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@mycompany.com

john.doe@mycompany.com

jdoe@mycompany.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@mycompany.com should be forwarded to peter@mycompany.com

sales@mycompany.com should be forwarded to mary@mycompany.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.