I have been using Gmail from the starting of my internet life. While Gmail own its faith and popularity with millions of people, Microsoft’s mail services remained far behind. But, the Outlook.Com seems to be the winner over Gmail in both the terms of feature and the user interface. I recently decided to use Outlook more effectively.
After using Outlook.Com for a couple of days, I found some essential features which are not present in the Gmail. Here are 10 standalone features of Outlook.Com which helped it to be a superior to Gmail.
#1. Outlook is Faster than Gmail
The most impressive thing about Outlook is that it is more faster than Gmail. Unlike Gmail, it takes less time to be loaded into your browser as well as at the Outlook desktop application. Though Microsoft proclaimed Outlook as a preview version, I am pretty happy with the speed.
#2. Sign-in using a Temporary Password
If you have added your mobile phone number with your Outlook account, you can log-in from any computer without the actual password. What you need is clicking the ‘Sign in with a single-use code’ link at the Outlook.com log-in page and putting the account address and the mobile number. Microsoft will generate and send a temporary password at your mobile phone through SMS. Once you use that password, it will become ineffective.
This is useful if you use a public computer. As the temporary password is one-time-use only code, your account will never fall into a security issue. Gmail has the two-step verification which is bit complex to setup.
#3. Disposable Email Addresses
Disposable email addresses are used in suppressing the spam emails. Suppose, you need to share your email address with a site which has a less trustworthiness. In lieu of using the original email address, you should use the disposable address which will be destroyed after a certain period of time.
Unlike Gmail, Outlook supplies such disposable email addresses in form of temporary email alias. You can create a temporary email alias which are as similar as a regular email address. You’re allowed to delete those addresses any time you need. Even, you can edit an existing email alias rather than deleting it.
#4. Short Emails by Size
This is one of the best features of Outlook.com which are not available in Gmail. This gives you the ability to short the emails by their sizes. Thus, you can find out the giant emails having very large attachments and delete them to recover space.
#5. The Send Only Feature
In Outlook.com, you can set your email account to send outgoing emails only. No incoming mail will be received. This feature sounds very useful when you send some information to your customers in a bulk and don’t want to get any reply.
In our site, often we need to send information to the site subscribers. We don’t need any further reply to those emails. That’s why we use no-reply@techtipsapp.com to send such emails and this account is set to ‘Send only’ feature.
#6. Unlimited Storage
There is no specific storage limit for your email account in Microsoft Outlook.com. Microsoft increases the inbox capacity automatically as you need more space. Gmail gives only 15 GB space for free.
#7. Sending Large files and Attachments
Both Gmail and Outlook do not allow to send any email more than 25 Mb. In Gmail, you can send files more than 25 MB by uploading them to Google Drive and including the download link into the message body.
Outlook is integrated with Skydrive more efficiently. If you try to send any file that is more than 25 Mb, it will automatically send that via Skydrive.
#8. Email Blocking
You may want to avoid some person who continuously sends or forward emails at your inbox. Outlook.com allows to block emails from particular addresses or domains.
To block email from a particular address, select any message sent from that address > click Sweep > select the option ‘Delete’ >> all from Inbox and block future email’.
If you want to block email addresses in a bulk, go to Outlook Settings > Options > select ‘Safe and blocked senders’ under ‘Preventing junk email’. At this place, you can add the domain names that you want to add as blacklisted address.
#9. Recover Deleted Messages
There is a very easy option to recover deleted messages in Outlook. Just open the ‘Deleted’ folder and click the ‘recover deleted messages’ link from the bottom of the page.
I am quite unsure about how long Outlook will keep your deleted emails, but this feature is lifesaving as you can easily recover any important email if you deleted it accidentally. Gmail does not provide such email recovery option.
#10. Setup Email Addresses with Custom Domain at Free of Cost
Outlook.com allows you to create up to 50 email accounts with your custom domain name. It does not charge a single penny. Though it is free for this time, I’ve doubt on how long it will remain as a free service.
The same service is provided by Google apps. Though Google used to allow up to 10 free email accounts with your custom domain in the past, they’ve recently withdrawn the free service.
Hope Gmail will include these features in future.
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