Even though instant messaging apps like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have gotten immensely popular, Email still remains the preferred choice when it comes to proper communication. And when it comes to email services, Gmail is undoubtedly the most popular out there.Gmail offers numerous features such as smart search, label support, tight integration with other Google services like Drive and Hangouts, as well as a large amount of storage. But as powerful as it is, Gmail is not the only email service out there. In fact, there are quite a few email service providers that are almost equally (or at times, even more) feature-laden as Gmail.Interested to know more? Here are 9 hot Gmail alternatives that we think are definitely worth trying out.If you're heavily invested in the Microsoft ecosystem, Outlook.com is a no brainer. It is granularly integrated with other Microsoft products such as OneDrive and Office Online and thus, provides a seamless experience. It comes with advanced calendar, tasks and contacts sub-modules for easy management of your daily workflow.Outlook.com also has features like Sweep, Pin, Aliases and built-in Chat that help in better collaboration and organization of email. It can automatically sort email based on user-specified parameters. The availability of apps across all platforms ensures that you can manage your email effectively regardless of the OS you use. There's unlimited storage as well.Although Zoho has quite a few features, what makes it stand out from the rest is that the email service doesn't display any ads in the interface at all, not even in the free account. It provides a minimalistic user interface with multiple layouts that let you configure the display as per your preferences.Zoho mail fully supports all modern email protocols such as IMAP and Exchange ActiveSync. It even comes with a full-blown online productivity suite that can be used to create/edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It was co-founded by India-based Sridhar Vembu.At the free level, Zoho provides 5GB of email storage and 5GB of document storage space. These can be easily upgraded through one of the paid plans.While its name might seem a little unfamiliar, the fact is that Yandex mail is backed by its namesake company, which operates the largest search engine in Russia. The service provides 10GB of free email space. Interestingly, the company claims that the email storage automatically increases by 1GB everytime the free space falls below 200MB.Among the many features of Yandex mail are the ability to group messages into conversations, labels, file preview/playback support and antivirus scanning for incoming messages. It also supports email protocols such as POP and IMAP. Oh, and creating a free account also gives you access to the companion Yandex Disk cloud storage service, which offers 10GB of free cloud storage.Another popular email service coming from Russia, Mail.ru is backed by its namesake internet company, which operates numerous other websites that are claimed to have the largest audience in Russia. The email service itself is pretty feature laden, with everything from folders to rule-based message sorting to themes included in the package.Mail.ru supports popular email formats and can pull emails from other email services like Gmail as well, making transition even simpler. Its companion cloud storage service provides 25GB of free cloud storage space, and companion apps exist on all major platforms. Some other important features of Mail.ru include two factor authentication, multiple aliases and calendar support.If you're looking for a secure email service, ProtonMail is arguably one of the best you can find. Created by scientists and researchers from institutions as renowned as MIT and CERN, ProtonMail is an encrypted email service that's hosted in Switzerland, which has strict privacy laws.It features end-to-end encryption and is based on open-source code. ProtonMail achieves bi-layered security by associating not one, but two passwords with user accounts - one for logging in and another for encrypting/decrypting the email contents. Its mobile apps are available on iOS and Android as well.Want a secure email service that does the basics right without becoming too complicated? Tutanota might just be what you need. All of the emails sent or received between Tutanota email addresses are end-to-end encrypted, and those sent to regular email addresses can be optionally encrypted with user specified passwords.Even the email subject and attachments are encrypted. Tutanota is open-source and thus enables security experts to fully verify the code that's used to protect email messages. Tutanota has native apps available on both iOS and Android, and is based in Germany.Scryptmail is another really good secure email service that features end-to-end encryption. It doesn't store any data (not even metadata) on its servers. Its code can be verified by anyone and no third party scripts are allowed. The company claims that all communication is secured with a user-specified passphrase that stays on the source machine only.It comes with strong HTTPS encryption and is fully compatible with standard protocols to exchange public encryption keys among users. Regular messages sent to common email services can be encrypted using PIN codes. You can create disposable email accounts as well.Vivaldi mail comes from its namesake Vivaldi Technologies, a company founded by Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, who also happens to be the co-founder and former CEO of Opera Software (yep, the developer of popular Opera browser).What's interesting about Vivaldi is that it has a really clean and minimal user interface, devoid of extra things like chat, ads or anything like that. The contacts sub-module lets you easily manage all your contacts, and there's a calendar sub-module for managing appointments included in the mix too. You can also manually create and manage folders.Do you use one or more Apple devices (eg iPhone, iPad) on a regular basis, iCloud mail is definitely worth giving a shot. It comes with companion Apple services such as Contacts, Calendar, iCloud drive and of course, iWork suite of web-based productivity applications.An advantage of iCloud mail is that it doesn't contain any ads in the interface and is quite minimal. However, there are some disadvantages too. iCloud is quite bare bones and doesn't have many advanced features. Moreover, you need to have your iCloud email account set up on an Apple device in order to access it on web.