Email Hosting Terms

[Joshua]

Email Hosting Terms

Email is a standard feature that is provided with most web hosting services, although there are separate email hosting services available for businesses that require a higher level of functionality from their email services and larger storage. As it is a popular method of communication, many web hosting companies work hard to develop the best email products they can with businesses being the main target rather than individuals. Businesses are looking for the email service that can offer them the highest degree of spam protection whilst safeguarding emails that are sent and received from their domain names.

Email Account

An email account is what you use to send and receive emails from your domain name. In order to be able to use an email account you will need to have access to a web hosting account because in order for an email account to function it will need to be hosted on a server along with a domain name so that it has access to storage and an email server application. Your email account will be protected by a username and password, whilst people will be able to send you emails using the email address that you have setup.

CC/BCC

CC stands for “Carbon Copy” whilst BCC stands for “Blind Carbon Copy” and both refer to how the recipients of an email see one another when an email is being sent to more than one person. If you wish to send an email to multiple people without hiding their email addresses then you will use the Carbon Copy field of your email client to do so. If you wish for the recipients of the email to be unaware of the other recipients then you can simply use the Blind Carbon Copy option. Any webmail or desktop email client should able to provide you with the option to send emails using either method as both are seen as being standards in email terminology.

Email Forwarding

Also known as an email alias, a forwarding account is not a physical email account but instead any email that is sent to an email address that is configured as a forwarding account will then be forwarded to the email address that has been defined in the configuration. This can be useful for situations where you want to setup different addresses for differences purposes, but don’t want to have to deal with the hassle of using multiple mailboxes and instead only wish to manage one.

Auto Reply

An auto reply is a message that will be sent to people who send you emails. Auto replies are pre-defined and can be configured to contain the message of your choice and can be formatted to contain your regular email signature accompanied by any additional HTML formatting that you may require. Most web hosting services will allow you to define an auto reply for your email accounts, although this is something that you would only normally setup if there is going to be something that will prevent you from replying to your emails in an extended period of time, such as if you were out of the office.

Webmail

A webmail client is a web based email client that will allow you to view and send emails through any web browser using your email account. There are many different webmail clients available for different platforms. If you are using a Linux cPanel hosting account then you will be provided with a choice of Roundcube, Squirrelmail and Horde email clients; if you are using a Plesk or DNP Windows hosting account then your choices will vary between Squirelmail and Horde, although some premium web hosting plans can offer access to a more developed webmail client called Smatermail.

As a user of Microsoft Exchange Server email hosting services, you will also have access to a webmail client. The webmail client offered by Microsoft Exchange Server is known as “Outlook Web Access” and mimics the operation of Microsoft Outlook on the desktop, but in a web environment.

[Sanersone]

Great article Josh
Just to add, Auto-responder e-mails, Hosted Email, Mailing Lists, Email Aliases, SMTP Server, POP3/IMAP e-mail accounts are few other email hosting terms.

[Francesca]

Can you help me in understanding BCC?

Here is an example for my question. If A sends email "To" B, CC to L, M, N and BCC to X, Y, Z then what will X, Y, Z see in their "Sent To" field?
I received an email saying "I have won £££££" but the To line had someone else's email address. Was my email address included in BCC address here?