The leader is Yahoo! Mail, closely followed by Microsoft’s Hotmail (now called Windows Live Hotmail). Thereafter it gets more uncertain. Gmail is often cited as the third “biggie” but this is not necessarily supported by the numbers. And even if it is third, the number of active accounts still falls well short of either of its two largest competitors.

While the ‘biggies’ have been tussling for top spot, a smaller lesser-known free email provider has been making waves in the online community.

Bluebottle.com has been flying under the radar for some time now, but is emerging as a top tier email provider. Bluebottle started off as an email service catering to the anti-spam community, as they provide a guarantee of spam-free email. But have boosted the features of their Bluebottle Freemail package to include; POP3 access, 10mb of attachment size and 250mb of storage space.

Now I know 250mb of storage space doesn’t sound as sexy as Gmail’s offering of 2-3GB, but let’s be honest here, what person would ever need 2-3GB of storage? Unless you plan on receiving massive amounts of spam, why would you ever need that much space? Emails are primarily in text format and only require about 2-5kb in storage space. It just seems like overkill to me.

I opened up my Bluebottle free email account about 6 months ago and i haven’t received one lick of spam. This is how Bluebottle keeps my email spam free. Whereas my Hotmail, sorry… Live Mail account still gets clogged with spam.

As well as Bluebottles’ superior anti-spam measures, they also offer free POP3 connection so i can access my Bluebottle account from my Outlook, there aren’t too many other free email providers that offer free POP3 email.

All in all, Bluebottle is the little guy with a heart of gold. Although it doesn’t have a huge brand attached to it like Gmail and Yahoo mail to give it instant credibility. Bluebottle is earning their credibility by exceeding the expectations of their users and constantly adding new and useful features to their free email service.