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Email account guides

11 guides covering account setup, verification and recovery across Gmail, Outlook and the providers worth comparing them against. Each one answers a single question properly.

By the EuroSciCon Guides team✓ Checked against the live interfaceUpdated

Start here

Plain-English guides to email accounts and the problems that come with them. Every guide covers one question properly rather than ten briefly, and each is dated so you can see how fresh it is.

  • Setting up an account? Start with the provider comparison, then the walkthrough for whichever you pick.
  • Blocked by a phone-number prompt? That is conditional on Gmail and avoidable entirely on several other providers.
  • Locked out? Recovery forms are scored rather than verified, which changes what you should do.
Three things almost nobody is told up front
  • Gmail's 15 GB is not 15 GB of email. It is shared with Drive and Photos, and Photos usually consumes it first.
  • Outlook's 15 GB is mail alone, with a separate 5 GB for files. That is the biggest practical difference between the two.
  • Recovery forms score your whole submission, including the device you use. Correct answers from the wrong laptop lose to vague answers from the right one.

Gmail & Google

Google accounts fail in specific ways, and most of them come down to two things: storage is shared across three services, and verification is decided per sign-up rather than by a fixed rule.

Free Gmail account: what you getFree permanently, but the 15 GB is shared with Drive and Photos rather than reserved for mail. The sending limits, and what the “account with password” listings sell. How to create a Gmail accountThe full walkthrough, plus the three decisions inside it that are effectively permanent. Without a phone numberWhy Google asks some people and not others, which workarounds do anything, and what to do when it insists. Gmail account recoveryWhy the form rejects correct answers, the four routes that skip it, and when there is genuinely no way back. A second Gmail accountGoogle has no aliases. The two built-in tricks that may cover it, and how to run two accounts properly.

Outlook & Hotmail

Hotmail, Outlook.com, Live and MSN are one system, so a guide for any of them applies to all four. The free storage works differently from Gmail in a way that matters.

Create a Hotmail or Outlook accountWhy new sign-ups no longer get @hotmail.com, and why Microsoft no longer wants your phone number. Free Hotmail account: what you getTwo separate allowances rather than one, which is why Outlook mailboxes rarely fill up. A second account, or an alias?Two options that look identical and behave completely differently. One shares your password; the other does not.

Any provider

Some problems are not specific to one company. These compare providers directly so you can choose on the facts.

Free email account: which to chooseThey are all free. What differs is storage, privacy and whether you get asked for a phone number. Email without a phone numberEight providers compared. Which genuinely never ask, and what you give up by skipping it. Email account recoveryWhy scored recovery forms reject correct answers, and what actually raises your score.

What these guides cannot do

Worth being direct about, because the search results for account problems are full of people implying otherwise.

  • We cannot recover your account. Nobody outside the provider can. Any service offering to for a fee is a scam.
  • We cannot tell you why a specific account was locked. Providers do not publish that, and anyone claiming to know is guessing.
  • We cannot bypass verification. No method does, and the ones circulating make things worse.

What these guides do is explain how the systems behave, so the time you spend goes on the things that actually change the outcome.

Frequently asked questions

Which free email provider gives the most storage?
Outlook.com in practical terms. Its 15 GB is reserved for mail alone, with a separate 5 GB for cloud files. Gmail's headline figure is also 15 GB but it is shared across mail, Drive and Photos, so a phone backing up photos can consume it and cause incoming mail to bounce.
Do I have to give a phone number to create an email account?
Not always. Tuta, Proton Mail, GMX and mail.com do not ask on their free tiers, and Outlook.com accepts an alternate email address instead. Gmail asks only sometimes, based on signals it does not publish, and no setting disables the prompt.
Why do email recovery forms reject correct answers?
Because they are scored rather than verified. Your answers are one input; the device, browser, network and location the request comes from are weighted heavily too. A correct submission from an unfamiliar machine can score lower than a vague one from the computer that used the account for years.
Are these guides affiliated with Google or Microsoft?
No. They are independently written and not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any email provider. Every guide is checked against the provider's live interface before publishing and dated so you can judge how current it is.

Why you can trust this guide

  • Independently written. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any email provider.
  • No credentials collected. Always sign in on any email provider's own pages, never through a third party.
  • Checked against the live interface before publishing, and re-checked when it changes.
  • Last reviewed: .