Email Software

Email Software

Email software allows you to send and receive messages on your computer. Email is a convenient, economical, and fast way to communicate with anyone in the world who has access to a computer and internet connection.

How Email Works

To view and send email, you must use an email client. Popular stand-alone clients are Microsoft Outlook, Eudora, and Pegasus. Web based email services like Yahoo and Hotmail use an email client that is accessed through a web page.

The email client shows you a list of emails in your inbox, allows you view messages and reply to or forward them, lets you save or delete messages, provides a way to create and send new emails, and usually lets you add attachments to messages.

The email client needs to connect to an email server. Access to an email server is usually provided by an ISP (Internet Service Provider) or by a web based email service. The email client sends and receives messages from the server.

Most email systems actually use two servers. Outgoing email is processed by a SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server and incoming mail is handled by a POP3 (Post Office Protocol) server or IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) server. Servers communicate with each other to accurately transmit email from sender to recipient.

Most email clients allow you to append attachments to emails. Attachments can be images, audio files, spreadsheets, documents, or software.

Email Software Features and Add-ons

There are many different features available for various types of email applications.

Autoresponders – These programs are set up to respond with a specific message when a blank email is sent to a particular email address. Autoresponders are a fast, easy, automatic way to provide information to interested parties.

Spam Filters – Junk email, or spam, has become an increasingly annoying problem. Spam filters weed out junk email and either delete it or put it in a separate folder. Filtering programs are usually customizable so you can specify certain words or phrases that the spam filter will look for in incoming emails. You can also add email addresses of friends and associates to a ‘safe list' so their emails will not be misidentified as spam.

Mailing List Managers – These programs make it easy to send the same email to many people at once. A mailing list manager provides a single email address for an entire mailing list. An email sent to this address will be automatically distributed to everyone on the list. The mailing list manager will also deal with email ‘bounces' or undeliverable email. This type of software is also called an email reflector, email exploder, list server, or majordomo.

Mail Merge – Some email programs have mail merge capability. Mail merge allows you to easily personalize email from letters or documents by inserting the recipient's name, address, and other information from a mailing list.

Security – There are a number of different types of email security programs available. Security software may provide email encryption, authentication, proof of delivery, and deletion, self-destruct or email shredding capabilities.

There are a number of other features available on various email programs including antivirus protection, spell checking, mail forwarding, and automatic email responses.

By Carla Wakeman           


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