Get AOL email address

I'm torn between Yahoo and AOL email. My son has the former while the latter is used by many of my friends. Which email service would you recommend? Will AOL work for a 70 year old retired grandpa who's just started to dabble in computers?
Derek George

It's never easy to choose between two of the best email services. At the time of writing, both Yahoo and AOL offer the same amount of storage space (unlimited), attachment size limit and have intuitive easy-to-use webmail interfaces. Having said that, you should probably get an AOL email address. In case of problems and difficulties, you can always take advice and help from friends who use this email service.

Also, POP3 and IMAP are provided for free by the service. This enables you to download AOL email to your computer. The advantage is that when the messages reside on your local hard disk, they would be available even without a live internet connection. Yahoo charges $20 annually for this and offers only POP3 (at the time of writing).

Get a free email at AOL

To get a free AOL email address all you need is a computer with a web browser program and an internet connection... not necessarily one provided by AOL. Below are step by step instructions with screenshots - please refer these when in doubt.

• Open a web browser program and go to the AOL home page - AOL home page
• If it doesn't look something like slide 1, no worries... simply locate the "Mail" image and click on it.
• This loads the email sign in page [Slide 2]. Click on the "Sign up for a FREE account" link which takes you to the online sign up form [Slide 3]. FYI, there is a "Get Free Email" link at the bottom of the AOL home page which would have taken you directly to the sign up page.
• By the way, if you see someone's AOL email account instead of the registration page, you need sign out first (the link is located below the AOL logo) and reload the page. If the form still doesn't show up delete the cache and the stored passwords or use a different browser program.
• Enter your first name, middle initials (if any) and the last name in the appropriate fields [Slide 4].
• In the next field, you need to enter a username for your prospective email address. The email address you'll get from AOL has the format USERNAME@aol.com. Since the part after the '@' sign doesn't change, the username is the only thing in the address that you can choose [Slide 5]
• Though the username can be anything you want, I suggest reading tips on how to get a nice username. Please understand that the AOL email service has millions of subscribers and you can only get a username when it's not in use by someone else. Once you enter your choice, AOL will check if it's available [Slide 6]. If this doesn't happen automatically, click on the "Check" button [Slide 7]. The service may also offer suggestions which, in my opinion, are quite useless. Spend some time with this and don't be disheartened if all your choices are unavailable. Numbers and characters like the period sign (.), the underscore character (_) are allowed in the AOL username.
• Once you get a AOL email username that fits the bill, rejoice! [Slide 8]
• Each email account needs to be secured with a password; you wouldn't like sharing personal messages and information, right? The password is like a security key of your account and, hence, should not be something others can guess in a few tries. Read how to make a strong password. Start typing in a password in the field [Slide 9] - the characters will be replaced by dots or asterisks. The strength bar will indicate how strong the password is.
• Enter the password once again in the next field [Slide 10]. Hit the "Next" button.

I cannot stress enough the importance of keeping your AOL email inbox safe and secure. Each day I get tons of messages from desperate users who cannot access their accounts because they have either forgotten the password or are unable to recover/reset this information. The next few fields of the AOL sign up form are very important and should not be taken lightly. They can help you regain access to your account in case of loss of password. Continue reading how to make a free AOL email.