Email addresses have brought something new to the world of communication; wherever you go in the world (as long as you have internet access) people can reach you in the same manner and location as they always do. This goes both for travel and moving. That’s the general opinion I take to my email addresses.

I see 3 different groups of email addresses: personal domain addresses (@personaldomain.com), ISP addresses (@verizon.net), and the big 3 addresses (Yahoo!, Gmail, Hotmail). I’ve had all three over the years, and about two and a half years ago I switched from my @personaldomain.com address to Gmail.

I’m generally opposed to ISP addresses because ISP technology changes frequently, causing price wars. If you change ISPs you lose your email address in the switch, and you have to go through the “here’s my new email address” routine with the unfortunate potential that someone doesn’t get it (or ignores it) and they get bounce-backs when they try to email you.

With personal domain addresses the available web based email clients are marginal to ok (read: techies are satisfied, not so good for Grandma and Grandpa). If you use a desktop client (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Mail.app), your mail is only accessible from one location. I used my @personaldomain.com address for years without issue. One key is that if you decide to not continue doing personaldomain.com at some point you would also lose those email addresses. When I used mine I would use the web client while at work, and a local client when at home. The downside is that once a message was downloaded to the local client I couldn’t get to it at work on the web client. (I recognize that this was a setting I could change on my desktop app, but I didn’t want my web space to be eaten up by email.) Another downside is that your desktop app and webmail clients are not aware of the messages sent from each. So let’s say I’m at work and send an email to my wife about the mortgage bill. If I try looking for it at home in Outlook I won’t find it, because it’s in the Sent folder of the webmail client.

With the big 3 they are primarily web based interfaces. I moved away from my personal domain address because I liked the Gmail interface a lot (personal preference). As long as I have an internet connection I can get to my email, and everything is there until I delete it. This is also the downside; if you don’t have an internet connection you have no access to your mail. So if you are at the airport, and don’t want to shill out the $10 for 30 minutes of internet access between flights (unless you are at PDX where the Wi-Fi is free!), you are out of luck. With a desktop app you can work offline, composing new messages and replying to others, and transmit them once you hook up again. Most of the big 3 give you the ability to use a desktop app with their service, but the same sent item issue is present as I pointed out in the personal review.

If you don’t have the multiple computer concerns that I dealt with, or concerns with the longevity of the domain name, my opinion is that it’s a tossup between the personal and big 3. Like I said, I love the Gmail interface, and that’s what I advise people to use that as me this question.