The different types of email - All email is not the same
Email is short for Electronic Mail and is defined as “a method of exchanging digital messages, designed primarily for human use”.
There are a few different types of an email account, and choosing the right one for you and your business is vital in making sure that you never miss that vital email and your hosting costs are appropriate.
A few points to note:
- Different hosting packages allow for a different number of email accounts to be attached to them.
- You can have any combination of different email types within your hosting account.
- Some email types are free as part of your hosting package, and some will incur an additional charge.
The Different Types of Email Accounts
Standard Mailbox (POP3)
This is usually the standard and default mailbox that you will be provided with. A standard POP3 mailbox allows you to send and receive emails in the traditional fashion.
You'll get 20Mb of storage by default and be able to store up to 500 emails. Emails you receive sit on our servers waiting for you to download them to your computer. When you download them, they are MOVED from our servers and are then just available on your local computer.
You MUST DOWNLOAD emails from a standard POP3 mailbox to your computer often as the mailbox can become full quite quickly, especially if you receive many emails or large emails with attachments. If the mailbox does become full, further emails will NOT be received and will be returned to the sender as undeliverable.
The good points
- Accounts are usually included for free
- Nice and easy to set up
- No special software needed
The not-so-good points
- Emails only available in ONE place
- Limited email account size
- Limited quota for emails
Note: Once you exceed your quota of 100Mb or 500 emails waiting for you on our email servers, you may no longer be able to receive emails. If this is often the case, we recommend you upgrade your email accounts to an advanced email mailbox. There is a maximum size of around 15Mb for individual emails and their attachments
Advanced Mailbox (IMAP)
If you are using a smartphone, Blackberries™, iPhones™, iPads™ or other mobile devices to pick up your email, we strongly suggest that you upgrade your email accounts to use an IMAP mailbox. This is the best solution if you are not sat at your desk on most days and want the flexibility of having your email available from wherever you are.
IMAP advanced mailboxes come with 1Gb of storage as standard and are specifically suited to managing lots of email and are tailored to work with both desktop computers and mobile devices.
Our advanced mailboxes allow for multiple devices to log into the same account at the same time so that you can see all of your emails wherever you are. Your emails live on our servers, so you log in to the server to see your emails.
We'll also allow you to use our outgoing mail servers to send email rather than using the server of your ISP.
Note: There is a maximum size of around 15Mb for individual emails and their attachments
The good points
- Emails available in MANY places
- Bigger email storage system
- Email on multiple devices
The not-so-good points
- A little harder to set up
- Will cost you extra per account
- May need some extra software
So, Which Email Type is Best for You?
As a general rule of thumb:
- POP is best if you only use one computer to check your mailbox and do this every day or so
- IMAP is best if multiple computers check the same mailbox or if you use a mobile device as well
Clarke Design is always happy to talk further about which email type is best for you.
Other Email Features
Email Forwarder: Forwards on an email to another mailbox (either locally or externally). For example, chairman@yourdomain.co.uk forwards on to the current chair. When the chair changes, change the forwarder. No need to tell everyone, they just keep sending to chairman@ — simple.
IMPORTANT: Please note that when forwarding mail to external email addresses, you run the risk of additional delays or the email bouncing.
Third party mail platforms, especially free services such as Hotmail and Yahoo, treat forwarded emails with a degree of suspicion, especially if the forwarded email is actually spam. They then treat our email servers as they would a spammer, which can more often than not delay the message from being delivered.
We are powerless to assist where delays of this nature occur. As such, we recommend you forward mail to local POP3 mailboxes on our platform.
Auto Responder: Allows an automated reply to be sent to the originator of an email. Can be used as a 'thank you' to those who email you to a specific address.
Group Account: Allows for a single email to be sent to a specific group of recipients. committee@yourdomain.co.uk could send the email automatically to many other different mailboxes. As the committee changes, it changes the distribution of the emails and different people will receive the committee emails.
Catch All: A special mailbox that catches all other emails not addressed to a specific mailbox. This can help to ensure that you get all of your emails, even if someone types in your email prefix incorrectly. This can, however, vastly increase the amount of SPAM email you may get, and you will receive every email you are ever sent.