Webmail and Email Client

When new to the internet, the difference between web mail and email clients can be confusing to a
person. You may have been shown how to use one way but don’t know how to use the other. We’ll
explain here the difference between web mail and email clients. Both web mail and email clients use the
internet to read and send mail. What may be confusing is how each of these work.

When someone sends you an email it is stored on a email server. The email server can belong to a
company that offers web based email accounts, your ISP provider or your web hosting provider. How
you “pick up” your email will depend on what type of email account you have. If you are only using web
mail, then the emails that you don’t delete are stored on the email server. With an email client the
emails are stored on your computer.

Web Mail
With web mail, you read or send email through your browser and the web mail interface. Some
examples of web mail are: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, The web mail service provided with your web
hosting, The web mail service provided with your ISP (Internet Service Provider) account accessing Web
Mail. When you access a web mail account you use your browser. You will be given a web address to
access your web mail. Next, you will need to login. This requires your user name and password. Enter
your id and password, then left click, Sign in. If there is an option to remember your login information,
avoid this, particularly if you are using a public computer. The login information is saved to a cookie on
the machine. The next person who uses the computer will have access to your web based email account
if you use the Remember me feature. Once logged in, you can now read the emails sent to your web
based email acount and send emails from this email address.

A lot of people who have been taught to use web based email find using an email client intimidating, but
really, it’s easier than using web based email. If you are running a business and only know how to use
web based mail, it would be a good idea to learn how to use an email client on your computer. This way
you could back up the emails from the computer for safe keeping, should your web based email’s server
goes down and looses all those important emails.

Email Client
An email client is a piece of software on your computer that you use to read and send emails from your
computer. The advantage of using an email client is that the emails are stored on your computer and are
accessible faster than using a web based email interface. Also, with an email client you can read the
messages you already received without being connected to the internet (a cost savings if you are on dial
up). You can also compose email while offline. Once connected again to the Internet, the emails can be
sent.
There are various email client programs available. Some of the more common email clients are:
Outlook Express – This comes with Windows for free.
Outlook – part of the Microsoft Office collection of programs
Thunderbird – comes with the Firefox browser
Contact management software – may use Outlook Express to send email from the contact management
software

Mail Protocols
SMTP, POP3 and IMAP are TCP/IP protocols used for mail delivery. If you plan to set up an email server
such as hMailServer, you must know what they are used for. Each protocol is just a specific set of
communication rules between computers.
SMTP
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. SMTP is used when email is delivered from an email
client, such as Outlook Express, to an email server or when email is delivered from one email server to
another. By default, the SMTP protocol works on three ports:
Port 25 - this is the default SMTP non-encrypted port
Port 2525 - this port is opened on all SiteGround servers in case port 25 is filtered (by your ISP for
example) and you want to send non-encrypted emails with SMTP
Port 465 - this is the port used, if you want to send messages using SMTP securely
POP3
Post Office Protocol version 3 (POP3) is a standard mail protocol used to receive emails from a remote
server to a local email client. POP3 allows you to download email messages on your local computer and
read them even when you are offline. Note, that when you use POP3 to connect to your email account,
messages are downloaded locally and removed from the servers. This means that if you access your
account from multiple locations, that may not be the best option for you. On the other hand, if you use
POP3, your messages are stored on your local computer, which reduces the space your email account
uses on your web server.
By default, the POP3 protocol works on two ports:
Port 110 - this is the default POP3 non-encrypted port
Port 995 - this is the port you need to use if you want to connect using POP3 securely
IMAP
IMAP stands for Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP shares many similar features with POP3. It,
too, is a protocol that an email client can use to download email from an email server. However, IMAP
includes many more features than POP3. The IMAP protocol is designed to let users keep their email on
the server. IMAP requires more disk space on the server and more CPU resources than POP3, as all
emails are stored on the server. This is why IMAP is more suitable for you if you're going to access your
email from different locations or if your messages are managed by multiple users.
By default, the IMAP protocol works on two ports:
Port 143 - this is the default IMAP non-encrypted port
Port 993 - this is the port you need to use if you want to connect using IMAP securely

Examples
Suppose you use hMailServer as your email server to send an email to bill@microsoft.com.
You click Send in your email client, say, Outlook Express.
Outlook Express delivers the email to hMailServer using the SMTP protocol.
hMailServer delivers the email to Microsoft's mail server, mail.microsoft.com, using SMTP.
Bill's Mozilla Mail client downloads the email from mail.microsoft.com to his laptop using the POP3
protocol (or IMAP).

Mail Server
A mail server (sometimes also referred to an e-mail server) is a server that handles and delivers e-mail
over a network, usually over the Internet. A mail server can receive e-mails from client computers and
deliver them to other mail servers. A mail server can also deliver e-mails to client computers. A client
computer is normally the computer where you read your e-mails, for example your computer at home
or in your office. Also an advanced mobile phone or Smartphone, with e-mail capabilities, can be
regarded as a client computer in these circumstances.
The Real E-mail System
For the vast majority of people right now, the real e-mail system consists of two different servers
running on a server machine. One is called the SMTP server, where SMTP stands for Simple Mail
Transfer Protocol. The SMTP server handles outgoing mail. The other is either a POP3 server or an IMAP
server, both of which handle incoming mail. POP stands for Post Office Protocol, and IMAP stands for
Internet Mail Access Protocol. A typical e-mail server looks like this:
The SMTP server listens on well-known port number 25, POP3 listens on port 110 and IMAP uses port
143.

The SMTP Server

Whenever you send a piece of e-mail, your e-mail client interacts with the SMTP server to handle the
sending. The SMTP server on your host may have conversations with other SMTP servers to deliver the
e-mail.
Let's assume that I want to send a piece of e-mail. My e-mail ID is brain, and I have my account on
howstuffworks.com. I want to send e-mail to jsmith@mindspring.com. I am using a stand-alone e-mail
client like Outlook Express.
When I set up my account at howstuffworks, I told Outlook Express the name of the mail server --
mail.howstuffworks.com. When I compose a message and press the Send button, here's what happens:
Outlook Express connects to the SMTP server at mail.howstuffworks.com using port 25.
Outlook Express has a conversation with the SMTP server, telling the SMTP server the address of the
sender and the address of the recipient, as well as the body of the message.
The SMTP server takes the "to" address (jsmith@mindspring.com) and breaks it into two parts: the
recipient name (jsmith) and the domain name (mindspring.com). If the "to" address had been another
user at howstuffworks.com, the SMTP server would simply hand the message to the POP3 server for
howstuffworks.com (using a little program called the delivery agent). Since the recipient is at another
domain, SMTP needs to communicate with that domain.
The SMTP server has a conversation with a Domain Name Server, or DNS. It says, "Can you give me the
IP address of the SMTP server for mindspring.com?" The DNS replies with the one or more IP addresses
for the SMTP server(s) that Mindspring operates.
The SMTP server at howstuffworks.com connects with the SMTP server at Mindspring using port 25. It
has the same simple text conversation that my e-mail client had with the SMTP server for
HowStuffWorks, and gives the message to the Mindspring server. The Mindspring server recognizes that
the domain name for jsmith is at Mindspring, so it hands the message to Mindspring's POP3 server,
which puts the message in jsmith's mailbox.
If, for some reason, the SMTP server at HowStuffWorks cannot connect with the SMTP server at
Mindspring, then the message goes into a queue. The SMTP server on most machines uses a program
called sendmail to do the actual sending, so this queue is called the sendmail queue. Sendmail will
periodically try to resend the messages in its queue. For example, it might retry every 15 minutes. After
four hours, it will usually send you a piece of mail that tells you there is some sort of problem. After five
days, most sendmail configurations give up and return the mail to you undelivered.
The SMTP server understands very simple text commands like HELO, MAIL, RCPT and DATA.

The POP3 and IMAP Servers

In the simplest implementations of POP3, the server really does maintain a collection of text files -- one
for each e-mail account. When a message arrives, the POP3 server simply appends it to the bottom of
the recipient's file.
When you check your e-mail, your e-mail client connects to the POP3 server using port 110. The POP3
server requires an account name and a password. Once you've logged in, the POP3 server opens your
text file and allows you to access it. Like the SMTP server, the POP3 server understands a very simple set
of text commands. Here are the most common commands like USER, PASS, QUIT, TOP, RETR, LIST, DELE.
Your e-mail client connects to the POP3 server and issues a series of commands to bring copies of your
e-mail messages to your local machine. Generally, it will then delete the messages from the server
(unless you've told the e-mail client not to).
You can see that the POP3 server simply acts as an interface between the e-mail client and the text file
containing your messages. And again, you can see that the POP3 server is extremely simple. You can
connect to it through telnet at port 110 and issue the commands yourself if you would like to.

POP Workflow:
Connect to server
Retrieve all mail
Store locally as new mail
Delete mail from server*
Disconnect
*The default behavior of POP is to delete mail from the server. However, most POP clients also provide
an option to leave a copy of downloaded mail on the server.

The IMAP Server

As you can see, the POP3 protocol is very simple. It allows you to have a collection of messages stored in
a text file on the server. Your e-mail client (e.g. Outlook Express) can connect to your POP3 e-mail server
and download the messages from the POP3 text file onto your PC. That is about all that you can do with
POP3.
Many users want to do far more than that with their e-mail, and they want their e-mail to remain on the
server. The main reason for keeping your e-mail on the server is to allow users to connect from a variety
of machines. With POP3, once you download your e-mail it's stuck on the machine to which you
downloaded it. If you want to read your e-mail both on your desktop machine and your laptop
(depending on whether you're working in the office or on the road), POP3 makes life difficult.
IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) is a more advanced protocol that solves these problems. With
IMAP, your mail stays on the e-mail server. You can organize your mail into folders, and all the folders
live on the server as well. When you search your e-mail, the search occurs on the server machine, rather
than on your machine. This approach makes it extremely easy for you to access your e-mail from any
machine, and regardless of which machine you use, you have access to all of your mail in all of your
folders.

IMAP Workflow:
Connect to server
Fetch user requested content and cache it locally, e.g. list of new mail, message summaries, or content
of explicitly selected emails
Process user edits, e.g. marking email as read, deleting email etc.
Disconnect

IMAP Problems
Your e-mail client connects to the IMAP server using port 143. The e-mail client then issues a set of text
commands that allow it to do things like list all the folders on the server, list all the message headers in a
folder, get a specific e-mail message from the server, delete messages on the server or search through
all of the e-mails on the server.
One problem that can arise with IMAP involves this simple question: "If all of my e-mail is stored on the
server, then how can I read my mail if I'm not connected to the Internet?" To solve this problem, most e-
mail clients have some way to cache e-mail on their local machine. For example, the client will download
all the messages and store their complete contents on the local machine (just like it would if it were
talking to a POP3 server). The messages still exist on the IMAP server, but you now have copies on your
machine. This allows you to read and reply to e-mail even if you have no connection to the Internet. The
next time you establish a connection, you download all the new messages you received while
disconnected and send all the mail that you wrote while disconnected.