Bancomail has analyzed millions of e-mail accounts highlighting, among the many insights, how as many as 70% of Italian professionals still prefer free domains over paid ones. Use a free email address (such as Gmail.com, Libero.it, Tiscali.it etc…) or buy an email domain suitable for your brand? It is in fact one of the first questions that a professional, or a small SME, asks himself before officially starting his own business. And it is curious to discover that, to date, the majority of Italians still prefer free emails to domain ones, which, especially in a working context, can appear more professional. The research, which analyzed over 3,500,000 email addresses from all over the world, also discovered important differences between countries.
Italy and the rest of Europe
Countries such as Germany and Austria lead the way in Europe in the percentage of domain emails purchased followed by Spain (61%), French-speaking European countries such as France and Belgium (47%). Finally Italy, also at 47%. It is interesting to note how – in the use of free email – often there is not even a website accompanying the activity. In Italy this occurs in 41% of cases, in French-speaking European countries in 42%, in Spain in 25% of cases. While in German-speaking European countries only in 9% of cases.
Email and working contexts
Italy is in first place for professionals who only use free email (70%). French-speaking European countries follow, with 58%, Spain with 41%, and German-speaking European countries with 24% use of free emails. With regard to corporate realities, however, this time the French-speaking European countries boast the highest percentage (52%), followed by Italy (49%), Spain (39%) and finally by the German-speaking European countries (20%).
Free domains are better
Alice Vezzoso of Bancomail. “We can state that the adoption of free emails does not varia significantly between the corporate sphere and that of freelancers. Except for Italy where 70% of professionals prefer the use of free emails to domain emails”.
Gmail wins in Italy and Spain
Among the free domains preferred by Italians, the primacy goes to Gmail.com with 34.2%. Then follow Libero.it (21.2%), Tiscali.it (7.8%), Alice.it (7.0%), Virgilio.it (5.9%), Tin.it (5.9% ), Hotmail.it (4.8%), Yahoo.it (4.4%), Hotmail.com (2.6%) and Fastwebnet.it (1.3%). For the German area, however, the most used free-mail provider is T-online.de (36.2%) in spite of Gmail which accounts for only 6%. In Spain, as well as in Italy, Gmail stands out the most among the others (44.8%), closely followed by Hotmail (33.9%) and Yahoo.es (7.9%). In the French area, Orange (which also owns the Wanadoo.fr domain) confirms its supremacy, with a total of more than 50%.
Preference for free domains: consider the context of each country
Andrea Mazzeo, Chief Executive Officer of Bancomail
Data like this is interesting. In fact, they make it possible to photograph the behavior of European business users and to formulate deductions on the computerization of the sector. At the same time they highlight the differences between the nations involved. Obviously, the various factors affecting the differences must be considered in the deductions, such as for example the different composition of the sector. In Italy, for example, the importance of micro-enterprises and the retail sector must be taken into considerationThe motivations and causes of the choice to maintain or prefer free email can be different. The great functionality of suites that allow you to manage mail, calendar, documents, etc with a single account; the growing use of social pages as the main web presence. And then the difficulty of finding IT suppliers capable of providing functional solutions. In recent times of crisis, in fact, there are many companies that have “appeared” on the web in a “hasty” manner, mainly driven by the need to find new ways to marketing of their products or services.