Webmail

Let's get this straight, once and for all.

When you host a website with TSDG, you also have the facility to create a number of email addresses at that domain. If your site is myworld.com you can have info@, sales@, inquiries@, mary@, john@ - whatever your heart desires.

We set up these email addresses for you on the server. When someone sends and email to one of your addresses, that email is sent to the server and then, assuming that you have set up your computer correctly (your Outlook, Outlook Express, Entourage etc.) those emails are then downloaded onto your computer.

Which should be the end of the story.

If you haven't set up your email correctly on your computer, or if your computer is switched off, then the emails have nowhere to go, so they remain on the server until your computer is ready to receive them. Then they are downloaded.

Where WE go wrong is in letting clients know this! If you don't have your computer switched on, you can access your emails on the server. We tell clients this because it can be very useful when you're traveling or away from your own computer. You can go to the server on the internet, from any computer, to see your emails. If they haven't been downloaded to your computer remember, they wait on the server.

This is great. When I'm traveling, I always use this webmail service. And on  Friday evenings, I switch off Outlook which means that, during the weekend, I can access my email online on the server.

BUT THAT'S WHERE IT ENDS.

Webmail is an extra service provided to you for times when you're away from your computer. It is not a complete email service like Yahoo or Google mail. For one thing, it has a 25MB capacity so will fill up pretty quickly if people are emailing large files to you.

You cannot store emails there. You can temporarily put them in folders but when you use webmail, you have to be a good housekeeper and make sure that the mailboxes, the folders (including sent items and trash) are regularly cleaned out. Just like anything else in life really.

Another quote from my mum "you can't get a quart into a pint pot". If you have a restaurant that seats fifty people, there's no way you're going to seat 200. If your gas tank holds thirty gallons of gas, there's no way you are going to get fifty gallons in there.

But do you go to the dealership that sold you the car and claim that you need a larger tank because you're going on a long journey and a thirty gallon tank is 'inconvenient'? No, you don't.

I hate to use the phrase, but it is what it is.

Furthermore, remember that the internet, by it's very nature, is not a service that is 100% reliable. No-one ever claimed that it is. There are such things as hackers. There are technological problems.  And let's say that you didn't pay your hosting bill, through some oversight - in extreme cases all your information on the internet could be lost.

Servers can go down - just like your car can break down. I don't know of anything that is 100% reliable. (If you do, please let me know!)

Let me give you an example. My family live in the UK. This means that I regularly receive precious photographs by email. Would I leave those on the server in webmail? No, of course not, I'd be crazy to do that. Do I keep them in Outlook? I'd be crazy to do that too. Naturally, I save them onto my computer. But I'm also aware that my computer isn't 100% reliable so at intervals I save my photographs to a CD. They are too valuable to be lost and certainly too valuable to be trusted to the internet.