The concept of electronic mail has been around since the early 1970s. It began as a way of exchanging messages between educators and some government agencies. It has grown a little since then. The basic concept is still the same, but nearly a third of the world has access to email now, instead of just the few educators in the early days. According to the Email Market, 2013-2017 report from The Radicati Group, there are over 2.4 billion email users worldwide. With a worldwide population of just over 7 billion, there is your third.
Web Interfaces
Nowadays, most email is accessed through a web interface. Via your browser, you log into your webmail provider, like Gmail from Google, Outlook from Microsoft (previously called Hotmail), or Yahoo! Mail. You then access your messages through a browser interface. It is typically free to access and is advertiser supported, so no out of pocket costs for the consumer. You must be online though, as if you’re not online, you can’t access the server that contains your mail messages.
Mail Protocols
Under the covers, email messages fly around the web through a set of well defined protocols. Each protocol is defined in something called an RFC or Request for Comments. When browsing, you’re familiar with the HTTP and HTTPS protocols at the beginning of the URL. For emails, those protocols are SMTP for sending messages and POP and IMAP for reading. Quite simply, SMTP stands for simple mail transfer protocol and defines how the sending machine directs a message through the Internet to its destination. POP stands for post office protocol. It is the simpler of the two protocols for reading mail. When a message is fetched with POP, it is typically removed from your mail server and relocated to the machine you are reading messages on. On the other hand, IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol, will leave your message where it is. It does copy the message locally to read, but it is still left on the server. If you later access your mail server again through IMAP, you’ll see the old message was read, and also see if any new messages were delivered. IMAP is certainly the more modern protocol and how the webmail providers treat your email. Until you delete a message, it is kept on the server. The webmail interfaces presents your messages to you. Another key difference is IMAP understands the concept of folders, whereas POP doesn’t. How the webmail provider implements the concept of folders varies considerably.
Major Webmail Providers
How old are the webmail providers? Of the big three, Hotmail launched first in the summer of 1996, Yahoo! Mail started next in the fall of 1997, and lastly Gmail came out just 10 years ago in the spring of 2004. They all started with a minimal amount of message space available, but that has grown considerably for all, and if the free amount is ever insufficient, you can always pay for more space. Gmail for instance offers 15 GB for free with plans for 100 GB for $2 and 1 TB for $10.
Dedicated Server Webmail
If instead of relying on a third party for your company’s email, you want to maintain your own mail host and server, you still need to provide an interface for users to access their mail. There are three popular software packages for managing your own in-house mail system: Horde, SquirrelMail, and Roundcube. Horde is the granddaddy of them all, having been out in one form or another since 1998. It is more groupware than just email. SquirrelMail is your stable HTML4 web-based email client that started in 1999. Roundcube is the new kid on the block, originating in 2008. It is more modern with the interface AJAX driven. All are predominantly PHP-based.
Mail Clients
If instead of reading mail from the web, you want to have your email available offline, that is where your desktop clients come around. Eudora was a very early popular email client. Once you set up the POP/IMAP/SMTP settings, it would fetch your messages, manage your address book, and send messages to their destinations. Nowadays, you’re more apt to use the one built into your operating system, Microsoft Outlook or Apple Mail. Yes, Outlook has both interfaces.
Pros and Cons of Both
Which method of mail should you use personally or your company consider? There are many factors involved. Part of it involves whether to have a dedicated mail server and part has to do with the interface to access that mail.
Government requests or snooping. Where does NSA have its claws out? If you maintain your own mail server, on your own hardware, you’ll know about any warrant to access the content. If Google or Microsoft gets a request, they can release your information without your knowledge.
Security. Who do you want to keep your information secure? Webmail providers livelihood is dependent on them keeping their systems secure. If the information is under your control, do you have the knowledge to maintain as much if not better security?
Backups. Who does backups? If you don’t use webmail and only keep copies on your laptop, what happens when it is time to upgrade, the system dies, or it is stolen? If you do use webmail, and it is your web server, you’re responsible for backups. If Google/Microsoft/Yahoo is your provider, they’re responsible for backups. If you need those backups, how quickly can you recover?
Internet Connectivity. The greatest benefit of not using webmail is you don’t have to be online to access your email. It does limit you to the one machine with all your messages though. If you use webmail, you can still write messages when not online. You just can’t read your messages when you’re not online.
Space. Webmail providers offer unlimited space. Local hard drives are cheap but do have their limits. And the more space you have the more that needs to be backed up.
Outages. With webmail, you have no control over when the service will be offline. If it is your machine, except for catastrophic failures, downtime is under your control.
Advertising. Webmail providers live off of advertising revenue. Do you mind seeing that with your mail?
Spam. This goes back to running your own mail server. Who do you want to maintain spam signature files and dealing with all the headaches.
There is lots to consider when looking into using webmail or not. For individual users, it depends first on connectivity. If you’re somewhere in the middle of a jungle on a mission, don’t use it, as your connectivity is apt to be unreliable. For the rest of the world, think about all your concerns and decide what is the best for you.. From a company perspective, whether or not to run a mail server is an important corporate decision. Consider all the factors involved here, too, and decide what is best for the company.