Ok, so I’ve been thinking about switching over to Gmail lately instead of my AOL webmail. Here are some of the many things that Gmail offers that AOL does not:
1. Better search: Gmail will search all your folders (”labels”) at once for any keyword you type in. With AOL you have to click on each folder and then search and keep clicking different folders until you find it. Gmail even searches my AIM conversations! (yes, Gmail has AIM built in)
2. Themes: Gmail has over 20 themes to select to spice up your webmail. AOL does have color themes but none with images yet. This isn’t a big deal but still nice to be able to have.
3. Ads: AOL has picture ads at the top and side of my webmail. Gmail has no picture ads, only a tiny text ad which you can barely notice.
4. Folders/Labels: Gmail has “labels” which are really folders very much like AOL can do. However with Gmail, once you give a person a certain label (i.e. labeling your mother under “family”) it will automatically know to put her in that folder. No need to drag emails to different folders once you are doing reading them. It also color codes the labels in your inbox and folders.
5. Emails as conversations: With AOL, if me and a friend keep exchanging emails back and forth with the same subject, I may end up with 20 emails after I’m through. With Gmail it organizes them all into one email until the subject line is changed.
6. Adding other email accounts: Gmail will allow you to add other email accounts to arrive into your inbox. Right now I also have my AOL, tallfreak.com and sarahsilvermanonline.com emails coming to my Gmail inbox. AOL will allow you to read only Yahoo and Gmail BUT you have to click on the sidebar and view them in a DIFFERENT window. It will not put them all in one single inbox for you.
7. Sending email with different email address: I think this is my favorite part. I can send emails from gmail and pick which email address of mine I want the recipient to see. For instance, when doing website business I can reply to the sender and choose that they see my webmaster@ email and not my personal gmail account email. Or if I’m scared that a friend will not recognize my gmail account and then delete my email, I can choose that my aol email pops up in their inbox instead.
8. Applications: I haven’t looked into this much but there are various apps you can add to your gmail for specific needs you may have. One app I use is Gmail notifier. It’s a little program that tells me when I have email even when I’m not on the web. It will also give a popup on your computer screen with the senders name and subject. It also will tell me how many emails I have.
9. Names instead of emails: I don’t know the appropriate term for this but now when people with business emails (such as Outlook) receive an email from me, they will see my name (if I choose this) instead of my email address in their inbox. I will also be able to see people’s names in my inbox instead of their long email address. AOL has never been able to deal with showing anything but the email address for some reason.
10: Spam filter: After looking at all the youtube videos about how gmail offers more options than AOL, they have also all emphasized that Gmail’s spam filter is a lot better than AOL’s. So far I haven’t gotten any spam in my inbox at gmail, but then again I’ve only been using it a few days.
That’s my little comparison of the two top webmail providers. AOL is still a great webmail application but it just doesn’t have all the cool, “techie” advancing options that I like to see after time. Any email sent to my other email addresses will still come to my gmail so don’t worry about me not getting your emails anymore! Remember, with gmail I can add all my old accounts too!
22 users responded in this post
The important point is for me ‘’spam filter”,i do not wanna get hundreds of spams,i was hotmail user,now i’m gmail user,and i’m really happy with gmail about spams
Hi,
I am Marcel from the AOL Webmail team. I truly appreciate your thoughts and comments around AOL Webmail. We constantly try to improve our service and product. We are actively working to actually bring you all of the features you’re mentioning here. AOL is offering email since almost 15 years now and with over 50 Million users it is not always easy to do all the things we want to be doing and make everybody happy - but we try and are thankful for everybody’s thoughts about our performance.
But let me address your list one by one. While I can not go into too specific details on some issues/requests, talk about the reasons why we currently don’t offer certain features or why it takes so long, I still try to be as open as possible.
1: Better Search:
This is truly a shortcoming of our current setup and everybody at our team is looking forward to offer this feature to our users in the very, very near future.
2: Themes:
We will be launching richer and a lot more Themes this month. In fact you should be able to test the new stuff sometime next week on our beta side: http://beta.webmail.aol.com
3: Ads:
We try to have a good balance between advertisement and functionality. It’s not always easy but we think the current set up is a good compromise. In any case, feedback is always welcome.
4: Folders/Labels:
Google is taking a different approach. We have decided to stick with folders. You can achieve the same functionality with AOL Webmail by setting up filters. This is the more traditional way and used in desktop mail applications as well. This means you can set up a filter which automatically copies mail from your mother into the right folder without you having to manually drag and drop the mail. You can find filters under “Settings” in AOL Webmail.
5: Emails as conversations:
This might be called “Threaded view” and - just like the “Search everywhere” feature, we are desperate to introduce this feature to all our customers soon.
6 and 7: Adding other email accounts / sending with different email address
This is a highly requested feature. We truly believe we have on of the best webmail applications out there and we understand people want to manage more then just their AOL Mail in there. We are currently working on this feature and hope to offer it in the near future. As a first step we introduced the Yahoo panel, allowing you to view mail from yahoo. Expect more to come soon.
8: Applications
The Gmail notifier is indeed a very nice feature and we might copy it
However, you can also use the AOL toolbar to stay informed while browsing the web: http://toolbar.aol.com. If you are using AIM, I encourage you to download the latest version at http://www.aim.com - this will also keep you informed about new mail and works similar to the GMail notifier.
9: Names instead of emails:
This is actually not a specific GMail or AOL Feature. That’s just the way mail works. Most mail clients (including AOL Webmail) display the name if it is present in the email “From” header. If you want people to see your name and not just your address, simply go to “Settings”, then select “Compose” in the left pane (right below “Account”). Then just put your name into the field where it says “Your Name”.
10: Spam filter:
AOL’s spam filter is seriously one of the best in the industry and something we can be proud of. However, since AOL is serving a lot of email users and as such is very attractive to spammers it is under constant “attack” - probably even more then Google. This might result in a perceived higher amount of spam and poor filters when in fact it is not. In any case, you can change the spam filter settings and their sensitivity under “Settings” - “Spam Controls”.
Once again, thank you very much for your comments on AOL Webmail.
Marcel
AOL Webmail Team
I use Yahoo at the moment and it has gotten atrocious. The search function doesn’t work, its slow, and I still get spam. Im starting to get sick of it.
Im going to be checking out Gmail thanks to this post, and if they have any sort of email import, im switching over…. now if only Yahoo has a email forward option that doesn’t cost 9.99/yr fee.
First off I must say its impressive that you managed to get an extremely impressive comment from an AOL Webmail Team employee, +1 to AOL for that!
However being a user of both, I must say gmail definitely suits me better. The main reason being their spam filter seems to do much better than the spam filters on both my Hotmail, and AOL Webmail accounts. Now the kicker is my gmail account is actually older, and I’ve given that email out more places, yet still have less spam. Hopefully you find out what works best for you.
@IrateSloth: I already wrote something about the spam filter and the potential misconception in my reply above. It’s a very complex and challenging issue. The default for AOL’s spam filter is medium. You might want to try the high setting.
And btw: The AOL Mail team has a blog as well: Try http://mailblog.aol.com to get the latest.
I haven’t used AOL yet, just Gmail and Yahoo. Yahoo also introduced conversations in email just recently, but i am still getting a lot of Spam mails.
Just wanted to follow up
The new AOL Webmail (and a lots of themes) is now at http://beta.webmail.aol.com - have fun!
obviously ,, gmail Dude… there is no chance at all for Aol,, The service of gmail its too nice.. u know.. no one can compare to gmail…
AOL is still around?
Do you not have problems from some people (mostly medium and small sized companies) not being able to email you?
To even try to compare AOL to Gmail is a bit ridiculous. The fact you mention you havn’t looked much into applications says it all. Give the google applications a try and you’ll be hooked. Google documents rocks. By the way did you know that AOL search shows google’s results?
You forgot the most important benefit of switching to gmail from AOL - people won’t poke fun at your email address and the fact you still use AOL.
@Staysure: To be honest: The fact that you’re seriously asking the question (AOL is still around) and make assumptions (not being able to mail) only seems to indicate that - in fact - you did not really look into the applications. In this case AOL Webmail. This seems a bit ignorant to me. Further proven by your last statement. You don’t have to use an “aol.com” email address if you don’t want to. Kindly look at http://www.tunome.com.
Next time before you make the statement that you can not compare AOL to Google - or any other competitor for that matter, please get the facts right first. Thank you.
Sorry if I hurt your feelings. I took my sarcasm a bit too far. But seriously gmail is better hands down.
Gmail has the best spam filter and thats what counts for me. Plus the interface is much more user friendly and less clutted.
@Tom: Regarding spamfilter: I tried to address this perception issue in one of my comments above. It’s a complex matter though. But glad the google spam filter seems to work better for you.
Regarding the UI: This has - unfortunately - a lot to do with taste and preference. There is no “one size fits” all when it comes to user interfaces. However, I do not agree that Google’s UI is less cluttered. Personally I do think there UI elements are all over the place and it’s pretty hard to use. But - as I said - that’s all about taste and preferences
@Staysure: What I like about the original blogpost is, that somebody tried to form his opinion by actually using and comparing two different products. And I highly value any opinion as a result of this. However you are making a statement without backing it with facts. Unfortunately this makes the statement and any discussions around it worthless.
Marcel,
I understand you’re an AOL loyalist, but to say I provide no facts isn’t a valid point since this entire discussion is revolving around personal opinion and very few facts are mentioned by anyone here.
I feel cheated by AOL and it’s normal for me to hold a very bad grudge against your company. 15 Years ago when AOL started I was an AOL user (since that pretty much all there was back then). Your company cheated it’s customers by overcharging us connection rates and provided a terrible service. You cheated customers and that’s a historical FACT.
You may have improved your company considerably since then but Google has been much more reputable in their activities and they treat their users a lot better (while still making money).
I’ve also struggled hard in 3 different companies trying to email AOL customers! For a long while your spam filter prevented many genuine emails from getting through to my customers - not because my emails were spam but simply because the IP of the sender had to coincide with the IP of the email server. For anyone using Outlook with their host server at a different location this was a problem (small and medium sized businesses).
Let’s face it your provided a terrible fix to your spam problem. My experience over the past 15 years with AOL has been appauling. I haven’t had to use an AOL account to have been a victim of it’s problems in recent years.
I will continue to discourage people from using AOL because I honestly feel a better service can be had elsewhere - Gmail, Yahoo, and others.
@Staysure: I am not just an AOL loyalist - but an actual AOL employee. There are actually quite a lot facts mentioned - both in the original post and in my long response. Somebody actually said down and tried both products. That’s what I mean with facts.
Anyway. Indeed the experience you had in the past - when AOL actually still was an ISP - was far from excellent and I am honestly sorry about that. I realize that - what AOL did in the past in this respect - is hurting the company a lot and is keeping users like you from coming back or even having a second look. But this just tells me - being responsible for AOL Webmail - to try even harder. To make the product even better. To go the extra mile to compensate for all the things said and done in the past. Maybe I am extra picky about facts because of this - but maybe I am just trying to reach out and get things straight. The AOL today has nothing to do with the AOL 15 - or even 2 years ago. In any case I seriously do appreciate your comments and feedback.
Thank you.
Well Marcel, here we both agree. AOL is definitely a much better email solution than it was in the past and whether I like it or not, it’s one of the “big guys” when it comes to email.
Gmail is fast in my view. But one thing for sure is you will see some ads in your gmail account if you have one.
I think AOL mail and Gmail are quite nice. Yahoo and MSN Live mail don’t offer imap support or even the older pop3 (Yahoo does with plus) and they both seem to have crappy spam filtering.
After I left AOL dial up back in……long time ago….late 90s / early 00’s (which I was like the only person AOL worked well with, except the reason my mom canned AOL which was we were using it through a free ISP and not AOLs access numbers so it only costed $9 a month instead of $20-$25 but they raised the $9 price to around $15 I think and didn’t notify my mom at all (could have sent a letter or called or e-mail or SOMETHING!). She paid the bill every month on time but this new charge piled up until she received this huge bill in the mail, needless to say the mistake was fixed and she didn’t have to pay it. but we ditched AOL after that).
I switched to Yahoo mail as it was the most popular at the time and it was fine for years, that was until the spam hit and at first the filters worked good but then it just got to the point where when I checked my e-mail I was clicking the spam button more than I should have and trying to find good e-mail outta all the crap mails was taking the fun out of e-mail.
Yahoo’s problem is charging for special “plus features” while you can get those features and more for free from the competition.
The only thing I like about Yahoo is there new interface.
However using e-mail with imap and a desktop app is nicer. Thunderbird and it’s add-ons are awesome.
I use Gmail now and my mom made the switch to AOL mail from Yahoo because Yahoo became a spam box for her as well.
I think AOL mail looks good and the spam filter seems to work great, except when using folders and filters. The filters need allot of work as they fail most the time, while Gmail filters are work great. Other than that AOL mail is not bad.
I hope they all stay in the game and work on improving because we need competition. I heard other search engines and e-mail providers are losing to Google. As much as I like Google, I don’t want it to be the only thing around. We need these other companies to create some shake up. To convince other people to give em a try.
Here is a good list of top e-mail providers: http://email.about.com/od/freeemailreviews/tp/free_email.htm
So why did I pick Gmail over AOL mail? I felt Gmail offered more and less clutter in the interface. True I use it with Thunderbird most of the time, but when on the go, I need a good web interface. Also I can sync my e-mail contacts with Thunderbird and use the Lightning Calendar add-on with Thunderbird and can sync my Google Calendar. Features sadly missing from AOL mail.
Gmails filtering is just spot on, while trying to help my Mom setup AOL filters for like ad responses in Craigslist.org. The filter wouldn’t work as it should and some replies would end up in the inbox, while if I did in Gmail it would work flawlessly.
Plus Gmail is sporting some nice lab features. However I let my Mom try out Gmail and AOl and she preferred AOL. So people do like different things.
E-mail is great but then most of the time allot of friends contact each other through social networks like MySpace.
The competition needs to look at what works and enhance it and get it advertised to the people.
Back to Yahoo…..The only thing it’s got going for it is Yahoo Answers and Yahoo Games, however they had to slap advertising on the screen you play on. How annoying.
Again the competition needs to get it’s act together and please the people instead of annoying. If there is a better option, were gonna switch to it.
Why settle for bloat?
Agree. GMail rocks between the web mails.
Sometimes i use YahooMail and Hotmail but in the end i always prefer Gmail.
Gmail is far superior in every way. The biggest feature for me is IMAP and Push E-mail. AOL doesn’t support IMAP, or at least they didn’t a while ago, and that feature is a *MUST HAVE*.
AOL Mail offers free POP3 & IMAP.
i have been using gmail for a long time now and i think its the best
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