Webmail (or web-based email) is an
email service
A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of email hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf. ...
that can be accessed using a standard
web browser
A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...
. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised
email client software. Examples of
webmail providers are
1&1 Ionos,
AOL Mail
AOL Mail (stylized as Aol Mail.) is a free web-based email service provided by AOL, a division of Yahoo.
Features
AOL Mail has the following features available:
* Email attachment limit: 25 MB
* Max mailbox size: Unlimited
* Supported protoc ...
,
Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...
,
GMX Mail
GMX Mail is a free advertising-supported email service provided by GMX (Global Mail eXchange, in Germany: Global Message eXchange). Users may access received GMX Mail via webmail, or using POP3 or IMAP4 protocols. Mail is sent using SMTP. Found ...
,
Mailfence
Mailfence is an encrypted email service that offers OpenPGP based end-to-end encryption and digital signatures. It was launched in November 2013 by ContactOffice Group, which has been operating an Online office suite, online collaboration suite ...
,
Outlook.com/Hotmail.com,
Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo (2017–present), Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously av ...
and
IceWarp Mail Server
IceWarp Mail Server is a business Email and Collaboration server developed by IceWarp Ltd. It features email with custom domain, shared calendars, documents editing, messaging and advanced tool for team collaboration and can be run in Cloud or o ...
. Additionally, many
internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (ISP) provide webmail as part of their internet service package. Similarly, some
web hosting providers also provide webmail as a part of their hosting package.
ISP providers and hosting companies, typically use webmail software via 3rd party software such as
Roundcube or
SquirrelMail
SquirrelMail is a project that aims to provide both a web-based email client and a proxy server for the IMAP protocol.
The latest stable version 1.4.23-svn is tested with PHP up to version 8.1 and replaces version 1.4.22 which can only run on ...
.
As with any web application, webmail's main advantage over the use of a
desktop
A desktop traditionally refers to:
* The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor)
Desktop may refer to various compu ...
email client
An email client, email reader or, more formally, message user agent (MUA) or mail user agent is a computer program used to access and manage a user's email.
A web application which provides message management, composition, and reception functio ...
is the ability to send and receive email anywhere from a web browser. Its main disadvantage is the need to be connected to the Internet while using it.
History
Early implementations
The first Web Mail implementation was developed at
CERN
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN (; ; ), is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Gene ...
in 1993 by
Phillip Hallam-Baker
Phillip Hallam-Baker is a computer scientist, mostly known for contributions to Internet security, since the design of HTTP at CERN in 1992. Self-employed since 2018 as a consultant and expert witness in court cases, he previously worked at Comodo ...
as a test of the HTTP protocol stack, but was not developed further. In the next two years, however, several people produced working webmail applications.
In Europe, there were three implementations, Søren Vejrum's "WWW Mail", Luca Manunza's "WebMail", and Remy Wetzels' "WebMail". Søren Vejrum's "WWW Mail" was written when he was studying and working at the
Copenhagen Business School
Copenhagen Business School (Danish'': Handelshøjskolen i København'') often abbreviated and referred to as CBS (also in Danish), is a public university situated in Copenhagen, Denmark and is considered one of the most prestigious business schoo ...
in Denmark, and was released on February 28, 1995. Luca Manunza's "WebMail" was written while he was working at
CRS4
CRS4, also known as Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia (Italian: Centro di Ricerca, Sviluppo e Studi Superiori in Sardegna), is an interdisciplinary research center, founded by the Sardinia Autonomous Region on N ...
in Sardinia, from an idea of Gianluigi Zanetti, with the first source release on March 30, 1995. Remy Wetzels' "WebMail" was written while he was studying at the
Eindhoven University of Technology
The Eindhoven University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven), abbr. TU/e, is a public technical university in the Netherlands, located in the city of Eindhoven. In 2020–21, around 14,000 students were enrolled in its BSc a ...
in the Netherlands for the DSE and was released early January 1995.
In the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
, Matt Mankins wrote "Webex",
[comp.mail.misc]
Webex Announcement
August 8, 1995. and Bill Fitler, while at
Lotus cc:Mail, began working on an implementation which he demonstrated publicly at
Lotusphere Lotusphere was an American annual conference hosted by Lotus Software (which later became an IBM software brand) from 1993 to 2017. In 2013, Lotusphere was re-branded as IBM Connect.
Except for the first conference, which took place in December 19 ...
on January 24, 1995. Matt Mankins, under the supervision of Dr. Burt Rosenberg at the
University of Miami
The University of Miami (UM, UMiami, Miami, U of M, and The U) is a private research university in Coral Gables, Florida. , the university enrolled 19,096 students in 12 colleges and schools across nearly 350 academic majors and programs, incl ...
, released his "Webex" application source code in a post to comp.mail.misc on August 8, 1995,
[ although it had been in use as the primary email application at the School of Architecture where Mankins worked for some months prior.
Bill Fitler's webmail implementation was further developed as a commercial product, which Lotus announced and released in the fall of 1995 as ''cc:Mail for the World Wide Web 1.0''; thereby providing an alternative means of accessing a cc:Mail message store (the usual means being a cc:Mail desktop application that operated either via dialup or within the confines of a local area network).
Early commercialization of webmail was also achieved when "Webex" began to be sold by Mankins' company, DotShop, Inc., at the end of 1995. Within DotShop, "Webex" changed its name to "EMUmail"; which would be sold to companies like UPS and Rackspace until its sale to Accurev in 2001. EMUmail was one of the first applications to feature a free version that included embedded advertising, as well as a licensed version that did not.
]Hotmail
Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services.
Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...
and Four11's RocketMail both launched in 1996 as free services and immediately became very popular.
Widespread deployment
As the 1990s progressed, and into the 2000s, it became more common for the general public to have access to webmail because:
* many Internet service provider
An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise private ...
s (such as EarthLink
EarthLink is an American Internet service provider.
It went public on NASDAQ in January 1997. Much of the company's growth was via acquisition; by 2000, ''The New York Times'' described Earthlink as the "second largest Internet service provider ...
) and web hosting providers (such as Verio
Verio is a global web hosting provider headquartered in the United States. Incorporated in 1996 in Denver, Colorado, it is a wholly owned subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Communications, which acquired the company in 2000. Ve ...
) began bundling webmail into their service offerings (often in parallel with POP/SMTP
The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is an Internet standard communication protocol for electronic mail transmission. Mail servers and other message transfer agents use SMTP to send and receive mail messages. User-level email clients typical ...
services);
* many other enterprises (such as universities and large corporations) also started offering webmail as a way for their user communities to access their email (either locally managed or outsourced);
* webmail service providers (such as Hotmail
Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services.
Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...
and RocketMail
RocketMail was one of the first major free webmail services. The service was originally a product of Four11 Corporation. For a brief time, RocketMail battled with Hotmail for the number-one spot among free webmail services. Four11, including R ...
) emerged in 1996 as a free service to the general public, and rapidly gained in popularity.
In some cases, webmail application software is developed in-house by the organizations running and managing the application, and in some cases it is obtained from software companies that develop and sell such applications, usually as part of an integrated mail server package (an early example being Netscape Messaging Server). The market for webmail application software has continued into the 2010s.
Rendering and compatibility
Email users may find the use of both a webmail client and a desktop client using the POP3
In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. POP version 3 (POP3) is the version in common use, and along with IMAP the most common p ...
protocol presents some difficulties. For example, email messages that are downloaded by the desktop client and are removed from the server will no longer be available on the webmail client. The user is limited to previewing messages using the web client before they are downloaded by the desktop email client. However, one may choose to leave the emails on the server, in which case this problem does not occur. The use of both a webmail client and a desktop client using the IMAP4
In computing, the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) is an Internet standard protocol used by email clients to retrieve email messages from a mail server over a TCP/IP connection. IMAP is defined by .
IMAP was designed with the goal of per ...
protocol allows the contents of the mailbox to be consistently displayed in both the webmail and desktop clients and any action the user performs on messages in one interface will be reflected when the email is accessed via the other interface. There are significant differences in rendering capabilities for many popular webmail services such as Gmail
Gmail is a free email service provided by Google. As of 2019, it had 1.5 billion active users worldwide. A user typically accesses Gmail in a web browser or the official mobile app. Google also supports the use of email clients via the POP an ...
, Outlook.com and Yahoo! Mail
Yahoo! Mail is an email service launched on October 8, 1997, by the American company Yahoo (2017–present), Yahoo, Inc. The service is free for personal use, with an optional monthly fee for additional features. Business email was previously av ...
. Due to the varying treatment of HTML
The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...
tags, such as