New Poll: How Do You Email?

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Chris Coyier on (Updated on )

I just tossed out a new poll. I’ve been wanting to do this one for a while, and the short-but-global GMail outage yesterday confirmed now is a good time. The question is:

How Do You Email?

There are people that like to do the cloud thing, and there are people who like to roll their own email. Then of course there are combinations therein. I find this interesting not just because of the variety of methods, but because of how strongly people feel that their method is the best way to go.

I have my opinions, but I’ll wait until after the poll to share. Poll is in the sidebar as usual.

These are the different options as I see it:

Pure Cloud

This is when you use a service like GMail, Yahoo, or Hotmail (many more) and have an address like “[email protected]”. You use the Browser to access it.

Localized Cloud

This is when you use a service like GMail, but you don’t like using the Browser to do email, so you set up a local Email client (e.g. Thunderbird) to use your GMail account.

Pure Local

This is the pure roll-your-own variety. You own your domain names, they reside and servers that run their own mail servers. You check your email through local Email clients that talk to those servers. If you are just a “I use whatever my work or school gives me”, you are probably in this boat.

Clouded Local

This is when you have your own domains with your own mail servers, but you like the browser based email experience so you set up GMail to use your own servers. You would also be in this came if your work or school has it’s own email system but it’s browser based.