Still not convinced that Gmail is the way to go? Some of the reasons I love a free Gmail account are the wonderful options and flexibility it provides. I’ve already talked about how to get your own custom e-mail address and more, but I’m always learning new great things about Gmail.

Two quick things that I’m excited about are email import and extra email addresses. These two functions are also available at places like Yahoo! and Hotmail, but usually not for free.

We as people get comfortable and the thought of change is usually never fun. Changing e-mail address sounds like a chore, so I can certainly understand the resistance to change. However, with Gmail, its easy! If you have thousands of email messages that you don’t want to lose access to, import them into your Google email and don’t miss or skip a beat. Google does it all for free, behind the scenes.

Also, people get a lot of spam (when they don’t have Gmail) often times because they must use an email address to sign up for something online. Once that happens, their address gets sold to a spam list. Yikes! Well, with Gmail, you can create as many “throw away” email address as you want, by adding a plus sign ( + ) and another word to your address. For example, lets say I want to sign up for a free software download and the website wants me to register my email address. If my Gmail address is [email protected], I could give the website my email address as: [email protected]. Or, if I had to give Target my address, I could give them [email protected] Google sees this address and still sends it to me, because Google ignores the ( + ) sign and anything that follows it. They become a tag for me to see later in my inbox. That way, if I start getting spam in my inbox, and it is sent to the address: [email protected], I can create a filter within Gmail to filter out all email sent to [email protected] and have it sent immediately to the trash. Cool, huh?

If you get online bank statements or notes from your credit card, give them the address: [email protected] Then, you can create a filter to catch anything with +banking to be sent to a folder you have created called Finances, or whatever you want. That way, you never miss an important message from your bank, and they are all stored and organized into one, or as many convenient folders as you wish.

To find out more, read the official Gmail blog.

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