Picking Up your Business and other E-mail.

There are two ways to pick up mail on our systems.

WEBMAIL
One is a product called webmail which installed on the server and allows you to check you mail from any Internet capable computer. Just use your domain address and append /webmail/ to it, e.g., http://yourbiz.com/webmail/ where yourbiz.com is the name of your domain. Make sure to include BOTH "/" characters. Webmail is not intended for heavy e-mail users. If you use e-mail heavily or deal with huge files, you need to pickup your mail with an "e-mail client."

General Information
There are several types of e-mail addresses. The most common for most of us is the POP3 and alias address. The POP3 uses a server e-mail program that requires use of a valid user name and password to pick up the e-mail. POP3 mail can only be accessed by a person who has access to the domain name e-mail, has a valid user name and the password that is associated with the given user name.

When you obtain a dial-in access, most ISP's give you a "family" POP3 address. If the name of the address is misspelled by someone attempting to contact you, the ISP will "bounce" the message back as unknown or some other error. Thus, mybusiness@2bonweb.com could be a valid address and mybusiness@officeonweb.com would be bounced as unknown. On a business server with POP3 main service, it operates differently. The address can be leased or defaulted. This ensures that e-mail to the business, a source of a potential sale or customer satisfaction, is not lost.

An e-mail alias is a name that refers back to a valid POP3 or other secure e-mail address. Aliases can be declared or defaulted. For a declaration example: if a Bill Morrison has the POP3 mail of bill@mybusiness.com on their domain mybusiness.com, a person can declare (specify) that bill@mybusiness.com, morrison@mybusiness.com, bmorrison@mybusiness.com and technician@mybusiness.com go to the POP3 mail address bill@mybusiness.com. These are aliases (sometimes these are called personalities). If the domain has the name ouroffice@mybusiness.com declared as its default user name, any mail to mybusiness.com not declared in an alias or special POP3 specification will "roll" to the default POP3 ouroffice@mybusiness.com. Thus, since the e-mail address billmorrison@mybusiness.com was not declared as a alternate POP3, or alias address, it would be picked up by the person that picks up the default mail. In this way, they can check and redirect the mail to the appropriate business associate. If it happens much, they can even declare a new alias so they won't be bothered with it.

To pick up e-mail you need an e-mail client that is compatible with the Internet standards. AOL's and CompuServe e-mail clients, among others are not compatible clients. They are proprietary and are designed to remove some of the difficulty of learning how to get on the Internet. While they are easy, they are also not very reliable as a business e-mail client. However, you can have these as your providers and still get standard POP3 e-mail from your domain. You just log on normally and then use an e-mail client program. These cost anything from free to about $50.

The most professional client is Eudora Pro from Qualcomm. The next best client is Outlook Express version 4 or 5 (free). Outlook (cost varies) is similar to Outlook Express. Eudora Light (free) is an excellent client too.

Outlook Express^TM

Outlook Express comes free with the Internet Explorer^TM Internet browser by Microsoft^TM. You cannot load it on your computer without loading the browser as a part of the setup process. It is a good mail client, allows multiple personalities, and accounts. You must declare the account as your default to respond as that account. Also, it defaults to using special Windows specific characters in the e-mail's you send. As a result, many of your clients will not see what you think they will see in message you send to them. Instructions on how to setup Outlook Express for your domain's POP mail account are available in our support site.

Outlook^TM

Outlook is similar, but is not as frequently updated as Outlook Express. Outlook is designed to closely tie itself to the Microsoft Office services of products, including data basing and other features. These complications means that it has much more complexity in it and it is more difficult for the programmers to update it as frequently. Its interaction with these other products make it a notably a powerful augmentation to the Office Package. Instructions on how to setup Outlook 97, Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002/2003 for your domain's POP mail account are available in our support site.

Eudora Pro^TM is a very professional e-mail client by Qualcomm. It comes with many free options and quality updates over the year or so are included. You must purchase it, but it is well worth it. It has many professional options and lets you know precisely what you are sending your client. You specify a default personality, as well as other accounts and personalities. Then hold down the shift key as you select an option to select a change from the default. You can also right client within the various areas of the message to change personality or other options. Signatures, backgrounds, and all the rest that you need to respond properly are available. It is the only e-mail client, at a reasonable cost that we know of, that has full multitasking of sending and receipt of the messages. This really speeds up the process for the user. This is the client most of us at OfficeOnWeb use. Instructions on how to setup Eudora Pro 3 and Eudora Pro 4 for your domain's POP mail account are available in our support site.

Eudora Light^TM is very similar to the Pro version but lacks much of the professional e-mail client features. It is also made by Qualcomm. It is an excellent product for the small business that does not use multiple accounts and personalities. Eudora Light is similar in setup to the Pro version and although it is free and is an excellent client, for a business, we recommend the Pro version

Netscape^TM has a similar product to the Outlook Express that you can get as a part of Netscape Communicator. You must select this download option however, or the download may not include the mail client. Instructions on how to setup Netscape Communicator and Netscape Navigator 3 Mail for your domain's POP mail account are available in our support site.

Mozilla^TM

Mozilla^TM is a really great new product that we think is going to change the browser market. One, it's FREE, two, it is free of the security issues of IE, three, it really allows you to enable security in visiting sites, four, it is a speed demon, five, it is customizable, six, it is easy. Instructions on how to setup for your domain's POP mail account are available on their support site. HIGHLY recommended.

AOL 5.0^TM and higher

AOL 5.0's and higher versions mail center comes bundled with the AOL package. There have been numerous problems reported with AOL 5.0 and higer versions "taking over" your computer when installed. Instructions on how to setup AOL 5.0 on your domain and still use other programs for e-mail and Internet access are available on our support site.