Email continues to be one of the most frustrating and productive internet tools. I would probably be lost without it but as an email server administrator it can be extremely frustrating.
If I were to choose based on my overall experience, I would say your best options would be Gmail, Yahoo and Hotmail. Worst to date is AOL. AOL has a history of the most aggressive spam filtering. Unfortunately, you can't be too aggressive in your spam filtering because it then catches legitimate and sometimes time-sensitive emails. This has been a recurring theme for years.
Gmail, which I've been extremely happy with, also has its quirks. Recently, two clients complained of emails getting lost or not delivered. Because Gmail was spot-on in their filtering for so long, users seldom if ever found it necessary to check their spam folder. Well that's changed in the past couple weeks according to some user experiences.
Companies are making changes to their technology so fast that they seem to steamroll the things they got right to begin with. I look forward to a new protocol to replace an antiquated system. Email has been around a looooong time. In most cases, technology from that era has been deemed obsolete and rendered extinct. Let's hope email holds on until the next best means of communication comes along.
