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Jason Ginsberg / 8.24.2023Home / Email Security

Best alternatives to Yahoo—four options reviewed

If you’ve been using Yahoo but don’t believe it meets your needs anymore, you can explore various other options. Discover the best alternatives to Yahoo.

Released in 1997, Yahoo Mail is among the oldest email providers on the market. While it has evolved into a decent platform, several issues have remained. The most noticeable one is the user interface, which looks quite outdated compared to most modern solutions.Yahoo also has not done much to ensure its platform works seamlessly with major productivity tools that countless individuals and businesses use. Third-party integration is virtually non-existent, and there aren’t many native platforms that would let you expand your workflow.Most importantly, Yahoo is far from the most secure email platform. It fell victim to one of the largest data breaches in history in 2013, which affected over three billion accounts.With all of the above in mind, it doesn’t surprise that many people are looking for alternatives to Yahoo. If you’re among them, this guide will show you how to find a provider that doesn’t come with Yahoo’s limitations and recommend a few options to consider.

Switch to Skiff for a secure email experienceWith its robust encryption features, Skiff ensures your email communication remains confidential

What to look for in a Yahoo alternative

Choosing an email provider seems easy at first glance because all platforms look quite similar to an untrained eye. Still, each solution comes with a set of benefits and drawbacks you must consider to avoid committing to an unsuitable platform.If you need a starting point for your search, consider the following factors when comparing different options:

User interface and cross-platform support
Built-in tools and third-party integrations
Features and pricing
Security and privacy

User interface and cross-platform support

Yahoo doesn’t boast a particularly well-designed interface. Besides the outdated design, you get distracting ads in the inbox and right-hand pane, which is quite frustrating and can damage the user experience.An ideal alternative doesn’t obstruct your inbox this way—you should get a clean, minimalistic design that provides a smooth workflow through the right number of well-placed features. This balance isn’t easy to strike, so many email providers come with a busy, cluttered interface that isn’t esthetically pleasing.Your Yahoo alternative should also ensure design consistency between different platforms. You may not always work from your laptop or desktop, so phone apps or well-optimized mobile browser versions are paramount.

Built-in tools and third-party integrations

Unlike Gmail or Outlook, Yahoo doesn’t have many connected platforms. You only get access to three tools from the inbox:

Contacts
Calendar
Notepad

While this may be enough for occasional or light use, advanced users will most likely find the platform too limiting. This is especially true because Yahoo doesn’t integrate with major productivity platforms, so using it for daily business tasks might stunt your productivity.Before committing to an email provider, check its integrations to see whether you’ll have everything you need to go through your workflow without interruptions. You may want to integrate your platform with document editing tools, shared storage, and various other solutions that either come natively with the email provider or can be used as third-party add-ons.

Features and pricing

Every email platform comes with a set of basic features you need to complete your daily correspondence. Still, some solutions offer useful extras that can significantly impact your workflow. This mainly comes down to email organization and management features that keep your inbox clean and ensure you don’t miss important messages.Specifically, such features include the following:

Smart folders separating important mail from messages that don’t need your immediate attention
Filters and labels, including the option to create custom labels
Advanced email search that encompasses the email’s contents, not just the subject

Not all of these features are available for free with every provider, so look for options with a rich free plan or affordable paid tiers.

Security and privacy

The notorious 2013 data breach seriously damaged Yahoo’s reputation. Worse yet, it was not an isolated case. These attacks occurred due to weak encryption, as Yahoo doesn’t go above and beyond to protect sensitive information.Like most Big Tech email solutions, it uses the Transport Layer Security (TLS) encryption protocol, which only offers modest protection while your emails are traveling to the recipient. TLS has been around for a long time but hasn’t evolved much, so it’s full of vulnerabilities a capable hacker can exploit without much effort.Besides, encryption keys used to protect your emails are created by Yahoo and stored on its servers. When you receive an email, the platform uses the decryption key to decipher the email and sends you the plaintext version.This means Yahoo can decrypt and see your correspondence, so you don’t get much privacy.The best way to keep your emails confidential is to use a platform with end-to-end encryption (E2EE). This standard gives you complete privacy by encrypting emails on your device, where the key is created and stored. The only person who can see the unencrypted version is the recipient holding the decryption key, so you can send private information and files more confidently.While most email platforms charge for E2EE, you can find privacy-first options that include it by default.

Four Yahoo alternatives reviewed

Numerous email platforms have surfaced since Yahoo’s release, so the number of other options might be overwhelming. To help you overcome analysis paralysis, we’ve shortlisted four options:

Gmail
Zoho Mail
BlueMail
Skiff

Gmail

Source: GmailIf you don’t want to move away from Big Tech email platforms but need a more capable solution than Yahoo, Gmail might be worth considering. Its main advantage is that it’s a part of a more robust productivity suite, Google Workspace.When you create an account, you’ll get access to platforms to which Yahoo doesn’t have equivalents, most notably:

Google Docs for document editing
Google Drive for file storage
Google Sheets for spreadsheet creation

Each of these tools is feature-rich enough to let you create a streamlined workflow, and Gmail itself might be suitable for an average user—unless you mind the platform’s weak security.Unfortunately, Gmail doesn’t differ much from Yahoo security-wise. You get the same TLS encryption and all its weaknesses. You can get end-to-end encryption with S/MIME, but this protocol has three main issues:

You must pay for one of Gmail’s higher-priced tiers to access it
S/MIME suffers from significant vulnerabilities that hackers have used to steal user data
You need to buy the S/MIME certificate separately and configure it manually, which can be complicated

For many users, Gmail's security limitations outweigh the benefits, which mostly boil down to the following:

A clean user interface
Intuitive features
Multi-platform support

Pros	Cons
Access to additional tools	Weak default encryption
Clean, modern user interface	E2EE only available with S/MIME for paid users
Multi-platform support	.

Zoho Mail

Source: Zoho MailZoho Mail is a popular provider among personal and business users because of its solid free plan paired with affordable paid tiers. The platform comes with some handy features, particularly in the email organization area.You can use Advanced Search to browse emails’ contents and find the threads and information you need quickly. There’s also an option to sort attachments by type for a clearer overview.A particularly convenient feature is email sharing. You can share a draft before sending it to discuss it with a team member. Folder sharing is also available, so you can send entire batches for approval or delegate emails more seamlessly.Zoho Mail has some decent security features, such as:

Malware and phishing protection
Spam detection
Email policies ensuring controlled distribution

Unfortunately, the crucial security layer is lacking—Zoho Mail also uses TLS for encryption in transit and AES-256 for encryption at rest. It may seem like your emails are fully protected at first glance, but Zoho still creates and stores encryption keys, so you don’t have complete control of your data.Another notable disadvantage is limited storage. You only get 5 GB with the free account, which may not be enough. You also don’t get access to document editing tools—you’d need to upgrade to Zoho Workplace to use them.

Pros	Cons
Advanced email search	Limited free storage
Robust organization tools	No document editing tools included
Email draft sharing	.

BlueMail

Source: BlueMailIf you want to keep your Yahoo account but want to move away from its busy interface, BlueMail can be a good alternative. It’s an email client that supports all providers, so you can sign up using your Yahoo email and enjoy a much better interface and additional features.BlueMail lets you add multiple email accounts and manage them from a unified inbox, which is useful if you have separate work and business emails but don’t wish to use multiple platforms. You can organize emails into clusters based on different categories, which keeps the inbox well organized.The platform also comes with an integrated calendar, which you can share with others to ensure easier collaboration. You can sync the calendar with your account and add .ics files to migrate your events and schedule.A notable benefit of BlueMail is that it doesn’t store your emails on its servers. Your provider (Yahoo, in this case) directly manages them, so the potential attack surface doesn’t expand to another platform.You still don’t get advanced security, though. BlueMail uses TLS and offers optional S/MIME integration, so there’s no full-fledged end-to-end encryption by default.

Pros	Cons
Unified inbox	No dedicated email address
Clusters for easy organization	No E2EE by default
No email storage on servers	.

Skiff Mail

Source: SkiffSkiff Mail is a privacy-first email provider that uses strong end-to-end encryption to make your correspondence secure and private. After you write your email, the encryption happens on your device with the help of the public encryption key shared with the recipient. A separate private key stored on the recipient’s device is necessary for decryption, ensuring complete confidentiality.This means nobody but the recipient can see unencrypted versions of your emails, including Skiff. Thanks to zero-knowledge login, the platform doesn’t even ask for personal information during signup.For additional security, Skiff Mail implements the following measures:

Secure Remote Password, which encrypts critical account data
Two-factor authentication (2FA), which gives you another security layer beyond login credentials

Advanced security isn’t Skiff’s only benefit—the platform’s rich free plan encompasses various features, most notably:

10 GB of end-to-end encrypted storage
Fast email and text search
Beautifully-designed user interface
Integration with various crypto wallets
Email organization features (folders, labels, and filters)
Custom domain and aliases
Support for browsers, macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows

Get free access to Skiff’s featuresYou can unlock military-strong security in a matter of seconds

Create a secure workspace with Skiff’s product suite

When you sign up for Skiff Mail, you’ll get instant access to three additional end-to-end encrypted platforms that serve as a secure alternative to Google Workspace and similar Big Tech productivity suites:

Skiff Pages—A document editing tool with a rich text editor and end-to-end encryption of your files’ contents and metadata for complete privacy
Skiff Drive—A secure storage solution supporting files of all types and sizes that offers optional InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) integration
Skiff Calendar—A rich calendar app that automatically syncs with Skiff Mail and comes with a built-in video conferencing tool

Source: SkiffSkiff Mail is open source, and the codebase is available on the platform’s GitHub. For additional information on its features, you can read the whitepaper.Note that Skiff’s security measures don’t extend to your device, so the platform can’t offer complete protection if the device is corrupted by malware.

Pros	Cons
End-to-end encryption	Can’t fully protect your correspondence if your device is infected by malware
Rich free plan	.
User-friendly interface	.
Integrates with E2EE productivity tools	.

Sign up for Skiff in seconds

You can get started with Skiff by following three simple steps:

Visit the signup page
Choose your username and password
Explore Skiff’s E2EE product suite

All essential features are available with the free plan, but if you want up to 1 TB of E2EE storage and valuable extras like short email aliases, you can upgrade to one of Skiff’s three paid plans.If you’ve been using Yahoo for a while and don’t want to lose your existing correspondence, you can transfer all your data without complications with Skiff’s one-click migration. Skiff will encrypt your emails as soon as you migrate and won’t store any unencrypted copies.

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