Web Mail vs. Email Clients

There are basically two different ways to access your email: use a browser to access your email (WebMail) or use a PC based email client. Outlook, Outlook Express, and Thunderbird are examples of PC based email clients.

When you receive an email from someone, it arrives at the email server responsible for accepting and storing email addressed to your domain. Being somewhat similar to the way ground mail arrives at a post office, the email message sits on the email server until you tell it what to do with the message.

When you use PC based email software, the message is downloaded and saved to your PC. The email server then deletes the message once you have saved it locally (you can, of course, setup your PC email software defaults to instruct the email server not to delete the message when you download it). Deleting the messages from the server prevents your email account from exceeding its quota (and possibly having your email account shut down until you remove the messages).

Using WebMail to view your email does not download the messages to your PC. Instead, you are using an email program on the server designed for viewing, replying, deleting, and sending email directly from the mail server. WebMail is not designed to be a place for saving or storing email for long periods of time.

Once an email is sent to you, think of your email server as simply a post office, receiving the email addressed to your domain. Just like you must go to the post office to pick up your mail, you must login to your email server to pick up your email.

• You can use a PC email client to download your email to your PC (removing it from the email server).
• You can use WebMail to login and manage your email (you must manually remove it from the email server by deleting messages).

Which approach do you prefer? It is really a matter of taste but most people prefer to use a PC based email client such as Outlook to download and save their email. Also, a PC based email client will run faster than Webmail. However, if you spend a lot of time on the road, WebMail gives you easy access to your email wherever you might be.