There are so many ways to read email today, on our desktops, phones and even tablets. We are bombarded each day with new messages from our loved ones, companies giving out amazing offers and even the undesirable kind like junk mail. Where do you get yours?

It is safe to say that everyone has that one email address, the ‘main’ one where everything important is delivered to. It does not matter which one you use—the new iCloud email, a gmail address, the renovated Outlook or even an old-school AOL, what matters is that there is always a definite one, but what do we do when we are required to use multiple ones from different companies competing for your attention?

I’m a Hotmail guy, I have had my address since 2006 after switching from a very embarrassing one on the same server (which I refuse to acknowledge now). Hotmail has always been seen as the “everyone else” email since most people get one if they haven’t heard about Yahoo! first. Gmail is the one that really changed things, according to many it was ‘the best around’, but I could never adapt to the switch and so I stayed with mine, through thick and thin (introduction of Live accounts) all the way to the renovated Outlook (which is amazing in my opinion, but I don’t think I’ll upgrade to the @Outlook.com address quite yet). 

I also have other email accounts I’ve made just for the sake of having them around: @Gmail, @Yahoo, @Mac, @Me, @iCloud. Two out of those five I decided to pick and keep active. The iCloud address serves me with all the over-the-cloud features Apple provides, but I rarely receive any email on it. I just started using Gmail to forward all my emails from my Secure Server from GoDaddy in order to effectively use a domain email (@Mithical).

It is all a very complicating web of email accounts I have been trying to unify for months, and it is only up to this year that I have been able to manage it flawlessly. Through various hoops and forwarding techniques, everything manages to get to my phone, my Mac mail, and web mail page where I can check it off. Competing email providers probably do not like playing together but it definitely makes everything a little more simple when you only have one place to check for new messages. Still, it shouldn’t be a time-consuming and complicated process for those lacking in the basics of computing servers. I wish there came a day when one company brought everything together for the better without the need to bother with forwarding. Facebook tried it with its unified messaging system but so far it hasn’t caught fire. Everything in a simplified, synchronous march towards our inbox, that is what we have yet to see from email.