This article talks about two free email services based out of Latvia.
In my previous two articles, I reviewed two very good Russia based E-mail services, Yandex Mail and Mail.Ru, for those of you who might be getting bored of the regular bunch of E-mail providers, and looking for alternatives. Well, Guess what? Russia isn’t the only one offering awesome E-mail services. Today, ILFS brings you two nice and free E-mail services out of Latvia, just east of Russia. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? Read on.
Mail.LV
Mail.LV is a really great E-mail service and boasts one of the most minimalistic Home Pages I’ve ever seen. And in a way that’s good. Apart from the login information boxes and the registration links, it shows the local weather and exchange rates of Latvian currency (LATS) against the major world currency. This free email service from Latvia gives 10GB of free email space. Those of you who are used to large mailboxes that come with GMail and Yahoo might find that too small, but we already know why we don’t need large mailboxes. Anyway, here’s the screenshot of the homepage.
Pretty neat, right? Well, obviously, there’s not much to explain much about the login and sign-up interface. So let’s click the Create an account button and get started.
The signup form is pretty straightforward. Let’s fill in the information for a sample account creation and hit the Create Account button.
And.. we’re done. The default Webmail UI carries forward the minimalistic feeling. The left pane contains the folder pane (Inbox, Sent etc.) while the right pane consists of the list of E-mails. The horizontal bar overhead contains important links (Contacts, Settings, Compose etc.)
Here’s how the Compose UI looks like.
Finally, the Settings UI gives you the option to tinker with the miscellaneous settings.
As illustrated by the above screenshots, Mail.LV offers a clean and functional user interface. In fact, it’s a pretty nice E-mail service for casual usage. However, there’s one Caveat. The E-mail service ads a tag line to every outgoing E-mail which might be obtrusive for some of the users.
Mail.LV features: Summarized
- 10 GB of Free E-mail storage
- Clean and Minimalistic UI
- Rich HTML editor
- Scanning of incoming E-mail by Anti-virus for malicious content, attachments etc.
- Blacklisting/Whitelisting to block spam correspondences.
- POP/IMAP/SMTP support
- SSL/TLS based encryption for inbound and outbound E-mails
Inbox.LV
Inbox.LV is another free Latvian E-mail service. Compared to the previously discussed mail.lv, it offers a little more features. To start with, it offers mailbox of 20 GB as compared to 10 GB that coms with Mail.lv. The homepage of Inbox.LV is looks like a web portal, a little bit like Yahoo’s. It consists of links to local services like games, classifieds etc. And of course, there’s the login information and signup fields. Here’s a screenshot of the homepage (defaulted to English language)
The links on the page are self explanatory. Let’s hit the Sign Up button. The Sign Up process is a two step thing, as illustrated by the following screenshots, in order.
Step 1:
Step 2: This step requires the user to fill up the majority of user information
That’s it, just click the Finish button. You’re returned to the homepage, where you can login to the newly created account. Here’s the default inbox view, with the welcome E-mail opened up.
The Entire Webmail UI is a pretty straightforward affair. You get the folder navigation pane at the left, and the E-mail content to the right. The top bar features important links like Compose, Options etc. Now it’s understandable that the UI seems a bit cluttered with Flash ads here and there. But, hey? if you don’t like the Webmail UI, just don’t use it. Use the service with any of the popular E-mail Clients. Bam! Problem Solved.
Inbox.LV features: Summarized
- Mammoth 20 GB Mailbox space
- POP/IMAP/SMTP Support
- SSL/TLS based inbound and outbound E-mail encryption
- No account Expiry at all
- Multiple aliases
Conclusion
As I’ve mentioned before, E-mail communication has become increasingly important to our productivity in this tech-connected world. And while the major providers suffice just good for casual users, it’s always good to check out new alternatives. These Latvian E-mail services may not divulge you guys from changing over completely, but at least they do look promising. And that alone makes them worth a shot.
What do you guys think? Would you be giving these Latvian E-mail services a try? Do let me know in the comments below.