmail account for business.
Lots of ways to personalize your email inbox for your specific needs.
Easy to use and effective free tool for email.

What We Don’t Like

The tie-ins with other Google products can feel overwhelming if you just want to create a simple email account.
Primary, Promotions, and Social sections of the inbox can be helpful, but emails don’t always end up where I expect them to, so I often direct all emails to the primary inbox and sort them myself.
Some settings and options are more intuitive than others, so getting used to this email experience may take longer than you’d like.
Some settings require you to click Save to make changes, while others happen automatically, which can get confusing.
Nested labels don’t always work properly on mobile.

2. AOL: Best for Interface Organization

Unique Feature: Unlimited Storage

Sign up here.

Type of email: Webmail

Who should use it: Anyone who uses email for most of their communication.

America Online (I feel nostalgic just typing those words) has quietly kept up with today’s standards for a good user experience and is now once again one of the best free email accounts available to you.

Purchased by Apollo in 2021, AOL delivers your email from its classic news-driven homepage and comes with the contemporary spam filters and virus protection you’d expect from your email provider. You can also send text and instant messages from specific windows in your email inbox.

AOL does have something over Gmail, though: more storage. Additionally, you can import email contacts from a CSV, TXT, or LDIF file, so you’re not creating your “buddy list” (get it?) from scratch.

First impressions: The sign-up experience is simple, but it seems arbitrary that there is a limit on characters in the email address. This provider also requires a phone number for verification. I got an error message on my first try signing up, but the second try everything went smoothly and I was easily able to create my new AOL email account.

Onboarding is quick and simple — it’s just choosing a theme and text settings. Then, the home page for my new email account was full of news and ads, which I wasn’t expecting.

There was also an ad at the top of my inbox. When I clicked “Compose” to create a new email, there was a helpful set of pop ups showing me how to create emails with their tools. The AOL inbox also offers spaces to save contacts, photos, documents, subscriptions, and travel.

Core Features

1 TB storage. This major perk makes it less likely that you’ll need to create another email account due to storage limits. What a win — especially if you sell and receive numerous emails per day!
Ability to import contacts in any format. If you’ve kept your list of contacts in a file on your laptop or phone, you can easily import it into AOL with the click of a button.
Offers a spellchecker to reduce errors. There’s no need to install a separate spellchecker — AOL provides one within its composer.
Protection from suspicious/spam emails. No one wants to sift through emails from dubious senders. AOL will filter them for you.
Accessible from any internet-connected device. And on any browser, too. While email clients vary in terms of compatibility with operating systems and devices, AOL is available on whatever device you have on hand.

What We Like

Large text option is great for accessibility.
Simplified tools make it easy for a range of users to create, organize, and send emails.
The “Views” section offers spaces to save contacts, photos, documents, subscriptions, and travel.

What We Don’t Like

Ads and headlines fill a lot of screen space, which can be distracting.
Some add-on features feel dated.
Helpful icons on the right sidebar are for calendar features, but they’re small and difficult to see in comparison to clickable ads.