Yes sir! We have more competition in the web mail field now. The company is called GMX and is claiming to have developed the world’s best free web mail service. GMX - Global Mail X-change.

• They claim to have over 10,000,000 satisfied users
• Huge selection of available names with gmx.us or gmx.com
• Spam protection with up to 98% hit rate
• Maximum virus protection guaranteed
• Bundle existing email accounts & addresses into one (much like GMail’s)

The GMX web site says that you can import existing email addresses from the likes of GMail, Yahoo or Hotmail and easily manage them all from within the GMX platform. They have state-of-the-art, high security servers hosted in the USA, over 99% guaranteed availability, 5 GB storage space, up to 50 MB attachments per email, and are POP3 and IMAP supported. I like this last part because I prefer to use the IMAP function for my email accounts due to it’s simplicity and the fact I can draw on one address book when needed.

GMX Internet Services Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet, a listed company with over 3500 employees. They have run ads in several major publications like Computer Shopper, PC Magazine, Laptop Mag, etc. to promote this new service.

I signed up for it just a bit ago and the process was easy enough. Just pick a name for the email account, a password and some other information and you’re set. The process even asks you for an alternate email account in the event you forget your password so they can email it to you. Nice touch for those of us that experience that senior moment once in a while.

Setting up the IMAP function was just as simple. By clicking on the Help icon in the email application, a popup window will then display with all kinds of information. Click Overview and the details about the various methods of using GMX will then come into view.

I was set up and running in around 5 minutes in Thunderbird and sent a test mail to my GMail account and then replied back. Both were sent/received in no time at all. Impressive. Now time will tell how well the spam and virus protection capabilities will keep me safe from the meanies out there that love to load up the ‘ol inbox with offers galore and/or try to drop off their “little pets”.

The web interface is clean and functional but requires the user to have Java enabled for it to work. They seem to have incorporated several of the best features from the other web mail apps out there and made them seamless in function. I like it so far.

If you’re wanting to give a new web mail app a try, go check out GMX. It’s free, easy to use and can incorporate all your other web mail/email accounts for use under one virtual roof.