When it comes to email clients, it’s important to understand them. While Gmail is probably what many email users think of first when planning a new inbox, Yahoo Mail has a strong audience too. Let’s see what Yahoo Mail is all about.
What is Yahoo Mail?
Yahoo Mail is a popular (free!) and rather user-friendly email inbox provided by Yahoo, a well-known tech company. It has all you need in an email account – send and receive email messages, photos or documents. Whether it’s a personal or a work inbox, the main features have got you covered as a user.
With Yahoo Mail, you can access your email from various devices like computers, smartphones, and tablets, making it easy to stay connected. Also, Yahoo Mail can be integrated with desktop clients via POP3 and IMAP. You can read more about the differences between POP3 and IMAP here.
Yahoo Mail has spam filters, which help keep unwanted and suspicious emails out of your inbox. There’s also a variety of customization options to personalize your email account. You can choose different themes, create a signature for your outgoing emails, and even set up an automatic response if you’re away.
When was Yahoo Mail Created?
Yahoo Mail has been around since 1997 and, over the years, has evolved to offer a range of features designed to make your email experience convenient and enjoyable. The web version of Yahoo Mail has undergone many service and interface updates too. Side note: 2013 was not a good year for Yahoo Mail. Every Yahoo account that existed in mid-2013 was very likely hacked. Npr.org has more on that if you’re interested.
Yahoo Mail Market Share
According to Statista, in 2017, Gmail was a very strong leader in email space in the United States. 44% of people in the U.S. most frequently use Gmail, with their nearest rival being Yahoo Mail at 26%.
Let’s look at more recent data – the email client market share reported by Litmus. In July 2023, Yahoo Mail is #4 in their chart with 2.55% (calculated from over 1.3 billion opens in Litmus Email Analytics in July 2023). But in August 2021, when they first started recording email client market share, Yahoo Mail was ranked #5.
Important to Email Marketers: App Updates
According to Litmus research, Yahoo Mail updates its rendering engine approximately every four days (for apps). Interestingly, they report that Yahoo Mail Android users will likely see updates more often than Apple users. If you are building an email campaign for your Yahoo Mail audience, test each email thoroughly to ensure it renders as expected.
Yahoo Mail: Deliverability
Nobody likes spam. Yahoo gets it too. Yahoo Mail uses its own algorithms and user-provided spam reports (so as a Yahoo Mail user, make sure you report spam emails).
Yahoo wants you to mark spam as spam:
"Getting unwanted emails or spam is frustrating. While most of spam emails are being caught by our spam filters, occasionally some can slip through. When this happens, it's very important to mark the email as spam, then our system will learn that messages from a specific place are not good and helps us make Yahoo Mail even better at recognizing future spam emails."
It has also been reported that the actual email content is very important to Yahoo Mail when it comes to email deliverability and spam detection.
Yahoo Mail Rendering Quirks
Like any email platform, Yahoo Mail has its unique way of displaying and rendering emails. If you’re building emails for Yahoo Mail recipients – or you’re a Yahoo Mail user expecting to see flawless emails in your Yahoo Mail inbox – it is important to be aware of email rendering quirks specific to Yahoo Mail.
- CSS support limitations: Yahoo Mail has pretty good support for the most common HTML and CSS used in email design. However, it may have limitations with advanced CSS properties such as positioning rules (e.g., top, right, bottom, left).
- Media queries: In the past, Yahoo Mail had issues with media queries, used to create responsive designs for different screen sizes. This lead to mobile styles being displayed on desktop clients. However, it appears that this issue has been addressed in recent versions of Yahoo Mail.
- Blue link issue: Previous versions of Yahoo Mail added a class of “.yshortcuts” to links, causing them to display as blue even if styled differently using inline CSS. This resulted in an inconsistent look for linked text. This issue should have been fixed in newer versions.
- Image alignment: Yahoo Mail might have inconsistencies with image alignment. Images are, by default, treated as inline elements, which can sometimes cause gaps or misalignments in the layout. To ensure proper alignment, email developers often use the “display: block;” CSS style for images.
- Table Alignment: Yahoo Mail had an issue with center-aligned tables aligning to the left, regardless of the HTML attributes. This affected the overall layout of email templates. The issue could potentially be resolved by using the “table-layout: fixed;” style on the outer-most container table.
- Limited support for CSS3 and HTML5: Yahoo Mail may not fully support advanced properties like border-radius and box-shadow. So when coding emails, keep in mind the partial support you may have to find workarounds for.
- Font rendering: Yahoo Mail might interpret fonts differently than other email clients or web browsers, which could lead to inconsistencies in font sizes, styles, or line heights. Make sure to test emails well.
- Spacing and margins: Yahoo Mail might have variations in how it handles spacing, margins, and padding within email templates, which could, again, affect the overall design layout.
- Font embedding: Yahoo Mail may not support custom web fonts, and users might see fallback fonts instead.
Summing up: A Solid Inbox with Some Rendering Quirks
Overall, Yahoo Mail is a reliable and user-friendly email service that provides a convenient way to communicate, share information, and stay connected with others. Whether you’re a student, a professional, or simply someone who loves to keep in touch, Yahoo Mail has you covered.
As for email marketers, Yahoo Mail may bring some challenges. It’s important to test your emails regularly when building campaigns for your Yahoo Mail subscribers.
