There are none that compete on a direct level. I use Gmail for free email myself. That said, we've seen that better is possible. MobileMe set the current stand

There are none that compete on a direct level. I use Gmail for free email myself. That said, we've seen that better is possible. MobileMe set the current standard, though Yahoo! has done some pretty excellent things (though they rarely DEclutter) on occasion. I think that something that worked like Gmail, looked like MobileMe, would be the best solution. Something ridiculously streamlined, with powerful built-in search and threaded messages.