Security:  

AOL’s spam filter center is simple, you choose “off,” “low,” “medium,” and “high.” AOL recommends keeping your filter on “medium.” We found that on this setting all our emails were sent to the appropriate places. If spam does slip through you can easily report it.

Additionally, with AOL’s Security Suite download you get virus protection in your emails and on your computer, phishing protection, parental controls, AOL firewall, pop–up controls and spyware protection.

Features Set:  

With AOL email you can drag and drop each message into its appropriate, custom folder. You can customize filters to reject emails from unknown domains, clickable hyperlinks, pictures and certain words or phrases. Unfortunately, the way AOL’s security features are setup there is no way to automatically sort your incoming email into specific folders.

You can choose to compose your emails with an HTML or plain text composer. Both include spell check. Additionally, AOL is IMAP accessible.

Extras:  

AOL’s most unique feature is “MyAddress.” AOL now allows you to choose your own domain name. Your email no longer has to be “Name@aol.com.” You can be “Name@personaldomain.com.” Additionally, you can invite up to 100 friends to be a part of your domain. No other free email service we reviewed allowed you this degree of email address personalization.

AOL includes a calendar that can track events by the year, month, day and so on. Additionally, you can record your tasks and place notes in the calendar feature. AIM is AOL’s instant messenger. It is a free download and will notify you of incoming email.

With AOL’s My Mobile service, you can receive IMs, alerts and reminders on your cellular phone or PDA while you are away from your computer.

Support/ Ease of Use:  

We found AOL’s help center to be easy to use and informative. Their search often produced comprehensive and relevant results. The tutorials are especially helpful for new users.

One of the most frustrating aspects of AOL’s email and additional services is in order to get the most out of AOL you have to download several additional programs. Fortunately, these are all free downloads.

AOL is in the process of reinventing itself for the better. Many of the features you enjoyed with AOL as your ISP are now available free to the world. Although you cannot sort your incoming messages with filters, they provide some of the best free email security available on the Internet.