Web Hosting E-mail Services

Hosting services should include e-mail accounts and e-mail services.
E-mail Accounts

Hosting solutions should include e-mail accounts for each person in your company. E-mail addresses should appear something like this:

john@blogger.com
john.doe@blogger.com
jdoe@blogger.com
POP E-mail

POP stands for Post Office Protocol. POP is a standard client/server protocol for sending and receiving e-mail.


The e-mails are received and held on your internet server until you pick it up with a client e-mail program, like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.
IMAP Email

IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP is another standard protocol for sending and receiving e-mail.

The e-mails are received, and held on your internet server, until you pick it up with a client e-mail program, like Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird.

IMAP represents an improvement over POP because e-mail stored on an IMAP server can be manipulated from several computers (a computer at home, a workstation at the office, etc.), without having to transfer messages back and forth between computers. POP was designed to support e-mail access on one single computer.
Web-based E-mail

Web-based e-mail services enable you to access your e-mail via a web browser. You log into your e-mail account via the Web to send and retrieve e-mail. Being able to access your e-mail from any browser anywhere in the world is a very attractive option.

Examples of web-based e-mail services are Gmail and Hotmail.
E-mail Forwarding

E-mail forwarding allows you to have multiple e-mail personalities.

With e-mail forwarding, you can setup aliases for other e-mail accounts like:

postmaster@blogger.com should be forwarded to peter@blogger.com

sales@blogger.com should be forwarded to mary@blogger.com
Mailing Lists

Some service providers offer mailing list capabilities. This is valuable if you plan to send out e-mails to a large number of users.