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Congratulations on your GMail account! 

 

These pages would discuss an user's perspective of making your GMailing easier, and understanding the features and differences between GMail and any other webmail or email services you may have used earlier.

What is GMail?

GMail is a free webmail service, which also allows free POP and/or IMAP access to your account. Additionally, GMail provides you more mail storage space (currently 6GB+), allows attaching larger files (20MB), allows forwarding, collecting, and mail aliasing, allows mobile access, and has some unique features for organizing and searching your mailbox which other existing services have not ever thought of or implemented yet.

 

Currently, GMail is in version 2 (also called the new version) while one can still opt to access GMail in version 1 (the older version). Both these versions are in beta.

Webmail

A webmail service is an email service which is available on the net, wherever you are. Which means that you could access your GMail account from any computer whether you are at home, office, vacationing, or even from outer space as long as you have a connection to the internet.

 

There are several such globally popular webmail services, some of them also free. Apart from these webmail services, other ways to have an email account is through

• ISP-mail service providers

• Hosted-mail service providers

• Configured email servers, like those provided by offices, universities, corporations, or neighbourhoods.

ISP email 

 

When you sign up with an ISP (internet service provider) to get your internet connection, whether broadband, cable, or plain PSTN dial-up, usually the ISP would throw in an email account for you too. This may be anything from 5MB or larger. Typically, these addresses would be <username@ISPnameDomain>. This is not exactly a free service, as you would have to pay your ISP for continuing both your internet connection as well as the email account. You would not be able to only have the email account without your internet subscription too.

Hosted email 

 

If you decide to have your own personal domain and hosting (for web pages, blogs, music, or for business), generally the hosting service would also provide you an email account depending on the hosting plan you opt to pay for. These plans depend on many factors: the space you require, the tools you require, the download bandwidth you foresee, etc. and what you pay for these plans cover your email account too. Some hosting providers also charge separately for email accounts, depending on the number of accounts and email space you require. Typically email addresses would be in the form <username@HostedServiceDomain>.

Configured mail servers

When you join any institution like a school or university, an office, hospital, or a corporation, you may be provided with an email account, which typically would be <username@InstitutionDomain>. Generally, such configured email servers have a dual function — they allow intra-domain communication between colleagues, as well as allow their members to send and receive mail to the outside world. However, since these are 'configured' by the administrators in charge of these mail systems on behalf of the institutions, they may set or relax a few 'rules' or policies for these members. For example, a mail administrator could easily block all mails from or to a specific webmail service.

Usually, these services are usually accessed by using any local email client, though it is possible to access your ISP-mail or Hosted-mail even through a web interface. The process of accessing (receiving) such mail services using an email client is either through IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol, or IMAP in short) or through POP3 (Post Office Protocol, commonly called POP), while mail sending is done using SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol).

IMAP, POP

While most of us do not need to know the technical nitty-gritties of these terms, a basic understanding may be required if one wishes to opt for IMAP or POP in one's GMail account. Basically, IMAP provides synchronized access while POP provides a single-point access to your mail account. What that means is that if you use IMAP between your GMail account and several computers and/or mobile devices, in all of these your GMail account (received mails, sent mails, labels or folders) would 'look' the same or synchronized. However, using POP access, messages you download on one (or two) machines or mobile devices would not be 'seen' as downloaded or received from other computers or mobile devices accessing your GMail account. There is an excellent explanation of which you need to use and when by the GMail Guide Yellow on her POP vs IMAP  post.

Email clients 

Sometimes, users mistakenly confuse features of their local email clients (which are software programs on one's computer) with email services, whether webmail, ISP-mail, or Hosted-mail. Generally, as ISP-mail, Hosted-mail, or Configured-server mails are accessed using local email clients (like MS Outlook, Outlook Express, MS Mail, Thunderbird, The Bat, Netscape Messenger, Eudora, Apple Mail, and such others) users often confuse features and attributes of these clients as being features and attributes of the mail services they access. In reality, webmail services usually provide far more features than these other services — a primary reason why such helper applications like stand-alone local email clients are required to access such services, to receive, send, or organize your mailbox. GMail, as you see in the table below, provides far more services and features than most of these.

Table of features

These discussions would continue.