When looking for a new email provider, there are many factors to consider: Reliability, security, privacy aspects, ease-of-use and usability, features and, of course, pricing. Since Yahoo Mail and Gmail are both very popular email providers that offer a wide range of features, it’s easy to get lost when comparing Yahoo Mail vs Gmail.
➡️ Therefore, we’ve created this comprehensive comparison that consist of 5 important criteria. Every criteria analyses multiple aspects that allow you to weight the result based on your personal preferences!
Not interested in the details? In this case, have a look at our quick summary!
ProtonMail vs. Tutanota: Compared Features
The Result:
➡️ Yahoo Mail Pros and Cons
➡️ Gmail Pros and Cons
➡️ What would MailJerry choose?
Summary: Yahoo Mail vs Gmail Comparison
| Aspect | Yahoo Mail | Gmail |
|---|---|---|
| Account security | ✅ strong | ✅ strong |
| Data breaches | do happen, good incident management | do happen, does not openly communicate |
| Uptime | ✅ 99.9% | ⛔ not reported |
| Spam Protection | ⭐️ basic | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ highly sophisticated |
| Security Features | ⭐️ basic (mainly phishing alerts) | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ sophisticated (even monitors the dark web) |
| Privacy / email scanning | 👎 scans all emails, uses data | 👎 scans all emails, uses data |
| Encryption | 👎 basic | 👎 basic |
| Appearance & Customisation | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ highly customisable | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ minimalistic |
| Email filtering | ⭐️ basic filtering via “smart views” | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ sophisticated inbox filtering |
| Ads | ⛔ large, very prominent | ✅ small, not disturbing |
| Mobile apps | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ works well, customisable | ⭐️⭐️ works well |
| Offline Access | ⛔ no | ✅ yes |
| Features | ⭐️ all basic features existent | ⭐️⭐️⭐️ state-of-the art, modern features |
| AI support | ⛔ no | ✅ yes |
| Attachment Storage | ⭐️ via Dropbox | ⭐️⭐️ via Google Docs |
| Ecosystem | ⛔ weak | ✅ advanced (all Google Workspace apps) |
| Storage Capacity Free Plan | 1 TB | 15 GB (shared between all apps) |
| Paid Plans | $ 5.00 / month | 3 different plans, starting $ 1.99 / month |
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail
The Contenders
Yahoo Mail:
Yahoo Mail, widely known as Ymail, was launched in 1997. Initially lagging behind its competitors, the email service improved significantly over the years. Today, Ymail has a large user base with more than 225 million active users in 2017.
Besides the widely used web-based email client that supports 27 different languages, Yahoo Mail offers a mobile application for iOS and Android. In addition, you can add your Ymail email to any email client of your choice.
Gmail:
Gmail started in 2004, offering free storage capacity of 15 GB, which was significantly higher than any other competitor. Free storage space, a minimalistic, web-based email client and handy features are among the success factors that make Gmail on of the most popular email providers word wide. With more than 1.8 billion Gmail users, on average one in every five email users relies on Gmail.
Besides the web-based email client (supporting 72 languages), Gmail is available as iOS or Android app and can be added to every email client of your liking (Thunderbird, Apple Mail…).
The Comparison:
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail
Finding the right email provider heavily depends on personal preferences. While one user might prioritise security and privacy, another user puts a greater focus on features and usability.
➡️ Therefore, we’ve based our comparison on five criteria: Security & reliability, privacy, usability, features and price. You can weight each criteria based on your preferences to find the ideal email solution for your specific needs!
Criteria 01:
Security & Reliability
Two of the most important things when it comes to choosing an email client are security and reliability. Simply said: You want your email provider to work (preferably every time you wish to use it) and no one else to have access to your precious communication. So let’s how Yahoo Mail vs Gmail perform:
Account security
In terms of security, the biggest risk usually sits in front of the display. To minimise the “human risk factor”, Gmail and Yahoo both implemented security measures like two-factor authentication (2fa), strong password prompts and recovery methods.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Data Breaches
As any other popular email provider, Gmail and Yahoo have a track record of data breaches. For example, in 2013, 3 billion Yahoo accounts were affected by a security attack, while in 2018, more than 52 million Google accounts were exposed through a bug in the Google API.
So, who should you trust? Every popular email provider falls victim to security attacks, but given the track record of security breaches as well as communication and measures taken in case of an incident, Gmail does a better job.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Uptime
How often are Gmail and Ymail down? That’s not easy to answer since Yahoo Mail won’t release email uptime stats anymore. This, however, can’t prevent users from reporting downtimes (e.g. in Februar 2024, thousands of Yahoo Mail users reported problems with the email app).
In comparison, Gmail has an excellent uptime history, making good of its promise of being available 99.9 percent of the time.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Spam Protection & Security Features
To identify spam, both Yahoo and Google implement robust filters. While some legitimate emails are identified as spam by the Yahoo spam filter, Google does an excellent job, implementing sophisticated algorithms that continuously learn and adapt to new spamming techniques.
Yahoo Mail implements phishing alerts in its web client that informs you when you’re about to reply to an email that looks suspicious. Gmail even goes a step further with the option “monitor the dark web” that’s available for all paid accounts. If personal information such as passwords or credit card information is found on the dark web, Google will inform you about it.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail: Who wins in terms of security and reliability?
The Winner: Gmail (4 vs 1 points)
➡️ Even though Gmail wins, both companies offer secure and reliable email services.
Criteria 02:
Privacy
Can you have a confidential email communication when relying on Ymail or Gmail? Or do both email services use or even sell your data? Let’s find out!
Email Scanning & Data Privacy
Every way you interact with your Gmail email address can be monitored by Google. In fact, Gmail scans every email you read or write and collects vast amounts of personal data. For example, Gmail collects purchase information (= tracks everything you buy), delivery tracking and flight booking.
Yahoo Mail, unfortunately, is no privacy champion, too. It similarly gathers data to identify user preferences. Verizon, Yahoo’s parent company, has a history of implementing questionable tracking technologies, making both Yahoo Mail and Gmail less appealing for privacy-conscious users.GPT
🥇 Score: 0 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Privacy Features
Could you, at least, prevent one or both contenders in our Yahoo Mail vs Gmail comparison from using your data? With Gmail, you can opt out of the scanning of your email communication. Yahoo Mail offers a similar feature. But even then, both email providers still scan and collect vast amount of data.
When it comes to sharing your email address with others, Yahoo Mail lets you add aliases (= temporary email addresses) you can use if you don’t want to share your real email address with someone.
Gmail, on the other hand, offers an interesting feature called confidentiality mode. By activating the confidentiality mode, you can send emails that self expire, preventing the recipient from sharing the email without the senders permission.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Encryption
So, is your data at least properly encrypted when sending and receiving emails? Both email providers rely on HTTPS and TLS without encryption, providing a basic level of encryption, but no end-to-end encryption.
With Ymail and Gmail, it is possible to implement passkey support, allowing you to authenticate using public-key encryption. End-to-end encryption can be achieved through third party plugins (like the browser extension Mailvelop).
🥇 Score: 0 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail: Who wins in terms of privacy?
The Winner: Undecided (1 vs 1 points)
➡️ Never the less, neither Gmail nor Ymail are a good choice for privacy-focused individuals.
Criteria 03:
Usability
In today’s workspace, efficient and quick email communication is an important factor. Utilising an easy-to-use email client is key to reduce the time you spend each day sending and writing emails. So which provider offers better usability for their email clients?
Overall Appearance & Customisation
The Gmail and Yahoo Mail email clients are mature, sophisticated applications that are easy to use. Gmail offers a clean and intuitive interface that makes it easy to navigate and manage your communication efficiently. Yahoo Mail is a little less minimalistic but offers vast customising options: You can adjust the whole theme including text, contrast, colours… you name it.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Email Management
Both Gmail and Yahoo offer all features you expect from a modern email client. With its sophisticated inbox filtering that distinguishes between primary, promotional and social emails, Gmail helps you to focus on what’s important. Ymail offers a similar feature called “smart views”. Smart views also help you to filter your inbox, but do not work as well and intuitive as Googles inbox filtering does.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Ads
In the free plan, Yahoo Mail and Gmail are both ad-sponsored. Gmail works with small ads that do not disturb heavily. Yahoo, on the other hand, adds large banner ads to the interface that can be very annoying.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Mobile Usage
Who is easier to use when you have to write an email on the go? Both contenders offer mobile applications for iOS and Android that work really well and are easy to use. While there aren’t that many customising options in the Gmail app, Yahoo allows you to highly customise your mobile app.
🥇 Score: 0 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail: Who wins in terms of usability?
The Winner: Gmail (3 vs 2 points)
➡️ This does not mean that Yahoo Mail is a bad choice in terms of usability. If you prefer a high level of customisation, Yahoo is the better choice.
Criteria 04:
Features
The Ymail and Gmail web-interface both offer all features you expect from a modern email client, like easily composing and reading emails and organising data in folders and labels. But wich provider does stand out in terms of additional functionality?
Sending & Receiving Emails
Ymail offers a so-called “all in one inbox”, allowing you to add other email accounts (like Gmail or Outlook) to the Yahoo Mail client. You can easily manage and unsubscribe from mailing lists and activate a news integration that displays current news based on your interests.
Gmail does not only offer an offline mode, but also heavily implements Googles AI features that help you respond efficiently and even drafts full emails for you. The Gmails snooze feature is another handy tool: Remember the last time you opened an email and forgot about it? Gmail makes it reappear after some time.
So while Yahoo Mails features are nice, Gmail offers more state-of-the art, modern features that make email communication a lot easier.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
File Management
When sending large attachments, Gmail automatically uploads them to your Google Drive. This is extremely convenient, as you don’t have to worry about file size, but also reduces the amount of storage capacity available for your plan.
Yahoo Mail works similar, uploading the attachment to Dropbox. This, of course, requires you to manage your attachments efficiently, so you do not run out of storage when using a free Dropbox account.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Apps & Ecosystem
Besides email, what more can you expect when singing up with Google or Yahoo? Yahoo offers various small apps, from which the Yahoo Calendar and Yahoo Notes are the most prominent ones. They allow you to perform simple tasks, bud in general, aren’t really great.
When signing up with Google, you ave access to the complete Google Workspace ecosystem that does not only include an advanced calendar app and Google Drive for file storage, but also productivity and collaboration tools like Google Meet or Google Docs.
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail: Who wins in terms of features?
The Winner: Gmail (3 vs 1 point)
➡️ However, if you simply want to send and receive emails, without using any fancy features and tools, Gmail and Yahoo are both an equally good choice.
Criteria 05:
Price
Yahoo Mail and Gmail offer free and paid plans that significantly defer from each other:
Free Plans
Gmail offers 15 GB of free storage capacity. That’s a lot for email communication, but becomes significantly less generous when looking at the details: The 15 GB are shared with all Google services, making it easy to run out of storage space. Furthermore, free Gmail accounts have a sending limit of 2000 emails / day.
Yahoo offers a generous amount of 1 TB free email storage and does not apply any sending limits at all. However, you have to use your Ymail account, as inactive accounts are automatically deleted after 12 months. What’s more, you can store attachments only up to 25 MB. Larger attachments are uploaded to Dropbox, that only offers 2 GB storage for free.
🥇 Score: 0 for Gmail, +1 for Yahoo Mail
Paid Plans
Gmail offers the following paid plans:
Basic: includes 100 GB storage, more Google photos editing features, VPN for multiple devices and the security feature “monitor the dark web”
Price per month: $ 1.99
Premium: includes 1TB storage, all features from the basic plan + all Google Workspace premium features
Price per month: $ 9.99
AI Premiums: includes 2 TB storage, als premium features and all Google AI features (included in Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides…)
Price per month: $ 21,99
Yahoo offers only one paid plan, called Yahoo Mail Plus.
Yahoo Mail Plus: includes 5 TB email storage and all plus features (e.g. more temporary email addresses, no adds, all Yahoo apps…)
Price per Month: $ 5,–
🥇 Score: +1 for Gmail, 0 for Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail: Who offers better options in terms of pricing?
The Winner: Undecided (1 vs 1 point)
➡️ Both providers offer completely different plans. Gmail offers more flexibility by differentiating between 4 different paid plans. The pricing of Yahoo, on the other hand, is simple: There’s one paid plan, and that’s it.
Yahoo Mail vs Gmail:
The Result
So who wins the comparison Yahoo Mail vs Gmail? Gmail wins all four of the five tested criteria. But don’t jump to a conclusion right yet! This does not mean that Gmail must be the right choice for you. Let’s look at the pros and cons first!
Yahoo Mail: Pros and Cons
Pros:
✅ Informs you when you’re about to reply to spam / phishing emails
✅ Use aliases if you do not want to share your real email address with someone
✅ Highly customisable interface
✅ Mobile application is also highly customisable
✅ Possibility to add other email accounts to the Yahoo Mail client
✅ Generous 1 TB of storage (free plan) so you will never ever have to delete emails again
✅ Only one paid plan, making it easy to calculate costs
Cons:
⛔️ No information about uptime available
⛔️ Does not communicate security breaches openly
⛔️ End to end encryption only through third-party plugins
⛔️ Only basic inbox filtering through “smart views”
⛔️ Very prominent ads in the free plan
⛔️ Management of large attachments via Dropbox (third-party)
Gmail: Pros and Cons
Pros:
✅ Less security breaches compared to Yahoo
✅ Very reliable (uptime of 99.9%)
✅ Sophisticated, continuously adapting spam filters
✅ Offers self expiring, password protected emails through Gmails “confidentiality mode”
✅ Sophisticated inbox filtering
✅ Google AI features that even draft complete emails
✅ Reminds you about emails you forgot (“snooze feature”)
✅ Mighty ecosystem with Google Workspace (Google Docs, Google Meet…)
Cons:
⛔️ End to end encryption only through third-party plugins
⛔️ Storage capacity shared between all Google apps
⛔️ Sending limit of 2000 emails per day (free plan)
⛔️ AI features only available in the most expensive plan
Summary:What Would MailJerry Choose?
Even though there are differences in terms of security measures, both Gmail and Yahoo are secure, reliable email providers. Never the less, they both scan and use your personal data, making them a questionable choice for privacy-focused users.
Gmail offers a very minimalistic interface, while Yahoo Mail allows you to customise the complete email client. If you prefer a high level of customisation, Yahoo is the better choice. Gmail, on the other hand, offers modern, state-of-the art features, including AI, that make email communication feel a lot more like 2024.
With Yahoo, you can only store files up to 25 MB, while with Gmail, you easily run out of storage space and might have to upgrade your plan.
🏆 Overall, it’s clear to say, that Gmail is the winner of our Yahoo Mail vs Gmail comparison.
What would MailJerry choose?
➡️ Being a privacy-focused individual, MailJerry would always prefer a dedicated or vps hosting solution for its emails or at least use a secure email provider like ProtonMail or Tuta. However, if there were only Gmail or Yahoo Mail available, MailJerry would probably opt for Gmail, as it offers more modern, partially AI powered features and more sophisticated spam protection.
