Which is the best email service for both business and personal use? That’s a tough question nowadays, as there are lots of email services on the Internet. While many opt for the most popular ones, such as Yahoo, Gmail, or Outlook, there are also others who prefer less known email clients. Given the enormous amount of time that we spend each working day sending, reading, and replying to emails, having the right email client is essential for you to be as productive as possible. Today, we’ll compare Google’s Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook.
Gmail Vs. Outlook – GUI
Aesthetically, both Gmail and Outlook have a clean interface, which differs in the default color themes – Gmail comes in white and red and Outlook in blue.
Outlook follows the style of the Windows modern user interface, also known as the Metro user interface, while, until recently, Gmail was considered the “ugliest” of the two. However, a recent redesign of Gmail has dramatically improved its aesthetics and user experience, with a look much more in line with Outlook.
Gmail Vs. Outlook – Folders, Tags, and Searches
The critical thing Gmail did to differentiate itself from the competition was to have labels instead of folders. That means that messages could be tagged with multiple keywords instead of being placed in a specific folder. Most people still believe that Gmail, having labels, doesn’t have folders, which isn’t strictly true. In some email clients, Gmail comes with folders instead of labels.
Outlook, on the other hand, comes with the more traditional folders in comparison with Gmail’s labels.
Gmail Vs. Outlook – Connectivity and Storage
Gmail supports both POP and IMAP, which means that virtually any email clients on most operating systems will work seamlessly with this email service, and even Microsoft Outlook will work correctly with it.
Outlook is also compatible with both POP and IMAP, although in the past, some complaints referring to connectivity problems and lack of compatibility with IMAP, have emerged on forums. Outlook also supports Microsoft ActiveSync.
Gmail offers 15 GB of free storage, but this counts on Gmail and Google Drive. You can buy more storage, anyway. Microsoft, on the other hand, also offers users 15 GB of free storage per Outlook account but if you have an Office 365 subscription, you’ll get 1 TB of storage to cover all Microsoft products, for example.
Gmail Vs. Outlook – Managing Spam, Filters, and Emails
Spam filtering in Gmail works effectively. It only allows one or two spam emails per year, so it’s efficiency is the highest among the email services. It’s also excellent for filtering out unwanted emails that are not quite spam emails.
Outlooks email and spam filtering are less sophisticated, and much of the filtering has to be done manually. However, it has some features that put it ahead of Gmail. For example, Outlook has the sweep function which helps users get rid of all emails, all from ten days ago or keep the last of a particular sender or block future emails from a sender.
