Email servers and clients

Email servers and clients

Using email requires two things: an email server and an email client.

The email server is a piece of software that runs on the server (computer) and is constantly connected to the internet. It receives and processes any mail sent to it, and sends any mail you tell it to send.

The email client is the app you use to view your mail. This might be an app on your phone, something you view in a web browser, or a desktop application like Microsoft Outlook. The client checks the mail server for new messages, and stores them for viewing. It provides an interface for reading and writing messages. It sends outgoing messages to the server, which sends them to their intended recipients.

The server and the client are two different pieces of software, and they communicate using standardized protocols (POP and IMAP; see below). This means that the choice of server and choice of client are independent of each other.

People get confused about this all the time. One of the most often-heard reasons people have for not wanting to switch from their personal email addresses to organization-controlled email addresses is that they don’t want to have to change how they read and write email. They use Outlook, or Apple’s Email, and they think they will have to change. This is not the case.

Most email clients can connect to most email servers with no problem. Even better, most email clients can connect to multiple email servers and work with multiple email accounts at the same time. This means that someone who is using (for example) Outlook on their computer to check their personal email account can set it up to check their professional email as well.

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Email protocols: POP and IMAP

Email protocols: POP  and IMAP

The two dominant email protocols are POP andIMAP. (A protocol is a standardized way of moving information from one place to another.)

POP stands for “Post Office Protocol.” You will sometimes see it written as “POP3,” because the protocol is in its third iteration.

IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol.”

Both are ways of moving message information from servers to clients, but they are otherwise very different from each other.

POP is based on a “Post Office” model. The server delivers messages to you, but does not otherwise keep them or store status information about them. IMAP provides a high degree of syncing between the server and the client.

You really want to be using IMAP most of the time. With IMAP, the details of whether you have read a message, the content of drafts, and other information about your own interaction with mail is saved on the server. This means that your email experience is fully synced even if you use multiple devices, like your laptop and your phone, to read the same email.

When you are looking at web hosting plans, be sure to find one that supports IMAP in the email server.

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Email, Webmail, and Mail Servers

 Email, Webmail, and Mail Servers

More fundamental than running a website is the importance of reliable email service. You have a number of options in how you set up your own email service for your company. You’ll be better equipped to choose the right option for yourself if you understand a little bit about how it all works.

Email and domain names

As you almost certainly know, email addresses take the following form:

name@example.com

Everything before the @ sign is the local name, and everything after it is the domain name.

It is a very bad practice, and unfortunately much too common, for small organizations and sole practitioners to use a commercial email service with a domain name like @gmail.com or@aol.com. This is a bad practice because it looks unprofessional, amateurish.

It’s a very minor point, but it has a big impact on the way your clients and potential customers think about you.

In an organization, such as a small business or (more commonly) a small non-profit, the too-common practice of using personal email addresses can introduce legal and ethical problems as well, because of the inevitable mixing and confusion between personal and professional communication. Also, email addresses controlled by the organization can be turned off, blocked, forwarded to another address, or taken over by another user.

Email servers and clients

Using email requires two things: an email server and an email client.

The email server is a piece of software that runs on the server (computer) and is constantly connected to the internet. It receives and processes any mail sent to it, and sends any mail you tell it to send.

The email client is the app you use to view your mail. This might be an app on your phone, something you view in a web browser, or a desktop application like Microsoft Outlook. The client checks the mail server for new messages, and stores them for viewing. It provides an interface for reading and writing messages. It sends outgoing messages to the server, which sends them to their intended recipients.

The server and the client are two different pieces of software, and they communicate using standardized protocols (POP and IMAP; see below). This means that the choice of server and choice of client are independent of each other.

People get confused about this all the time. One of the most often-heard reasons people have for not wanting to switch from their personal email addresses to organization-controlled email addresses is that they don’t want to have to change how they read and write email. They use Outlook, or Apple’s Email, and they think they will have to change. This is not the case.

Most email clients can connect to most email servers with no problem. Even better, most email clients can connect to multiple email servers and work with multiple email accounts at the same time. This means that someone who is using (for example) Outlook on their computer to check their personal email account can set it up to check their professional email as well.

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Reading anything about SEO and web hosting

Reading anything about SEO and webhosting

(Except this, of course.)

SEO — Search Engine Optimization — is always a hot topic, and the people who are good at it are the ones you will find when you start searching for information about it on a search engine (funny how that works out). But a lot of the “SEO and Web hosting” content is barely accurate at best.

There are continuous claims that sharing an IP in a shared hosting plan is “bad for SEO.” (It mostly isn’t.) There are parallel claims that buying some hosting feature will improve SEO. (It mostly won’t.)

And even if there is a tiny improvement for some of these things (getting an HTTPS certificate is apparently beneficial), the difference will hardly matter unless you are in a highly competitive niche — and then you’d have to know about a thousand other things in addition to the rumor you heard about Google penalizing sites hosted in the Central Time Zone.

SEO basics are very simple: Create a lot of good content and encourage people to share and link to it. The most beneficial thing you can do from a hosting standpoint is to go for speed — both search engines and regular people prefer fast websites.

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