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E-Mail Accounts
When creating e-mail address you have several options available to you and 3 basic types of configurations (when using us to handle mail services for your domain).
"Fully Hosted"
This is your "regular" e-mail account (with mailbox). You can send/receive messages with this type of account. Messages received by this address are stored on our mail servers where you can retrieve them. You can access these messages using a stand-alone e-mail client (ie: Mozilla's Thunderbird, Microsoft's Outlook or Outlook Express, Eudora, Mac's Mail or Entourage or many other stand-alone e-mail client software package) OR you could also access them using our WebMail interface.
We support both POP and IMAP connections for retrieving your messages.
"Forward-Only E-Mail"
(A.K.A. an "alias" or "forward")
This type of account does NOT have its own mailbox (where messages are stored). It simply forwards any messages that it receives to the address (or addresses) specified for it.
"Garbage E-Mail"
Just quietly deletes any messages sent to it (without sending a "bounced" message back to the sender).
Addresses
There are basically 2 different types of addresses you can configure when setting up an e-mail account.
Specific
An example of a specific address would be something like;
- john@doe.com
- jane@doe.com
- john.doe@doeindustries.com
- jane.doe@sales.doeindustries.com
Catch-All
When you create a "catch-all" address for a particular domain it will accept messages addresses to ANY username at the specified domain EXCEPT where they may already be other "specific" addresses already defined for that domain. Of course if there is a specific e-mail address message will be delivered to that address rather than to the catch-all address. The catch-all just catches any other addresses that are not specifically created.
NOTE: If you set up a "catch-all" address for a domain you will NOT be able to enable our free Junk Filter feature on that domain. Doing so would overload it because catch-all address are spam magnets!
If you need to use something like dynamic addressing (creating different addresses on the fly) I would strongly recommend using the "Wildcard Addressing" feature (listed below) instead!
Wildcard Address
We have implemented a feature that some may find extremely helpful. It's called "wildcard addressing" (sometimes it is also referred to as "plus addressing"). This is NOT to be confused with using a "catch-all" address on a domain!
Here's how it works...
Let's say that you have a "fully hosted" or "forward-only e-mail" account created with the address of john@doe.com.
You could send messages to that account using addresses like this;
- john@doe.com [the regular unmodified address]
- john+accounting@doe.com
- john+mortgage@doe.com
- john+sales@doe.com
- john+family@doe.com
See the pattern? You can use the plus sign "+" character AFTER the regular user name to add any additional identifier to the address (before the @). John's john@doe.com address will accept/forward them all!
What is this good for you may ask? Good question! Here's where this all comes in really handy. You can set up Keyword Filters to take specific action based on any one of those specific "+" addresses. For example, if you have all of your family send e-mail to you using the address john+family@doe.com you can set up a keyword filter to move all of those incoming message to a specific folder (ie: "family"). That way you can keep things organized easily! You can set up an unlimited number of keyword filters.
You can also use these as "disposable" e-mail addresses as well. For example, when you sign-up for a specific service you can give them your address as john+getrichquick@doe.com. If you start getting junk from them and can't unsubscribe you can always set up a keyword filter to just delete any incoming message send to that address. It's that simple.
NOTE: You can also set up a "Garbage E-Mail" address for one of your wildcard addresses if you want. Just set it up using the specific wildcard address that you never want to see messages from (ie: john+getrichquick@doe.com).
See this link for more information regarding using Keyword Filters.
