Email Services

EMAIL SERVICES

Email is a piece of text message (mail) with/without picture/file/video attachments sent to another person via internet. The client which facilitates to send emails to receiver is known as the email service. The email services act as the address for the sender and receiver. That is, if a person “A” sends email to person “B”; then both person A and B should have an address for sending and receiving mails. That address is defined by the usage of ‘@’ sign to designate the sending and receiving machine. Those address providers are the email services. There are different popular email services available in the market today. They are Windows Live (Hot Mail), Gmail and Yahoo mail.

POP3 EMAIL SERVER

POP3 is an Internet Service Protocol which does the task of standard delivery and retrieval of emails. POP means Post Office Protocol. It does the job of a post office clerk who stores the letters that are sent, and holds until the individuals pick it up. In the same way, POP3 (3^rd version of POP) holds the emails that are sent to the user and holds until the user open to see their received emails. When the user checks the inbox, the email client makes contact with the server and thus connects the user with the emails.

POP3 does not make copies of the email that it holds, and the emails get deleted automatically after the user has received it. This assures to the user that user’s mails are kept personal. POP3 ensures that the users who don’t use “always on” internet connection.  POP3 allows you to download email messages on your local computer and read them even when you are offline.It can work with any kind of email program virtually provided that the email program is configured to host the protocol. POP3 mail server address, user’s email id user name and password are required to be given as input to get connected effectively with the protocol.

IMAP (INTERNET MESSAGE ACCESS PROTOCOL)

IMAP acts as a middleman between the email client and mail server. Mail server receives emails from the email clients. Mail server comprises of the storage area, list of users, communication module series and user defined rules. The storage area contains the local user mails and the mails which have to be transmitted to another destination. Email client acts as a platform to read, write and send emails. The most popular email clients are Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo mail, Hotmail, Gmail and AOL mail.

 

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POP3 AND IMAP :

In POP3, as soon as the user views the open the received mails it gets deleted from the mail server. User can access the mail only in one pc.

But in IMAP, when the user opens the mail it is not downloaded from the mail server but it allows the user to read the mail directly from the mail server. User can access the mailbox from multiple computers at a time.

SMTP

SMTP means “Simple Mail Transfer Protocol” which is a set of rules for transmission of emails over internet and it is used only for outgoing of emails while POP3 and IMAP are used for reception of the emails. ESMTP (Extended Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) are used for the transmission of Multimedia (example: music file/picture file) through email.