Lavabit nets you a solid, secure and privacy-conscious email account which you can access in your email program using POP or IMAP and in your browser using a rudimentary web interface.
It’s a pity Lavabit restricts statistical spam filtering to paid accounts and lacks a fully fledged web interface.

Zapak Mail is a bare-bones free email service with unlimited storage and POP access to boot. With the exception of some background images, Zapak Mail offers no frills and does not help much with handling mail efficiently.

HotPOP offers free, reliable email accounts you can use with any email program using POP3 and SMTP. In addition, HotPOP lets you forward incoming messages to multiple other addresses. Unfortunately, HotPOP lacks IMAP access and a web-based email interface and is a bit short on storage space.

My Way Mail is a functional email service that has a calendar and task list thrown in, too. It does place ads in outgoing emails, though, and could offer more help organizing and composing messages.

Care2 E-mail provides solid free email with an environmental conscience. The spam filters and editing gimmicks in Care2 E-mail are nice, but so would be message search, IMAP access and smart folders.

Mail.com is great for its domain names (use them with forwarding!), but it is missing some of the security and convenience of other web-based email services.

If you are looking for a free email service, you can be picky. You’ll be rewarded with plenty of storage, effective spam filtering, a fast interface, desktop email program access and more. Find the top 17 free email services to choose from reviewed here.