The question of the title is far from obvious because, if it is true that Gmail has represented, since its release, an evolution of emails and a new way to read and send e-mail, Outlook.com, in the last year has made great strides by becoming a high-level mail service. Gmail and Outlook.com are certainly the best sites to create an email address, which can be used without limitations and for free.
Hotmail (previously Windows Live Mail today is Outlook.com) is from Microsoft, a monopolist of PC operating systems and historically disliked by this dominant position.
Gmail is from Google, the owner of the internet and, in the last year, has become less likeable because of its user privacy policies, which are clearly used to improve the impact of online advertising.
So, after seeing the alternatives to searching with Google, we also see if it is appropriate to change the e-mail service and use Gmail or Outlook.com (Hotmail) to read and send mail .
First of all, it is important to underline that, whatever the email address used, just like with telephone numbers, you can use Outlook.com and Gmail without having to change your Email address, doing a kind of porting.
So what is going to change is only the web management interface of the mails.
This comparison, deliberately deployed on the side of Outlook.com, tries to identify the main strengths of the Microsoft mail service compared to the Google mail.
1) One of the major advantages of Outlook is its integration with the Microsoft OneDrive service.
Thanks to the automatic connection between the Outlook account and Onedrive it is possible to upload and share hundreds of photos, videos or other files, without having to clutter e-mail.
Furthermore, with Outlook.com, each attachment is uploaded to Skydrive and can be viewed quickly, without having to search for the email sent or received.
This thing, with Gmail, is currently impossible.
Also with Outlook.com you can send attachments without limits in the same message, as long as none of them exceeds 50 MB (with Gmail the limit for attachments is 25MB).
2) Outlook.com, allows you to open every Word, Excel or Powerpoint document received in the mail, through Office Web apps, a version of the Office programs that can be used online and for free to view and edit documents, without ever leaving the mailbox.
This feature is also owned by Gmail which allows you to edit documents received through Google Docs but on Outlook.com Office documents are automatically listed in a special folder.
Also with Outlook.com you can edit the received document and reply to the sender directly from the File menu of Office Web Apps with a clearly better integration.
3) One of the major flaws of Outlook.com was related to the security and massive reception of spam emails .
Microsoft has significantly improved the level of control of apam with SmartScreen filter technology.
It also allows you to set filters to organize all the emails that are automatically received by newsletters or updates from Facebook or other social networks.
Gmail is famous for having the best spam filter among email services but there are two features of Outlook.com that are missing from Gmail.
In fact, in the Organize menu it is possible to set the automatic cancellation after 10 days or more of the emails received from a particular address.
A recent news also automatically filters the messages received from newsletters, moving them to the relative folder.
The categories of Outlook.com are the equivalent of the labels of Gmail and I have not seen big differences between the two in this.
4) Outlook.com works great on all major smartphones including Windows Phone, iOS and Android phones with a two-way synchronization of e-mail, calendar and address book.
For the moment, Gmail is optimal only on Android phones while on Windows Phone and iPhone the application of Hotmail is better than Gmail.
5) Outlook.com is automatically integrated with Skype .
6) Regarding the security of the Outlook.com account, many users have seen their email address stolen by hackers and compromised in the past.
Gmail has always guaranteed greater security thanks to the recent innovation of the Gmail login with double verification.
Outlook.com has recently improved significantly in terms of email security by implementing a similar verification system, with the possibility of creating specific passwords to be used for external applications that use the login with Outlook.com address.
Using the " my friend's account has been compromised " function, you can report whether a contact's account should send strange and dangerous messages.
In security then Gmail and Outlook balance the account and you can deepen the topic in the articles:
- secure https login on Outlook.com and reports of accounts under attack
- Compromised Email account and password recovery on Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail
- Recover a Google and Gmail account
7) A feature of Outlook.com that (for now) is missing in Gmail is the creation of aliases to not receive spam which is very useful for disguising your address.
8) At the moment, Outlook.com lacks support for IMAP and only POP3 works.
In another article, the difference between IMAP and POP3
All of these Outlook.com improvements indicate Microsoft's commitment to attract more users and win the stiff competition from Google's ever-good mailbox.
Precisely for this you can switch to Outlook.com from Gmail or from any other mail site through an almost automatic configuration.
It then becomes easy to import all email and address book contacts from Gmail to Outlook.com and use the old email address for both receiving and sending mail.
You can read the guide to sign up for Outlook.com without changing your email address
Outlook.com is also excellent for backing up your emails online and for having a secondary address that supports automatic forwarding to turn messages to another address.
Also interesting is the Outlook.com function that allows you to set the same shortcut keys as Gmail (found in the options), which is very important for those who are used to using Gmail via keyboard shortcuts.
