yes, people still use yahoo mail. According to a report from late 2019, there are more than 200 million active Yahoo email users responsible for more than 26 billion emails every day, all of them alone. but why would someone choose yahoo mail instead of gmail?
Maybe it’s a biased question. After all, there are over 200 million people who find yahoo email perfectly usable, and we’re a lot of bona fide gmail fanatics.
so what are the differences between gmail and yahoo mail? should these differences affect which one you use?
gmail vs yahoo mail: the basics
Let’s start with some of the basics and see what gmail and yahoo have in common. both gmail and yahoo mail have the similar basic structure that you expect from almost all email providers, including things like:
- basic send, receive and inbox functions. gmail and yahoo mail fundamentally “work” the same way. each service routes your message from one server to another using the same protocols, free of charge, to deliver your message to a recipient. it doesn’t matter what type of mail service your recipient is using. Plus, all the basic inbox features you’ll come to expect right away are present on both platforms, including the ability to mark as read/unread, delete messages, mark as spam, and more. not much difference here.
- message compose features. For the most part, composing a message looks the same on both platforms. you’ll have access to the same formatting tools (including changing fonts, using bullets, and including attachments). there are just a few minor differences, like the location of different features and the accessibility of things like google drive.
- a desktop and mobile app. both gmail and yahoo mail offer a version standard desktop (with many layouts to choose from) and a mobile app to keep things simple on your mobile device.
- contact management. and of course both email platforms e-mail give you the tools you need to keep track of the people in your network. you can add new contacts, modify contacts, and get automatic prompts to complete known email addresses when you start entering them.
if all you care about is a basic platform for sending and receiving messages, gmail and yahoo mail are pretty much the same thing. but the similarities end there.
gmail vs yahoo mail: appearance and usability
Appearance and usability are somewhat subjective variables, but let’s take a look anyway.
In gmail, by default, you will have your emails sorted into three main categories, arranged at the top of your inbox. most of the screen is taken up by individual lines, each representing a different email thread.
On the left are simple icons that give you access to features like Inbox, Drafts, and Sent; you can hover over them to expand their descriptions. in the upper left corner there is a button to compose, and in the upper right corner you will find settings and more options for the applications. If you’ve never used gmail before, it’s easy to get started and works really fast.
yahoo may look similar, depending on how you configure it. the screen is a bit cluttered, with more space devoted to features (like inbox, etc.) and advertising. still, you can find almost all of the same features in all of the same places. From a subjective point of view, yahoo seems to run a bit slower than gmail, probably due to more robust advertising demands.
both gmail and yahoo mail offer many options to customize the layout. you can align your messages differently, change your inbox spacing, and even use different colors and brightness levels to make your screen more visible.
Mobile apps are also designed in a similar way. Each app delivers emails from your inbox and other folders in an easily digestible, finger-friendly format. again, you’ll have a number of customization options to tweak the look to your liking.
Overall, gmail seems to be cleaner and more efficient from an aesthetic point of view (in line with google’s brand standards), but both platforms are quite accessible and easy to understand.
winner: gmail
gmail vs yahoo mail: organization
Let’s talk organization.
by default, both platforms have a lot in common. you can mark messages as important or mark them with a star to further distinguish them. you can sort your inbox and search for messages. you can mark messages as spam, delete them, or archive them. you can even mark messages as read or unread. but from there, the platforms diverge.
For starters, each platform has a different system for handling different types of high-level emails. In Gmail, you will have access to different default categories, such as social networks, promotions and forums; these categories will serve as separate mini-inboxes to keep track of notifications and alerts that don’t belong in your main inbox.
You can change which of these categories appear and how they work in the settings menu. Yahoo Mail has something similar: a series of “views,” including photos, documents, offers, receipts, groceries, and travel. yahoo will automatically detect which messages belong to these categories and display them all at once. both functions are similar, but can be more or less useful depending on how you want to use them.
by default, yahoo mail works with the folder system that it can recognize from outlook. each folder contains individual emails as a kind of separate inbox, allowing you to stay organized. in gmail the system is slightly different and is based on tags; The main advantage of labels is that you can assign many different labels to a single email, instead of sending it exclusively to a single folder.
Each platform also allows you to search your inbox and/or set up automatic filters for incoming emails. however, the filters in gmail are much more robust; for example, in yahoo, you are limited to filtering messages by sending them to a specific folder. in gmail, you will be able to perform more complex actions, such as auto dialing.
winner: gmail
gmail vs yahoo mail: access to other apps and features
google and yahoo aren’t just email providers; each offers a suite of other apps and features for its users, and many of these apps and features are available within each respective email platform. consequently, you can think of each email platform as a kind of gateway or hub that leads to these other areas. Depending on the set of additional applications and features you prefer, you may lean towards one or the other.
for example, in yahoo mail, you can quickly access a calendar, notepad, and other yahoo applications, such as news, finance, sports, fantasy, politics, and celebrity news. If these things interest you, or you like how Yahoo presents and organizes them, Yahoo Mail can be a convenient home base for your online interactions.
The same can be said for gmail, but you have access to a much wider range of tools. You’ll have access to a calendar and note-taking app, but also a task (task) management app and other Google tools like Drive, News, YouTube, Maps, Translate and Photos. Additionally, Google has some additional features in Gmail that are not present in Yahoo Mail, including the ability to “snooze” incoming messages for later and experimental features that you can turn on or off in the settings menu.
Unless you have a strong preference for yahoo’s built-in news apps, gmail is the clear winner here.
winner: gmail
gmail vs yahoo mail: plugins and extensions
We can also think about the plugins and extensions available for each email platform, which have the ability to modify or improve your experience in different ways.
for example, in gmail, you’ll have access to the g suite marketplace, an open platform where you can search for g suite apps and third-party extensions that may improve your experience in one way or another. Many of these apps are free and some are paid, but all of them can disrupt your Gmail experience. For example, you can integrate with a project management platform to automatically turn your emails into tasks, or you can use a data analytics app to visualize your gmail activity and improve your email efficiency.
one of the biggest advantages of working with google apps is the universal openness of google to other developers. they’re easy to get along with, and they make building compatible tools and integrations as easy as possible. consequently, by using gmail, you will have the widest possible range of services to choose from.
yahoo doesn’t provide the same level of flexibility. There isn’t a built-in marketplace to explore, and there aren’t many Yahoo-specific plugins or extensions you can use to modify your experience. instead, if you want a different yahoo mail experience, you’ll need to rely on browser extensions.
winner: gmail
gmail vs yahoo mail: security and reliability
Whether you’re sending email in a personal or professional context, you need to think about your email security. can you be sure that your email account is not compromised with any of the platforms?
Obviously, there is no such thing as perfect security, but Google and Yahoo have different reputations when it comes to protecting consumer data. in particular, there have been several yahoo data leaks over the past decade.
The first and largest breach occurred in 2013, when an unauthorized third party gained access to more than 3 billion accounts. Seemingly unlearned, Yahoo suffered another breach in 2014, obtaining data on more than 500 million accounts, including account names, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, encrypted passwords, and some security questions and answers. . And in 2016, account names and passwords for 200 million Yahoo accounts were found for sale on the darknet marketplace site “therealdeal.”
Hypothetically, Yahoo has learned of the fallout and negative press associated with these security breaches, but its reputation may never fully recover. Google, by contrast, has had relatively few security scandals; there was a data leak in 2018 related to the google+ api, but this had little to do with gmail.
gmail also has several additional security features that you can use to improve the security of your messages. for example, when composing a new message, you can click the lock and clock icon at the bottom of the draft window to activate “confidential mode”.
Here, you can set an expiration date for your message, so that it cannot be accessed beyond that date and time. You can also request an SMS-based passcode to access your message, a type of two-factor authentication to prove that your message is only reaching the intended recipient.
winner: gmail
the bottom line: should i choose gmail or yahoo mail?
So, on the question of gmail vs yahoo mail, gmail is the clearly superior email platform.
yahoo mail is certainly not bad: it has most of the features that gmail has and some unique advantages, like useful personalized views for certain types of messages and access to yahoo news services. however, it cannot compete with the number of advantages that gmail has.
gmail is noticeably faster, has a cleaner design, is generally considered more secure, has more filtering and organization options, and its open nature means you can modify your experience with literally hundreds of different plugins and extensions.
if you are currently a yahoo mail user, you may consider switching to gmail; the process is relatively easy and can be followed step by step in the configuration menu, in the accounts and import tab. And if you’re starting an account from scratch, lean toward starting your journey with Gmail.
Be sure to check out our other posts comparing Gmail to popular email providers!
- gmail vs outlook
- gmail vs apple mail
- gmail vs hotmail
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