Lifehacker has a detailed look at the two major free mail services – Gmail and Outlook.com (the former Hotmail).
It’s mostly about the web interface for each which is important for some people.
Outlook for Windows/Mac can connect to both Outlook.com and Gmail but it works better with Outlook.com.
Outlook links to Outlook.com using Microsoft ActiveSync which is an efficient syncing technology originally (and still now) used by Microsoft Exchange Server. It not only syncs your mail but also calendar, contacts and tasks.
Gmail’s free version doesn’t have ActiveSync (the paid version of Gmail does). That means you can only sync mail folders. You’ll need a third-party tool to connect Outlook calendar/contacts/tasks with the Gmail equivalents.
From a purely Outlook for Windows/Mac point of view, Outlook.com is better than Gmail.
There’s no reason not to have both! With two different ways to do that:
- Add both mail services into Outlook Windows/Mac.
- Setup one mail service to grab mail regularly from another mail account. Outlook.com calls this a ‘Send – Receive Account ‘, Office 365 hosting ‘Connected Accounts’ and Gmail’s similar offering is ‘Mail Fetcher’. Once you have your mail accounts consolidated into one online mail store, you can that mail store with Outlook for Windows or Mac.
Organizing Outlook Email 2016 edition has a lot more on using Outlook and how to arrange and consolidate your mail accounts in the chapter ‘Migrating to online email’.
