Email review: GMX vs. Gmail

Google's Gmail is great, but not perfect. And of course, I'm always looking for perfect, always moving in the direction of better. That's what got me checking out the GMX.com email solution.

GMX mail is browser based, just like Gmail, but for some reason when it opens, it forces a new window for the mail functions instead of a more well-behaved tab in an existing browser window.

I do like the fact that GMX allows drag/drop, but Gmail doesn't.

GMX has keyboard shortcuts, as does Gmail, but they are different codes, which seems completely unnecessary. They should be the same. Why should I have to learn new codes for standard functions such as Reply, etc. Strangely, there is no shortcut in GMX for Archive. You can not choose to Archive a message while it is open, a big oversight which causes lots of extra keystrokes/clicks.

GMX doesn't work equally well in IE and Firefox. For example, Ctrl-R to Reply doesn't work in Firefox, but does in IE.

GMX seems to do a great job of spam filtering. Gmail puts spam in a separate folder, but I get a lot of it to wade through to find the few false positives.

One benefit to setting up an account at GMX is that you can probably get email addresses that are unavailable at Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, and other more popular email services. Get your favorite email handle (Superman@GMX.com for example) and then have it forward to your regular email address at Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.

I could go on, but the bottom line is that GMX is still in Beta, and while it has some nice features, it needs more work to achieve the speed and functionality of Gmail.