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An email hosting service is an Internet hosting service that operates email servers.
Email hosting services usually offer premium email as opposed to advertisement-supported free email or free webmail. Email hosting services thus differ from typical end-user email providers such as webmail sites. They cater mostly to demanding email users and small and medium-sized (SME) businesses, while larger enterprises usually run their own email hosting services on their own equipment using software such as Microsoft Exchange Server, IceWarp, Zoho or Postfix. Hosting providers can manage a user's own domain name, including any email authentication scheme that the domain owner wishes to enforce to convey the meaning that using a specific domain name identifies and qualifies email senders.
There are various types of email hosting services. These vary according to the storage space available, location of the mail boxes and functionality.
Various hosting providers offer this service through two models. A traditional email hosting or per mailbox hosting. Traditional email hosting charges a set amount for a certain number of mail boxes whereas the per mail box model charges per mail box needed.
These include:
Free Email Services using a public domain such as Gmail; Yahoo. These are more suitable for individual and personal use.
Shared Hosting Email Services are large mailboxes that are hosted on a server. People on a shared hosting email service share IP addresses as they are hosted on the same server.
Cloud Email Services are suitable for small companies and SMEs. These mailboxes are hosted externally utilizing a cloud service provider. Examples of these are Gsuite by Gmail and Microsoft Exchange Emails by Microsoft.
Enterprise Email Solutions are suitable for SMEs and large corporations that host several mailboxes. In some cases these are located on dedicated servers on the premises however they can be located on a cloud based server that can scale horizontally.
Most email hosting providers offer advanced premium email solutions hosted on dedicated custom email platforms. The technology and offerings of different email hosting providers can, therefore, vary with different needs. The email offered by most web hosting companies is usually more basic standardized POP3-based email and webmail based on open source webmail applications like Horde, RoundCube, or SquirrelMail. Almost all web hosting providers offer standard email hosting.
Email hosting services come in a variety of forms. These differ depending on the available storage space, the location of the mailboxes, and the functioning. Different email hosting servers provide tremendous benefits to businesses and ensure that communication channels are safe and secure. Various hosting companies offer this service in two different ways. Traditional email hosting or mailbox-by-mailbox hosting are also options. The per mailbox approach charges only the user mailboxes, unlike traditional email hosting, which charges a fixed rate for a predetermined amount of mailboxes. Among them are:
Electronic mail is a method of transmitting and receiving messages using electronic devices. It was conceived in the late–20th century as the digital version of, or counterpart to, mail. Email is a ubiquitous and very widely used communication medium; in current use, an email address is often treated as a basic and necessary part of many processes in business, commerce, government, education, entertainment, and other spheres of daily life in most countries.
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by RFC 9051.
Within the Internet email system, a message transfer agent (MTA), mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. In some contexts, the alternative names mail server, mail exchanger, or MX host are used to describe an MTA.
In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, it is one of the most common protocols for email retrieval.
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
Webmail is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.
An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in the 1980s, and updated by RFC 5322 and 6854. The term email address in this article refers to just the addr-spec in Section 3.4 of RFC 5322. The RFC defines address more broadly as either a mailbox or group. A mailbox value can be either a name-addr, which contains a display-name and addr-spec, or the more common addr-spec alone.
Microsoft Exchange Server is a mail server and calendaring server developed by Microsoft. It runs exclusively on Windows Server operating systems.
AOL Mail is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo! Inc.
A shared web hosting service is a web hosting service where many websites reside on one web server connected to the Internet. The overall cost of server maintenance is spread over many customers. By using shared hosting, the website will share a physical server with one or more other websites.
Push email is an email system that provides an always-on capability, in which when new email arrives at the mail delivery agent (MDA), it is immediately, actively transferred (pushed) by the MDA to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the email client, so that the end-user can see incoming email immediately. This is in contrast with systems that check for new incoming mail every so often, on a schedule. Email clients include smartphones and, less strictly, IMAP personal computer mail applications.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English.
Email encryption is encryption of email messages to protect the content from being read by entities other than the intended recipients. Email encryption may also include authentication.
hMailServer was a free email server for Windows created by Martin Knafve. It ran as a Windows service and includes administration tools for management and backup. It had support for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP email protocols. It could use external database engines such as MySQL, MS SQL or PostgreSQL, or an internal MS SQL Compact Edition engine to store configuration and index data. The actual email messages were stored on disk in a raw MIME format. As of January 15th, 2022, active support and development were officially halted, although version 5.6 will continue to receive updates for critical bugs.
GMX Mail is a free, advertising-supported email service provided by Global Mail eXchange or Global Message eXchange in Germany. Users may access received GMX mail via webmail, or using POP3 or IMAP4 protocols. Mail is sent using SMTP. Founded in 1997, GMX is a subsidiary of Ionos SE, a stock-listed company in Germany, and a sister company to Ionos and Fasthosts Internet. In addition to an email address, each GMX account includes a Mail Collector, Address Book, Organizer, and File Storage. Every user can register up to 10 individual GMX email addresses. Popup ads are displayed to all users, including premium, at GMX login; as of 2021 GMX was the only large email provider using popup ads.
Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. This includes a webmail interface featuring mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Outlook can also be accessed via email clients using the IMAP or POP protocols.
The Gmail interface makes Gmail unique amongst webmail systems for several reasons. Most evident to users are its search-oriented features and means of managing e-mail in a "conversation view" that is similar to an Internet forum.
A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf.
MailEnable is a Windows-based, commercial email server distributed by MailEnable Pty. Ltd, an Australian-based software company which was established in 2002.
mailbox.org is an encrypted email service provider based in Germany. The encryption system uses PGP like most other encrypted email providers. It also features address books, calendars, video conferencing, online office and tasks management. It competes against Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace as a German based provider. Its target customers include private, business, school and public authorities.