Electronic mail advice

I've been asked why my email address is at fastmail.fm, not a well known Internet Service Provider (ISP). The reason is that I decided not to let my email become hostage to my ISP - if I switch from DSL to cable to FIOS to wi-fi to whatever, my address doesn't change.

I wanted an email provider that treats customers as professionals (not brainless idiots), provides encrypted (SSL) webmail with a clean, uncluttered interface, supports IMAP (to enable offline access and backup), and has fair terms of service.

There are plenty of free and low cost services out there that may meet your requirements, here are a few that I've used or researched:

Provider	Options	Details
fastmail.fm	free and paid, IMAP, SSL	Clean, fast webmail interface. When you need it, tech support is fast and smart. Free account only has 10MB of storage.
myway.com	free, no POP or IMAP, SSL	Recently the service has become flaky; after converting to a new technology it is even slower and more unreliable. Not recommended.
yahoo.com	free, IMAP (premium only), no SSL	Good basic free webmail. AFAIK no encryption.
google.com	free, IMAP , SSL	I still don't trust anyone to scan all my email traffic to place context sensitive ads. DSLExtreme now uses Google as a provider - I'm not impressed. Google bounces any incoming email with a zipped attachment, even though they scan every attachment for viruses. NOT recommended.

A list of potential email providers supporting IMAP is here.