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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 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:
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), or mail transfer agent, or mail relay is software that transfers electronic mail messages from one computer to another using SMTP. The terms mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host are also used in some contexts.
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. Examples of webmail providers are 1&1 Ionos, AOL Mail, Gmail, GMX Mail, Mailfence, Outlook.com/Hotmail.com, Yahoo! Mail and IceWarp Mail Server. 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.
A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web hosting services are sometimes called web hosts.
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.
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols.
Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously available with the Yahoo! Small Business brand, before it transitioned to Verizon Small Business Essentials in early 2022. As of January 2020, Yahoo! Mail has 225 million users.
A dedicated hosting service, dedicated server, or managed hosting service is a type of Internet hosting in which the client leases an entire server not shared with anyone else. This is more flexible than shared hosting, as organizations have full control over the server(s), including choice of operating system, hardware, etc.
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 new email is actively transferred (pushed) as it arrives by the mail delivery agent (MDA) to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the email client. 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.
hMailServer is a free email server for Windows created by Martin Knafve. It runs as a Windows service and includes administration tools for management and backup. It has support for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP email protocols. It can 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 are stored on disk in a raw MIME format. It has active support and development forums.
A mailbox is the destination to which electronic mail messages are delivered. It is the equivalent of a letter box in the postal system.
GMX Mail is a free advertising-supported email service provided by GMX. 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 United Internet AG, a stock-listed company in Germany, and a sister company to 1&1 Internet 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 login; as of 2021 GMX was the only large email provider using popup ads.
Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services.
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.
mail.com is a web portal and web-based email service provider owned by the internet company 1&1 Mail & Media Inc., headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. 1&1 Mail & Media Inc. is a subsidiary of United Internet Group, a publicly listed internet services company based in Montabaur, Germany.
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.