Website Hosting and Email
Email is the main mechanism used on websites for visitors to contact the site owner.
Almost all website hosting packages include email hosting and email addresses as part of the package.
However if you take a look at small business stationary, business vehicles like vans with business contact details you will often find the address of the website and a Google or yahoo email contact.
Why wasn't the business using their own email address? Well the reason is usually that they didn't realise that they had them.
Email Addresses and domain Names
When you purchase a domain name you automatically have email addresses that can be associated with that domain name.
Most domain name providers limit the number, but there is always more than enough for small business/personal use.
So if you own the domain name yoursitename.com then you can create a selection of email addresses like email@yoursitename.com.
Most website owners either don't realise this, or forget about it, and use another totally different email address as the contact address, which not only looks bad, but is potentially confusing.
Email Access
There are two main methods which can be used independently or together:
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Associate the email address with a mailbox
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Forward the email to another address that has a mailbox.
Associate the email address with a mailbox
To do this your package must include mailboxes this almost always requires that you have purchased a web hosting package not just a domain name.
How many email addresses, and how you access them depends on your website hosting provider.
However most will provide at least 5 addresses and POP3 access, even with the most basic package.
Here are the email capabilities offered with the 1&1-UK basic web hosting package.
Most websites only require one or two email addresses like sales, newsletter, webmaster, accounts, contact.
Forward the Email to Another Address that has a Mailbox
If you don't have a mailbox associated with the address then you can arrange that the email be forwarded onto another email address that does.
Although this sounds attractive it does have problems as it can cause confusion if you reply to the email. Therefore I would only recommend that you use this as a notification method.
Access Methods
There are two main methods used:
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Access via a web browser -so called Webmail
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Access via email client- so called POP3 or Imap4 access
Most hosting packages will proved access using both methods and you can use whichever you prefer.
The main advantage of the Webmail access is that it works from any computer and requires no configuration whereas pop3/imap4 access only works after you have setup the email client (outlook express etc) correctly.
Email Contact From Website
Most new website owners and even many web designers use a simple mailto html tag on the website that allow site visitors to email them.
Although it is very easy to implement it has two major drawbacks.
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It results in lots of spam
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It relies on the email client on the visitors computer being correctly setup.- Certainly not the case with public machines.
It is for this reason I don't use it or recommend its use.
The two ways I use are:
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Embed the email address in a graphic
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Use a PHP Contact form
Main Email Terms Explained
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Autoresponders are automatic messages used mainly for acknowledgements. (see autoresponder article for more details)
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Email Aliases - An alias is an email address without its own mailbox. Instead the email is forwarded to another mailbox.
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Email Forwarding- A message (email) sent to email address A is delivered (by forwarding) to email address B. This can be used to forward your various email accounts to a single mailbox.
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Catchall Address -This is an email address for the entire domain. It is designed to cover for the case of misspelled addresses.
For example if someone sends an email to a user stevec@mysite.com (invalid) instead of steve@mysite.com (valid), then rather than sending an undeliverable message to the sender you can arrange the email to be sent to another mailbox (the catchall box).
The problem with catchall addresses is that you can receive a lot of spam.
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