There are different kinds of email. The two main types that people use are web-based email and POP email. What kind of email do you use? Do you use Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, or GMail? That's web-based email, and you use a browser to look at it. However, some people use special software, like Outlook Express or Eudora to get their email. This is called POP email.
First of all, when email is sent, it is sent through email servers. Email servers are special computers that act like a kind of email post office (or perhaps like a mailbox). When you send email from your computer, it goes to your email server. The email server figures out where the email must go to, and sends it to the email server belonging to the person who receives the email. It waits there until the other person checks their email. This is true for both web-based and POP email.
So what's the difference between the two types? The difference is in what program you use to see the email. Let's look at web-based email first, because probably that's the type you use.
Web-based email always uses a browser, like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, or Safari. This is the program you use to look at web pages. To get your email, you will go to a web page for the email service, like www.hotmail.com. Usually, web-based email comes through a company like Microsoft (Hotmail), Yahoo (Yahoo Mail), or Google (GMail). They give you an email account, and a certain amount of disk space on their email servers.
There are good points and bad points to web-based email. One of the bad points is speed. Browsers are very slow for email. Every time you click on a button to go to a new page, to do an action, or to do a search, it takes several seconds for the web page to load. This can be inconvenient. Another bad point is that you have to always type in your user name and password, and if you forget your password, it can be difficult to get it back.
One of the good points is portability: you can see your email from any computer. With web-based email, your email is always kept on the email server. It is not downloaded to your computer. So you can change computers, log on to the web-based mail site, and still see your email.
Portability has bad points, too. Your email account has limited space, so it might fill up, and your account will stop working. You have to always delete old email to keep enough space open. However, some email services give you so much space that this is not a problem. For example, Google gives you 2.7 GB of space!
The other type of email is POP email. With this type, you don't use a browser. Instead, you use an email program (also called an "email client") like Outlook Express or Eudora. These programs can do things much faster than browsers, so you don't have to wait a long time every time you do an action.
Unlike the web-based email, POP email always downloads the email from the email server to your computer, and then it can erase the email from the server. This way, your email account never fills up. (However, you have a choice: you can tell your email client to leave a copy of your email on the server after you download it. That allows you to check your mail from many different locations, but your account could fill up and stop working.)
With POP email, all the email messages and attachments are on your computer, which has more than enough space to hold it all. You can keep mail for years and years, and search for messages quickly and easily. I use Eudora, and I have all of my email from 1998 and even earlier!
One bad point, however, is that POP email has to be on a special computer; it does not have good "portability." You cannot easily check your POP email on a friend's computer, or a school computer.
One good point is that the email client can be open all the time, and can automatically check your email as often as you like. You can set the email client so it will make a sound if there is new email.
Another good point is that a POP email client can check many email accounts at the same time. With web-based email, you can only look at one account (one email address) at one time. But if you have 10 POP email accounts, your email client can check all of them, all the time. The email client is more powerful and more flexible.
When you get Internet service at home, your ISP (Internet Service Provider, the company that sells you the connection) will give you a free POP email account. If you buy a domain and make your own web site, you can usually make as many POP email accounts as you like.
Sometimes you can have a combination of both types. GMail, for example, allows you to use a browser to check your email (web-based). However, GMail also allows you to use a POP email client to check the same account. If you set your email client to leave a copy of the email on the server, then you can have the best of both worlds: portable web-based email, and fast & powerful POP email, in one account.
If you use a POP email client like Eudora or Outlook, you will have to set up each account you use. This requires at least five pieces of information:
- your email address
- your user name (usually the same as the email address)
- your password
- the POP email server address (for example, "pop.gmail.com"). This is the "incoming" server address.
- the SMTP email server address (often the same as the POP server, but sometimes not). This is the "outgoing" server address.
Different email client programs have different ways to enter this information; usually, when you get your email account, there will be a special page that teaches you how to set up any POP email client for the account. You might also have to change a few settings on the email client, depending on the service.
