Email Terms

With more and more businesses making use of computer based technologies to increase productivity and reduce costs. We realise that large numbers of smaller businesses do not neccesarily see the benefits that using email can bring.

What is E-mail?

A method of passing messages from one computer user to another electronically, typically over computer networks or the internet. Today most large business organisations do much of their internal mail electronically saving time and allowing messages to be prioritised to aid workflow.

E-mail has a number of advantages, the use of attachments which allow one member of staff to add a file from their computer or elsewhere to the message, multiple recipients meaning a single message can be sent to any number of individuals and cost reduction as there is no need for any form of paper based internal mail.

What is E-mail forwarding?

Provided as part of our hosting service, E-mail forwarding allows unlimited E-mail addresses on your domain name to be sent to a single existing E-mail address be that provided by your own ISP or a webmail service such as Hotmail.

For example:

• info@yourdomain.co.uk
• enquiries@yourdomain.co.uk
• tech-help@yourdomain.co.uk

Can all be sent to: exampleUser@hotmail.com

There are some distinct advantages of using E-mail addresses in this way:

• Professional appearance (info@yourdomain.co.uk looks better than yorname@hotmail.com)
• All contacts are based around your domain name and therefore help to reinforce your brand identity.
• Multiple addresses are sent to a single E-mail account providing centralised access to all enquiries etc.
• Simple transfer of E-mails should you change your ISP or webmail address, our team are just a phonecall away and will update your E-mail forwarding to point to your new E-mail address as soon as possible. Potential cost saving as literature, brochures and business cards etc. will not have to be reprinted should your E-mail address change.

What is webmail?

Allows you to access an E-mail address through a standard web browser interface (like Internet Explorer or Firefox) often has most of the functionality of a full E-mail client but usually has restrictions on the amount of storage available and the maximum size of an E-mail and its attachements. Probably the most popular webmail service is Hotmail provided by Microsoft with over ten million users in the UK alone.

What is POP3?

A: The Post Office Protocol 3 is a client/server protocol in which E-mail is received and held on a webserver until you decide to check it. When you choose to receive your mail, your E-mail client contacts the correct server using a personal secure login and downloads the content of your inbox.

What is IMAP?

Stands for Internet Message Access Protocol and works in much the same way as POP3 E-mail systems but has more functionality for accessing messages directly from the server.

What is SMTP?

Stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol and is is used by most E-mail systems to send mail between servers over the internet. SMTP is also used to send messages from a mail client to the mail server, this is why you need to specify an SMTP server when configuring your E-mail client.