Mailbox provider
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A mailbox provider, mail service provider or, somewhat improperly, email service provider is a provider of
email Electronic mail (usually shortened to email; alternatively hyphenated e-mail) is a method of transmitting and receiving Digital media, digital messages using electronics, electronic devices over a computer network. It was conceived in the ...
hosting. It implements email servers to send, receive, accept, and store email for other organizations or end users, on their behalf. The term "mail service provider" was coined in the Internet Mail Architecture document .


Types

There are various kinds of email providers. There are paid and free ones, possibly sustained by advertising. Some allow anonymous users, whereby a single user can get multiple, apparently unrelated accounts. Some require full identification credentials; for example, a company may provide email accounts to full-time staff only. Often, companies, universities, organizations, groups, and individuals that manage their mail servers themselves adopt naming conventions that make it straightforward to identify who is the owner of a given email address. Besides control of the local names,
insourcing Outsourcing is a business practice in which companies use external providers to carry out business processes that would otherwise be handled internally. Outsourcing sometimes involves transferring employees and assets from one firm to another. ...
may provide for data confidentiality, network traffic optimization, and fun. Mailbox providers typically accomplish their task by implementing
Simple Mail Transfer Protocol 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 typ ...
(SMTP) and possibly providing access to messages through
Internet Message Access Protocol 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 ...
(IMAP), the
Post Office Protocol 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. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, ...
,
Webmail Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) prov ...
, or a proprietary protocol. Parts of the task can still be outsourced, for example virus and spam filtering of incoming mail, or authentication of outgoing mail.


ISP-based email

Many mailbox providers are also access providers. Not the core product, their email services could lack some interesting features, such as IMAP,
Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network, such as the Internet. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over ...
, or
SMTP Authentication SMTP Authentication, often abbreviated SMTP AUTH, is an extension of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) whereby a client may log in using any authentication mechanism supported by the server. It is mainly used by Mail submission agent, submis ...
—in fact, an ISP can do without the latter, as it can recognize its clients by the IP addresses it assigns them.


Free mail providers

Launched in the 1990s, AOL Mail,
Hotmail Outlook.com, formerly Hotmail, is a free personal email service offered by Microsoft. It also provides a webmail interface accessible via web browser or mobile apps featuring mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and ...
,
Lycos Lycos, Inc. (stylized as LYCOS), is a web search engine and web portal established in 1994, spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. Lycos also encompasses a network of email, web hosting, social networking, and entertainment websites. The company ...
, Mail.com and Yahoo! Mail were among the early providers of free email accounts, joined by
Gmail Gmail is the email service provided by Google. it had 1.5 billion active user (computing), users worldwide, making it the largest email service in the world. It also provides a webmail interface, accessible through a web browser, and is also ...
in 2004. They attract users because they are free and can advertise their service on every message. According to American entrepreneur
Steve Jurvetson Stephen T. Jurvetson (born March 1, 1967) is an American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. Formerly a partner of the firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), he was an early investor in Hotmail, Memphis Meats, Myt ...
, Hotmail grew from zero to 12 million users in 18 months. In 1997, Microsoft purchased Hotmail for $400 million and relaunched it as MSN Hotmail the same year. This was relaunched as Outlook.com in 2012.


Premium email services

These are the paid equivalent of free mail providers. That is, a better alternative to ISP-based email. Much less popular than free mail, they target a niche of users.


Vanity email

It is also possible to run a shim service, providing no access but just forwarding all messages to another account, which does not lend itself to direct use, for example because it is temporary or just less appealing.


Role as identifier

A mailbox provider is the administrator of the registered
domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...
that forms the domain-part of its
email address An email address identifies an email box to which messages are delivered. While early messaging systems used a variety of formats for addressing, today, email addresses follow a set of specific rules originally standardized by the Internet Enginee ...
es. As such, it controls the
MX record A mail exchanger record (MX record) specifies the mail server responsible for accepting email messages on behalf of a domain name. It is a resource record in the Domain Name System (DNS). It is possible to configure several MX records, typically ...
s that specify which hosts will receive email destined to those addresses. The operators of those hosts define the meaning of the local-part of an address by associating it to a mailbox, which in turn can be associated to a user. The mailbox provider also specifies how users can read their mail, possibly creating SRV records to ease email client configuration, or giving detailed instructions. Email addresses are convenient tokens for identifying people, even at web sites unrelated to email. In fact, they are unique, and allow password reminders to be sent at will. From a bureaucracy-oriented point of view, there is no formal undertaking beyond domain name registration. This role is based on
IETF The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...
standards, and, unlike X.400 and other
ITU-T The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three Sectors (branches) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating Standardization, standards fo ...
works, in and of itself requires no arrangements with local authorities. The notion of Administration Management Domain (ADMD) is derived afterwards, from empirical evidence. However, local authorities concerned with
Internet privacy Internet privacy involves the right or mandate of personal privacy concerning the storage, re-purposing, provision to third parties, and display of information pertaining to oneself via the Internet. Internet privacy is a subset of data privacy. P ...
issues may add rules and requisites on top of the original Internet email design.


See also

* Email hosting service * Email mailbox *
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...
*
Webmail Webmail (or web-based email) is an email service that can be accessed using a standard web browser. It contrasts with email service accessible through a specialised email client software. Additionally, many internet service providers (ISP) prov ...
* Web mail server *
Comparison of webmail providers The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English. The list does not include web hosting providers who may offer email server and/or client software as ...


References

{{reflist Email