E-Mail Swap - Paid E-Mail

Not all email is free. Most of us have a free email account with Hotmail or Yahoo or GMail. However, these free accounts are subsidized one way or another. Nothing is really free. These email either contain advertisement from which the provider can make money, or they are part of a bigger service where an email account is a lure to attract customers.

On the other hand, if you want a more professional email account, the costs will increase. You usually have to pay for it, either as part of a bigger package such as web hosting or Internet service, or you have to pay for it individually. Hotmail, for instance, offers three different email options:

1. The first is free, but it can contain advertisement.
2. Hotmail Plus costs $29.95 per year. However, now you can have a bigger mailbox (2 Gigabytes), you can send large attachments up to 20 MB, and you can access your email using Outlook Express. Best of all, the advertisement is removed from the email.
3. The Outlook Live account costs $74.95 per year and offers access with Outlook 2003 as well as synchronization with you calendar and email address book.

So, basically, if you want a basic service and do not mind the inconvenience of ads, then a free account is good enough. If you want more functionality and flexibility, then you have to pay the price.