Yes! We are talking about e-mails. Believe it or not, e-mails have helped us to communicate keeping in stride with this fast paced world. Today, we can't imagine our lives without e-mails, so much so that they have become an integral part of our day-to-day lives.

E-mails connect us with rest of world. Today, they have become a part of your identity and as good as your phone number. In most of the cases, people think it is the best way to reach each other besides phone. In fact, e-mails have got better than communication over the phone.

Not only you can send messages across to a person you want to communicate with, but also you do it for much less than the phone costs you. Moreover, e-mails are free, and do not consume any cost for you to keep in touch with your friends and family.

Like all other human inventions, e-mails have evolved a lot. Today, not only they provide more storage space than the previous versions but also they offer you many exciting features that help to simplify your life. Now, you can send bigger attachments and also store all your mails without ever thinking of deleting them. And all these you get are for free.

There are three basic types of mail services available. They are Web based mail, proprietary Internet Access, POP 3 email. Of these the web based mail or web mail as it is popularly known as, is quite popular and extensively used. It is the mail service for people on the move and allows them to check it on any computer which is accessed to the Internet.

E-mail service providers have been consistently trying to make the services more user friendly and reliable. With these services you get all the possible features that you may require for sending and receiving mails. Most of the websites offer you 250 MB of data storage and a spam free e-mail experience. The features provided by the web based emails are as follows

The web based emails are fully functional services, which may include folders, address books, filters, attachments, etc

A webmail can be accessed from any computer that has a Web browser and access to the Internet.

This kind of emails are great for people that do not own a computer but are able to access one, either at college, university, a library, a cyber-cafe, etc.

The web based e-mails require you to do all your emailing online, which may be expensive, considering the time on, may spend on the Internet.

Some of the web based e-mails tend to add a "tagline" advertisement at the end of outgoing emails.