AltaVista Email a new division of the AltaVista Search Engine, ALtaVista mail allows users to select an address from a variety of domain addresses, including altavista.net, iname.com, earthling.net and more...

AmExMail is a new service provided by American Express. This free, private, web-based email system provides support for attachments, mail filtering and 5MB of message storage space for members. What's more, American Express cardholders receive a range of additional benefits, including 10MB storage space, POP access, email forwarding and more.

Angelfire, the established free web space provider, has openly embraced the web-based email movement by creating their own free email service ([email protected]).

ApexMail is a full-featured web-based email service, and certainly one of the best and most reliable of those available. A summary of their features includes includes auto-responders, forwarding, POP retrieval, advanced address book/contact management, color schemes, an email address search engine, blocking and more.

Autosig.com does not provide a free email account, but is giving away attractive graphical email signature files. Using their online signature generator, you can input all of the relevant data about yourself or your country, choose a graphical background of your choice and, whammo, you have your own custom email signature to impress your friends or clients.

Bigfoot provides people with free lifetime email addresses. They do this by providing a free forwarding address that actually sends mail to your existing mailbox. Their system is very

Conk! Mail allows you to take advantage of their fun, attention-grabbing domain name by setting up you own ([email protected]) email address. The address can direct mail to your Conk! web-based mail platform or, alternatively, can be used to forward mail to your regular account. Conk! also enforce a spam-free policy, for which we can all breathe a sigh of relief.

Coolmail is a well-presented, fully functional provider of free web-based email in the Hotmail® tradition.

HoTMaiL is hands-down the very best provider of free email on the Web. Their system allows you to have a Web-based email account that has a number of benefits associated with it. You don't even need to own your own computer or Internet connection - because you can access it from school/Uni/business...in fact, anywhere! Once you have signed up, you are given a special password and username that enables you to send and read your email from any computer with Internet access.

Lycos Email is yet another free email program provided by a search engine in order to attract regular users of the engine. They provide a reliable web-based system.

MailExcite is a web-based email service provided by the Excite search engine.

My Own Email offers users the choice of either a web-based hosted account or an email forwarding account that effectively allows you to improve your current email address, while receiving your mail in your usual account. For either type, users have the choice of more than 200 domain names to end their customized address.

Net@ddress has a system very similar in style, features and quality to Hotmail's service. In the near future, they may very well prove to be Hotmail's chief rival and I recommend them as an alternative to Hotmail - especially if the name that you want is already taken at Hotmail (you'll be surprised how many people have the same name as you).

NetForward claims to be the first provider of free, permanent Web-based email accounts. As for your address, if it's choice you want - it's choice you'll get with NetForward's service. Like the other services, you can select the term that you wish to appear before the @, but with NetForward, you also have the choice of 23 different domain servers (so that the word that appears after the @ can also be suited to your Web site - or personality).

Yahoo! Mail has, for obvious reasons, quickly become one of the Web's moat popular web-based free email systems. Their service is remarkably reliable and user-friendly.

ZDNet Mail cuts through the hype with this no-frills, but feature-packed, addition to the free web-based email community. Offering advances spam-filtering technology, an address book, the ability to send attachments, signature application, POP access, and the potentail to program automated vacation replies that take care of your mail in your absence, this service is loaded with goodies. Plus, you'll have the peace of mind associated with carrying such a reputable domain extension in your email address (ZDNet = Ziff Davis).