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.
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 the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. In some contexts the alternative names mail server, mail exchanger, and MX host can be 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.
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typically use SMTP only for sending messages to a mail server for relaying, and typically submit outgoing email to the mail server on port 587 or 465 per RFC 8314. For retrieving messages, IMAP is standard, but proprietary servers also often implement proprietary protocols, e.g., Exchange ActiveSync.
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.
Mercury Mail Transport System is a standards-compliant mail server developed by David Harris, who also develops the Pegasus Mail client.
FreePOPs is an extensible mail proxy that allows checking and downloading of e-mail from webmails using any conventional POP3 client program, avoiding the need to use a Web browser. It can also be used as an aggregator for RSS feeds. The application retrieves messages from various accounts without manual login through an http page.
The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English.
The POP3 Connector is a piece of software included with Small Business Server (SBS) versions of Microsoft Exchange Server that enables the server to fetch e-mail from external, 3rd party, POP3 servers.
An offline reader is computer software that downloads e-mail, newsgroup posts or web pages, making them available when the computer is offline: not connected to a server. Offline readers are useful for portable computers and dial-up access.
The Motorola Ming is a series of smartphones from Motorola, sold in Hong Kong and mainland China only. It is one of the series in the 4LTR line.
The Courier Mail Server is a mail transfer agent (MTA) server that provides SMTP, IMAP, POP3, SMAP, webmail, and mailing list services with individual components. It is best known for its IMAP server component.
Courier was an email client for Microsoft Windows. The software was originally released in 1996 as Calypso by Micro Computer Systems (MCS).
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 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 Ionos AG, 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.
GNUMail is a free and open-source, cross-platform e-mail client based on GNUstep or Cocoa. It is the official mail client of GNUstep and is also used in Étoilé. It was inspired by NeXTMail, the predecessor of Apple Mail. GNUMail is based on the mail handling framework Pantomime. GNUMail demonstrated that it is possible to develop cross platform programs for GNUstep and Cocoa.
Released during Q3 2007 for T-Mobile in the US, the Samsung Blast (SGH-T729) slider features a double-tap QWERTY keypad, music player, stereo bluetooth and a MicroSD slot.
EmailTray is a lightweight email client for the Microsoft Windows operating system. EmailTray was developed by Internet Promotion Agency S.A., a software development d.
Tor Mail was a Tor hidden service that went offline in August 2013 after an FBI raid on Freedom Hosting. The service allowed users to send and receive email anonymously to email addresses inside and outside the Tor network.
