The Next Web

Confirmed: web based email wins over desktop

Confirmed: web based email wins over desktopAwesome tech/lifehacking blog, LifeHacker conducted a survey amongst its readers, and they have a fair few. The blog asked which of the two they preferred, desktop or web-based email services.

The results are as follows:

54% prefer to manage email on the web
24% prefer desktop email clients.
20% prefer the hybrid approach, sometimes accessing email on their desktop, sometimes over the web.

Reasons varied:

“enjoy not having to worry about backups using web based email. Gmail, without a doubt easier to use”

“It can access multiple accounts from various sources, it’s easy, convenient, access from anywhere without any headaches, stores everything, and I always have a browser open anyway. One less local app running and sucking resources. Desktop mail is dead.”

“Gmail’s ability to group emails into conversations via a web-browser works well for me. While T-bird and other desktop clients can also group messages in this fashion, I find the web-based system works best.”

“”love the speed at which web based email features are added. With desktop, especially on the mac, new features and iterations come across once every year!”

“The sole advantage of desktop based email readers is the ability to see/respond to emails when offline.”

No real surprise here frankly, but with any luck this will convince the remaining desktop allegiance to move their bottoms online.

{Lifehacker}

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  • Guess I'm in that minor 24 ... sometimes 20%
  • Probably a mixed solution should be good for the most of cases, such webmail+client synchronized or webmail+postbox.
    In any case, the capability to access from mobile makes the difference
  • Desktop email rocks, I've tried so many times to switch over to web-based mail but there's no comparison!!
  • Really? What do you like so much?
  • Claire
    I'm sorry but you can't seriously call yourself a geek and then vouch for Apple Mail. Being lazy is no excuse.

    It's just like Outlook Express with an Apple logo and we know how much fun it is to ridicule people who use default bundled programs especially if they're on Windows. ;)
  • Personally I like my emails on my computer and my backup and I like to keep them, have emails going back to 93
  • Personal preferences cannot be "confirmed," and needs vary among users.

    I swap between desktop and web email when the time calls for it. Web is certainly convenient, but desktop is quite a bit more powerful. I cannot easily select 20 random photos from iPhoto or Windows Explorer and have web-friendly copies automatically created and attached to a Gmail message. But I *can* do that with Mail on a Mac and, IIRC, Picasa on Windows.

    I also can't use Billings to automatically create my monthly client invoices and attach them to a Gmail message. But I can with Mail.

    As a final desktop example, I can't use LaunchBar to type a couple characters of a person's name, hit Return on their email address, and create a new Gmail message. But I can with Mail.

    There are tons of examples like these for both sides of the fences. But the fundamental fact of the matter is that personal preferences and the differences between needs cannot be "confirmed." You might as well print a headline stating "Confirmed: Metallica is better than Dave Matthews Band."
  • These article gave some interesting insights!

    Leaves the question: which (open source) webmail application serves the needs of users the best? Probably not Squirrelmail (though very stable).
  • Just a test comment.
  • I suspect something is seriously wrong with this survey's methodology. You mean THAT many people don't care about working on their email on their laptops while on the bus, in the subway, on an airplane, etc? I for one will never let internet availability dictate when I can or cannot at least compose my email replies.

    I also can't believe that many people aren't at least a bit bothered by the privacy & security concerns.
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