I’ve tried out both Yahoo! Mail and Gmail for business use for the past few weeks. I wanted to give Gmail a fair go, since I’ve been a Yahoo! Mail user since 1998. Long story short, I had to go back to Yahoo! Mail because…
1. Gmail checks external POP3 accounts by its own weird algorithm, to save on resources, this means external mails goes uncheked for up to an hour. Gmail’s POP3 mail check frequency can’t be easily manually controlled like Yahoo! Mail’s ‘check all accounts’ drop down with the Check Mail button. Unless you like looking at Gmail’s 'Accounts and Import' settings all day.
2. Gmail’s threaded view has its advantages, but it becomes a real pain if you keep saving that draft to look at an unrelated email, not in that thread. Again Yahoo! Mail’s tabs allow this.
3. Google can send emails after verification on behalf of other email addresses. However it’s got this very bad habit of adding ‘On behalf of’. Again Yahoo! Mail doesn’t.
I really wanted to stick with Gmail for the following reasons…
1. Encrypted sessions.
2. Canned responses, my workaround for multiple signatures.
3. Tags, although I prefer folders, but I can respect their productivity aspect.
4. Better compatibility with the Opera browser.
Suggestions for Gmail
1. Allow users a tabbed interface option as well.
2. Drop the ‘On behalf of...'.
3. Allow manual adjustment of POP3 mail polling frequency, or at least a more convenient mail check button, maybe a simple F5 or clicking on the logo.
Time will tell if Gmail will listen and offer us options or not…
