Yes, people still use Yahoo Mail. According to one report from late 2019, there are more than 200 million active Yahoo email users responsible for more than 26 billion emails every day—all by themselves. But why would someone choose Yahoo Mail over Gmail?
Perhaps that’s a biased question. After all, there are more than 200 million people who find Yahoo email perfectly usable, and we’re a bunch of bona fide Gmail fanboys and fangirls.
So what are the differences between Gmail vs Yahoo Mail, and should these differences affect which one you use?
Table of Contents
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: The Basics
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Appearance and Usability
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Organization
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Access to Other Apps and Functions
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Addons and Extensions
- Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Security and Reliability
- The Bottom Line: Should You Choose Gmail or Yahoo Mail?
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: The Basics
Let’s start with some of the basics, and look at what Gmail and Yahoo have in common. Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail have the similar foundational structure you’ve come to expect from nearly all email providers, including things like:
- Send, receive, and basic inbox functions. Gmail and Yahoo Mail fundamentally “work” the same way. Each service routes your message from server to server using the same protocols, for free, to get your message to a recipient. It doesn’t matter what kind of mail service your recipient is using. Also, all the core inbox functions you’ll immediately expect are present in both platforms, including the ability to mark as read/unread, delete messages, mark as spam, and so on. There aren’t many differences here.
- Message drafting functions. For the most part, drafting a message looks the same in both platforms. You’ll have access to the same formatting tools (including changing fonts, using bullet points, and including attachments). There are just a few minor differences, such as the placement of different functions and the accessibility of things like Google Drive.
- A desktop and mobile app. Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail offer a standard desktop version (with many layouts to choose from) and a mobile app to keep things simple on your mobile device.
- Contact management. And of course, both email platforms give you the tools necessary to keep track of people in your network. You can add new contacts, modify contacts, and get automatic prompts to complete familiar email addresses when you begin to enter them.
If all you’re concerned about is a bare-bones platform to send and receive messages, Gmail and Yahoo Mail are similar for basic messaging, but Gmail stands out with its Image Preview Feature. This allows users to see images directly in emails, offering a more efficient experience and setting Gmail apart from Yahoo Mail in convenience and innovation.
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Appearance and Usability
Appearance and usability are somewhat subjective variables, but let’s take a look at them anyway.
In Gmail, by default, you’ll have your emails sorted into three main categories, laid out across the top of your inbox. The majority of the screen is occupied by individual lines, each representing a different email thread.
On the left are simple icons giving you access to functions like Inbox, Drafts, and Sent; you can hover over them to expand their descriptions. In the upper left is a button to Compose, and in the upper right, you’ll find Settings and more options for apps. If you’ve never used Gmail before, it’s easy to get started—and it performs very quickly.
Yahoo may have a similar appearance, depending on how you set it up. The screen is slightly more cluttered, with more space dedicated to functions (like Inbox, etc.) and advertising. Still, you can find nearly all the same features in all the same places. From a subjective standpoint, Yahoo seems to run slightly slower than Gmail—likely due to the demands of more robust advertising.
Both Gmail and Yahoo Mail offer lots of options for how to customize your layout. You can align your messages differently, change the spacing of your inbox, and even use different colors and levels of brightness to make your screen more visible.
The mobile apps are also designed somewhat similarly. Each app offers emails from your inbox and other folders in an easily digestible, easy-to-finger-tap format. Again, you’ll have a number of customization options to tweak the appearance to your liking.
Overall, Gmail seems to be cleaner and more efficient from an aesthetic point of view (in line with Google’s brand standards), but both platforms are fairly accessible and easy to understand.
Winner: Gmail
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Organization
Let’s talk about organization.
By default, both platforms have a lot in common. You can mark messages as important, or mark them with a star to distinguish them further. You can sort your inbox and search for messages. You can mark messages as spam, delete them, or archive them. You can even mark messages as read or unread. But from there, the platforms diverge.
For starters, each platform has a different system for managing different types of emails high-level. In Gmail, you’ll have access to different default categories, like Social, Promotions, and Forums; these categories will serve as separate, mini-inboxes to keep track of notifications and alerts that don’t belong in your main inbox.
You can change which of these categories appear and how they work in the Settings menu. Yahoo Mail has something similar—a number of “Views,” including Photos, Documents, Deals, Receipts, Groceries, and Travel. Yahoo will automatically detect which messages belong in these categories, and display them all at once. Both functions are similar, but may be more or less useful depending on how you wish to use them.
By default, Yahoo Mail functions with the folder system you might recognize from Outlook. Each folder contains individual emails as a kind of separate inbox, allowing you to stay organized. In Gmail, the system is slightly different, relying on Labels; the key advantage with Labels is that you can assign many different labels to a single email, rather than exclusively sending it to a single folder.
Each platform also allows you to search your inbox and/or set up automatic filters for incoming emails. However, the filters in Gmail are much more robust; for example, in Yahoo, you’re limited to only filtering messages by sending them to a specific folder. In Gmail, you’ll be able to take more complex actions, like automatically marking them.
Winner: Gmail
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Access to Other Apps and Functions
Google and Yahoo aren’t just mail providers; they each offer a suite of other apps and functions for their users, and many of these apps and functions are available within each respective email platform. Accordingly, you can think of each email platform as a kind of gateway or hub that leads to these other areas. Depending on which set of apps and bonus features you prefer, you may lean toward one or the other.
For example, in Yahoo Mail, you can quickly access a calendar, a notepad, and a number of other Yahoo apps like News, Finance, Sports, Fantasy, Politics, and Celebrity news. If you care about these things, or if you like how Yahoo presents and organizes them, Yahoo Mail can be a convenient home base for your online interactions.
The same can be said of Gmail, but it has access to a much wider range of tools. You’ll have access to a calendar and note-taking app, but also a task management app (Tasks), and other Google tools like Drive, News, YouTube, Maps, Translate, and Photos. Additionally, Google has some bonus features in Gmail that aren’t present in Yahoo Mail, including the ability to “snooze” incoming messages for later, and experimental features you can toggle on or off in the Settings menu.
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Unless you have a strong preference for Yahoo’s built-in news apps, Gmail is the clear winner here.
Winner: Gmail
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Addons and Extensions
We can also think about the add ons and extensions available for each email platform, which have the ability to modify or enhance your experience in different ways.
For example, in Gmail, you’ll have access to the G Suite Marketplace, an open platform where you can search for G Suite apps and third-party extensions that can improve your experience in one way or another. Many of these apps are free, and some are paid, but all of them can alter your Gmail experience. For example, you might integrate with a project management platform to automatically turn your emails into tasks, or you might use a data analytics app to visualize your Gmail activity and improve your email efficiency.
One of the greatest perks of working with Google apps is Google’s universal openness to other developers. They’re easy to get along with, and they make it as easy as possible to build compatible tools and integrations. Accordingly, by using Gmail, you’ll be giving yourself the widest possible range of services to choose from.
Yahoo doesn’t provide the same level of flexibility. There’s no built-in marketplace to explore, and there aren’t many Yahoo-specific addons or extensions you can use to modify your experience. Instead, if you want a different Yahoo Mail experience, you’ll need to rely on browser extensions.
Winner: Gmail
Gmail vs Yahoo Mail: Security and Reliability
Whether you’re emailing in a personal or professional context, you should be thinking about your email security. Can you be sure your email account is uncompromised with either platform?
Obviously, there’s no such thing as perfect security, but Google and Yahoo have different reputations when it comes to protecting consumer data. Notably, there have been several Yahoo data breaches over the past decade.
The first and most significant breach was back in 2013, when an unauthorized third party gained access to more than 3 billion accounts. Apparently not learning its lesson, Yahoo suffered another breach in 2014, getting data from more than 500 million accounts—including account names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, hashed passwords, and some security questions and answers. And in 2016, account names and passwords for 200 million Yahoo accounts were found for sale on the darknet market site “TheRealDeal.”
Hypothetically, Yahoo has learned from the fallout and negative press associated with these security breaches, but its reputation may never fully recover. Google, by contrast, has had relatively few security scandals; there was a 2018 data breach related to the Google+ API, but this had little to do with Gmail.
Gmail also has a handful of bonus security features you can use to improve the security of your messages. For example, when composing a new message, you can click on the lock-and-clock icon at the bottom of the draft window to activate “confidential mode.”
Here, you can set an expiration date for your message, so it can’t be accessed beyond that date and time. You can also require a SMS-based passcode to access your message, a kind of two-factor authentication to prove your message is only reaching your intended recipient.
Winner: Gmail
The Bottom Line: Should You Choose Gmail or Yahoo Mail?
So, in the question of Gmail vs Yahoo Mail, Gmail is the clearly superior email platform.
Yahoo Mail certainly isn’t bad—it has most of the same features that Gmail has, and a few unique perks like useful custom views for certain types of messages and access to Yahoo’s news services. However, it can’t compete with the number of advantages Gmail has.
Gmail is perceptively faster, it has a cleaner layout, it’s generally considered more secure, it has more options for filters and organization, and its open nature means you’ll be able to modify your experience with literally hundreds of different addons and extensions.
If you’re a current Yahoo Mail user, you may consider switching to Gmail; the process is relatively easy, and can be followed step-by-step in the Settings menu, under the Accounts and Import tab. And if you’re starting an account from scratch, lean toward starting your journey with Gmail. Or, check out this guide to Yahoo business email.
Be sure to check out our other posts comparing Gmail with popular email providers!
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Jayson is a long-time columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Inc.com, and various other major media publications, where he has authored over 1,000 articles since 2012, covering technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship. He keynoted the 2013 MarketingProfs University, and won the “Entrepreneur Blogger of the Year” award in 2015 from the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded a marketing agency that appeared on the Inc. 5000 before selling it in January of 2019, and he is now the CEO of EmailAnalytics.
Jayson, great article. Very informative, detailed, and balanced.
I like both email platforms, but lately, Gmail is unresponsive when using Spark or the native email application on my MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone. Yahoo never seems to have any similar problems. I would prefer to use Gmail, but this issue is making me rethink this decision.
Has anyone else run into this? If so, how did you resolve it?
I stopped using the native mail app on iPhone because it wasn’t playing nicely with Gmail after a while. But now I use the Gmail app on iPhone and it suits my needs perfectly.
Just do not forget or lose in your Google password.. Your life as you know it Will come too a STOP. Just because I for got and got
Older. I have been Denied my Google account totally. I am so stressed and mad. My blood pressure is very high. F o r 2 weeks. Lost everything because no longer have a password..
I notice this article makes no reference to the obscene levels of spam in Yahoo Mail. That alone would not make these comparable services.
Hi Henry, You are right. Something going on with Apple product and gmail. All my 3 gmail saved emails disappeared without reason or warning. I can’t getting it back. No support from gmail as well. Gmail app was not any good to get my mails back.
Lot of Apple user facing similar problem. But not in wildly known, or in media.
Gmail sucks D
Gmail gives you only 15GB of storage, and if you fill it up, you need to pay every month for every 100GB, whereas Yahoo mail offers you a whopping 1TB absolutely free, 10 times more that what Gmail charges you with! This reason should be sufficient to switch to Yahoo mail. What’s all the good features of Gmail worth, if you just can’t use it beyond a storage limit?
Simple and perfect answer!
15 Go vs 1000 Go!!! Gmail, the best? No way!
Although I have Yahoo Mail “Plus” (a risible scam, this “Plus”), Yahoo has—TWICE in six months!—deleted entire folders of saved emails. In both instances, my deleted emails were less than a year old. As a longtime user of Yahoo Mail, I’m beside myself with anger.
For my own protection, it seems I need to copy every important email and save it to my computer. What a CHORE. And why should this be necessary?
Additionally, I’ll need to find an email provider that can be trusted to protect its customers’ data. (Switching providers is also a CHORE.)
Is Gmail more dependable than Yahoo Mail? Anyone have an opinion?
Set up Thunderbird on a computer ( I use our desktop at home that is always on ) to download your accounts, bit leave your email on the server too. That way you have an automatic system to do it for you.
Have a program automatically back up the computer as well.
If the companies lose your folders, which can happen from time to time, you have all your stuff.
my Yahoo! mail now is 200 GB and will be more in future (still 800 GB for free space), If I choose to use Gmail I have to sign up 13 Gmail account! and if I have to use reach to 1000 GB how many Gmail account I have to sign up? that the problem of Gmail you have to pay them to get 1000 GB.
How on earth keeps 200 GB in his email and WHY??????? Have you consider you need a file transfer tool instead of email???? because 200 GB text is not possible.
It is not the tool. It is the person who use it!!!!
Try working and having to keep your emails for future reference with 15GB, you will not make it !!!
That’s exactly the reason I continue using yahoo, for a storage size. Very biased article.
Who would you trust your data with?
I so prefer Yahoo to Gmail for many reasons but one of the main ones is for archiving emails that I want to save. Gmail is far too complicated. With Yahoo I can create a folder, and easily save an email to it.
Attn: Jayson, Since comment dates are current I’ll put in my 2 bits. Great info but how current? There’s no date! Is it 10yo or 10 days? If you feel you can sign your name to it, date it! I don’t take anything without a date as being reliable.
I’ve been using Yahoo! since they took over GeoCities and was grandfathered in so in a sense have been using Yahoo for personal email since late 1990’s and still under 3% of that free 1TB they provide and still using the free email app. Still have the same GeoCities user name hidden in there somewhere but allowed to create and use a new username of my choice.
Y! is great when it comes to controlling spam but once in a great, great while something may get thru but no complaints here. Very well organized Inbox and can have a Folder for anything needed.
As of Sept 1, 2021 Yahoo is no longer a part of Verizon Media and is now again a stand alone entity. Quoting from Apollo Global Management, Inc. “For nearly 30 years, Yahoo has been the world’s premier global technology and media company, with nearly 900 million monthly active users worldwide, making it the third-largest property on the internet”.
So, yeah I think you can trust with Yahoo!
No affiliation.
BTW I believe Y! started out with the intention to compete with Microsoft but took a different path which didn’t drag them into the lawsuits MS is known to have been involved in.
One of the biggest issues I have is folder mgt. if you delete an item in your sent folder, it disappears from all folders. This is an issue with me. I come from an Outlook background…
Meh. Yahoo may not be as “competent,” but I hardly think they’re as nefarious as Google… no mention of privacy and sale of personal information here. I don’t think it’s “clear” that Gmail is superior… personally I think Gmail’s layout is too stark, things bleed into other things, labels are confusing, Google’s “privacy” practices are awful… not so clear-cut a winner in my book. (Coming from a long time Gmail user and previously Yahoo user who got spooked by data breaches)
I just started getting “a new device signed in” on my accounts (I was in the process of phasing out two accounts due to spam). I have not changed the one machine I use for email and each time I tell Gmail that the call was me. I understand something like this happened on a bigger scale in 2019. Google programming leaves much to be desired.
They are both awful in their own ways but i have to say YAHOO BIZMAIL is the WORST WORST WORST email platform. Their knowledge base is full of errors, defunct into, irrelevant and useless.
Their customer service is NON EXISTENT. YAHOO BIZMAIL has been owned by about a dozen entities and each is worse than the last. I mean you VERIZON!
if i could take a cyber switch and kill it, i would. It is the bane of my existence and my employer lets a stupid arrogant a**hole control what we use and he is worse than useless. He is a craptastic excuse for a human being like yahoo bizmail is a craptastic excuse for a business email system. it sucks. AVOID.
Ran into an issue which I’m sure I am not alone. Was locked out due to too many login attempts. When Yahoo sent a verification code they sent (6) in a row within seconds. Different code each time. Tried using last code and after trying several was locked out. Waited a day and same thing happened. This time I used the first code and it worked.
The sole reason for my use of yahoo mail is the simple SENTIMENTAL REASON – as it was assisting me in all my professional tasks through the internet – THICK OR THIN!
Moreso the endlessly interesting Yahoo Browser news and reaction features…
Those were straightforward, humble easy to use way of mass communication.
The lay-out were simply fast forward of the NETSCAPE b…Trowser!
So elegantly simple, straightforward, and user-friendly browsers!
Those were the good old golden days to internet browsers!
It seems pretty clear that there’s going to eventually be a charge for email service no matter which platform you choose. I’m completely frustrated because I’ve gotten locked out of my yahoo account and the only way I can get help is if I sign up for their premium or semi premium service which is anywhere between $14 to $4/ month! Otherwise I can go to the self help sight which gets me nowhere except to call the help line which I’ve done only to find it cannot help me unless I pay. I feel like this is a set up. I didn’t request an upgrade. My emails just stopped altogether. VERY FRUSTRATING and FRUSTRATED!
Lately Yahoo mail mail is loaded with disgusting filthy porn scam. And they know how to stop it, if you pay for an upgrade. That’s a scam the new upgrade is just as bad. Spam mail isn’t a problem with gmail or other free services.
Yahoo uses G Suite internally…so yeah argue against that. Yes I did work at Yahoo.
Yahoo mail is an absolute nightmare, have been spam bombed multiple times with endless emails because yahoo allows them through to both the normal and spam mail pages.
I need to check spam often as sometimes normal mail gets sent there now who wants to open the spam file to see dozens of emails every day from the same spammer aholes?
Been with yahoo 10+ years but it’s just getting worse and is an obvious security threat. Zilch customer service from yahoo when you have a problem too.
Yahoo mail is getting worse and worse. More and more, there is no response when I click on it. At some point I will probably have to give up on this POS and just go with GMAIL.