What is an Email?

Email stands for Electronic Mail. It is a method to send messages from one computer
to another computer through the Internet. It is mostly used in business, education,
technical communication, and document interactions. It allows communicating with
people all over the world without bothering them. In 1971, a test email was sent Ray
Tomlinson to himself containing text.
It is the information sent electronically between two or more people over a network. It
involves a sender and receiver/s.
Why use E-Mail?
An email is a communication that happens in real time and can get important data
across to people in various geographies. An email is a record of the communications
that have happened and is stored on the server of the organization. One has to be
very cautious while typing out a mail.
History of Email
The age of email services is older than ARPANET and the Internet. The early emails
were only sent to the same computer. Email services were started in 1971 by Ray
Tomlinson. He first developed a system to send mail between users on different hosts
across the ARPANET, using @ sign with the destination server, and was recognized
as email.
Difference between Email and Webmail
To differentiate between email and webmail, we need to know that it’s a working
platform. Those types of mail that are sent through the browser are called webmail
and those mail that are sent through the specific application and browser are also
called email. Gmail is a browser-based email whereas Outlook for Office 365 is a non-
browser email service. To send browser-based mail, we just use the internet whereas
sending non-browser emails, we need a specific application, and non-browser-based
email offered some security-related advantages.
Uses of Email
Email services are used in various sectors, and organizations, either personally, or
among a large group of people. It provides an easy way to communicate with
individuals or groups by sending and receiving documents, images, links, and other
files. It also provides the flexibility of communicating with others on their own
schedule.
Large or small companies can use email services to many employees, and customers.
A company can send emails to many employees at a time. It becomes a professional
way to communicate. A newsletters service is also used to send company
advertisements, promotions, and other subscribed content to use advertisements,
promotions.
Types of Email
Newsletters
It is a type of email sent by an individual or company to the subscriber. It contains an
advertisement, product promotion, updates regarding the organization, and marketing
content. It might be upcoming events, seminars, or webinars from the organization.
Onboarding emails
It is an email a user receives right after the subscription. These emails are sent to
buyers to familiarize and tell them about using a product. It also contains details about
the journey in the new organization.
Transactional
These types of emails might contain invoices for recent transactions and details about
transactions. If transactions failed then details about when the amount will be
reverted. We can say that transaction emails are confirmation of purchase.
Plain-Text Emails
These types of emails contain just simple text similar to other text message services.
It does not include images, videos, documents, graphics, or any attachments. Plain-
text emails are also used to send casual chatting like other text message services.
Advantages of Email Services
These are the following advantages of email services:
Easy and Fast:
Composing an email is very simple and one of the fast ways to communicate. We can
send an email within a minute just by clicking the mouse. It contains a minimum lag
time and can be exchanged quickly.
Secure:
Email services are a secure and reliable method to receive and send information. The
feature of spam provides more security because a user can easily eliminate malicious
content.
Mass Sending:
We can easily send a message to many people at a time through email. Suppose, a
company wants to send holiday information to all employees than using email, it can
be done easily. The feature of mail merge in MS Word provides more options to send
messages to many people just by exchanging relevant information.
Multimedia Email:
Email offers to send multimedia, documents, images, audio files, videos, and various
types of files. We can easily attach the types of files in the original format or
compressed format.
Disadvantages of Email Services
Malicious Use:
Anyone can send an email just by knowing their email address. An anonymous user or
unauthorized person can send an email if they have an email address. The
attachment feature of the email be the major disadvantage of it, hackers can send
viruses through email because sometimes the spam feature unable to classify
suspicious emails.
Spam:
Days email services improve this feature. To improve this feature sometimes some
important email is transferred into spam without any notification.
Time-Consuming:
Responding through email takes more time rather than other message services like
WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. Email is good for professional discussion but not good for
casual chatting.
Popular Email Services
These are some popular email services:
Gmail:
Gmail is the world’s most used email service provided by Google. Today, more than
1.5 billion active users worldwide. It is a web-based email service available on various
devices. It supported email clients via the POP and IMAP protocols. Gmail is like other
mail services, we can send and receive emails, block spam, create an address book,
and perform other basic email tasks.
To access Gmail, we need a Google account. It is just like many services offered by
Google by registered users. The creation of a new Google account is free for
everyone. The domain of Gmail is [email protected] where Xyz is your unique
username.
Outlook:
Outlook is also a popular webmail service founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack
Smith as Hotmail later in 1997 acquired by Microsoft. It is older than Gmail. Like other
webmail services, Outlook supports Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and later versions of
Internet Explorer. It has more features like keyboard controls ability that provides more
facility to the users.
To access Outlook, we need an Outlook account. It is free to create an account and
send mail. It also operates other Microsoft applications like Microsoft Word, Power BI,
etc. The domain of Outlook is [email protected] where the abc is our unique
username.
Some other popular Email services are Hotmail, yahoo mail, Protonmail, Zohomail,
etc.
E-Mail Format
Electronic Mail (e-mail) is one of the most widely used services of the Internet. This
service allows an Internet user to send a message in a formatted manner (mail) to
other Internet users in any part of the world. Message in the mail not only contain text,
but it also contains images, audio and videos data. The person who is sending mail is
called sender and person who receives mail is called the recipient. It is just like
postal mail service.
Format of E-mail :
An e-mail consists of three parts that are as follows :
1. Envelope
2. Header
3. Body
These are explained as following below.
1. Envelope :
The envelope part encapsulates the message. It contains all information that is
required for sending any e-mail such as destination address, priority and security
level. The envelope is used by MTAs for routing message.
2. Header :
The header consists of a series of lines. Each header field consists of a single line of
ASCII text specifying field name, colon and value. The main header fields related to
message transport are :
1. To: It specifies the DNS address of the primary recipient(s).
2. Cc : It refers to carbon copy. It specifies address of secondary recipient(s).
3. BCC: It refers to blind carbon copy. It is very similar to Cc. The only difference
between Cc and Bcc is that it allow user to send copy to the third party without
primary and secondary recipient knowing about this.
4. From : It specifies name of person who wrote message.
5. Sender : It specifies e-mail address of person who has sent message.
6. Received : It refers to identity of sender’s, data and also time message was
received. It also contains the information which is used to find bugs in routing
system.
7. Return-Path: It is added by the message transfer agent. This part is used to
specify how to get back to the sender.
3. Body:- The body of a message contains text that is the actual content/message
that needs to be sent, such as “Employees who are eligible for the new health care
program should contact their supervisors by next Friday if they want to switch.” The
message body also may include signatures or automatically generated text that is
inserted by the sender’s email system.
The above-discussed field is represented in tabular form as follows :

Header Meaning
 Header Meaning

To: E-mail address of primary receipt(s).

Cc: E-mail address of secondary receipt(s).

Bcc: E-mail address for blind carbon copies.

From: Person or people who have created a message.

Sender: E-mail address of the actual sender.

Received: It is used to specify how to get back to the sender.

Return-Path It can be used to identify a path back to the sender.

In addition to above-discussed fields, the header may also contain a variety of other
fields which are as follows :

Header Meaning

Date: Date and time when the message was sent.

Reply-To: It contains e-mail address to which replies should be sent.

Message-Id: It refers to the unique number for referencing this message later.

In-Reply-To: Message-Id of a message to which this is as a reply.

References: It contains other relevant message-ids.

Keywords: User-chosen keywords.

Subject: It contains short summary of message for one-line display.

What is an email client?

Electronic mail (email) can be defined as a process of exchanging
information/messages stored in a computer system by using an internet
communication system. Emails generally contain text but nowadays media and other
types of files can also be attached. When an email is sent then it goes to a remote
computer say email server and stored there until the recipient of the email go online
and check it.
For sending and receiving any email an email address is needed, every email address
comprises three parts :
1. Username: It can be anything but following the guidelines decided by the email
provider.
2. Domain name/host: It is the mail server where the message will be stored. It can
be @gmail, @outlook, etc.
3. Domain Type: It tells whether a given email address is commercial like .com or
educational .edu and some other custom type.
For example, [email protected] is an email address, it has three-part, joy is a
username, @gmail shows a domain name, and .com shows a domain type.
Email System
A complete email system is formed with three things:
1. Email Client
2. Mail Transfer Agent
3. Mail Delivery Agent
Email Client
An email client is also known as a Mail User Agent. It is actually the program or the
application that one has on his/her computer to send and receive emails. The email
client is used to compose emails, send them, and read them. It is basically used for
email management like creating, sending, receiving, and deleting emails.
Features of Email Client:
1. It hides the complexity of sending and receiving emails by providing a user-friendly
interface. By using this interface it is possible for any novice user to send and
receive emails easily.
2. Most of the email client servers provide some kind of backup so one need not
worry if any message is deleted as it will move to the bin and one can recover it
from there.
3. Each email client provides a high level of encryption to the messages while
sending them on the internet to reach the server, so it takes care of privacy or
confidentiality.
4. One of the most important features is accessibility means the ability to read
messages from any computer or mobile device from anywhere in the world by
using an internet connection.
5. No problem of memory or space as email clients provide more than sufficient
memory space on email servers.
6. Email clients can also be used as a to-do list for setting important reminders.
Examples
Some of the famous Email Clients are as follows:-
Microsoft Outlook: It is one of the best email clients as it has lots of features that
individuals can use for personal information management. It is a part of the Office 365
suite. It can be used in both ways as stand-alone software and also as multiple-user
software.
Some of the features of Microsoft Outlook are:
1. Task Management
2. Contact Management
3. Setting Reminders
4. Note Taking
5. Calendar Management
Mailbird: This email client is very useful in the management of multiple emails in a
single location with countless features and customizing options. It provides one of the
modern interfaces which is very easy to use even for new users. Integration of other
apps like LinkedIn, Whatsapp, Meet, and many more are possible here.
Some of the features of Mailbird are:
1. Email Tracking
2. Calendar syncing and integration options
3. The facility of speed reader
4. Feature of customizing themes
5. Events management
What is Webmail?
Webmail is an email service that can be accessed through a web browser so it does
not require to be downloaded and installed on a local computer or device its on a web
browser so the user can access their email accounts from any device with an internet
connection and a web browser and thus it eliminates the need for a dedicated email
client software and allows users to manage their email accounts through a user
interface provided by the email service provider. some of the popular webmail include
Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Outlook.com.
With Webmail, you may use and access your email from virtually anywhere with an
internet connection. Webmail is a cloud-based service or Web-based email system. It
doesn't require program installation, in contrast to Microsoft Outlook or Thunderbird.
It's a type of service that some businesses and ISPs (Internet service providers) offer.
Particularly among younger users, these server-based email services are becoming
common. Similar to Microsoft Outlook, these services offer an appropriate alternative
to email services in this scenario because emails are kept locally on the physical
storage drive and retrieval requires login into a server connection.
History of Webmail
The process of accessing email from any device and anywhere with an internet
connection has become common nowadays but it wasn’t the same before it has some
history and has to go through decades of transformation to become so common today.
This can be traced back to the year 1993, when at CERN webmail application
prototype was developed but it remained internal but soon several people and team
created working webmail.
The year 1996 can be marked as important time in history of webmail as it was the
year when Hotmail (later acquired by Microsoft and renamed Outlook.com) was
launched by offering free email with 4MB storage which can be considered to be
significant amount at that time. Hotmail attracted millions of users popularizing the
concept of webmail. Other webmail also joined like RocketMail (later named Yahoo!
mail) and further solidified webmail’s place in communication system.
Then came early 2000s where tech giants like Google entered webmail arena and in
2004 launched Gmail. Gmail was launched with many innovative features like search
and conversation threading. Microsoft then improved Hotmail and competition
increased which lead to further development and improvement. Presently platform like
Gmail offers other features also like video conference which got common during Covid
in India , document editing and calendar integration and many more such features
such that it become common for all people and can be treated as identity on internet.
Comparison Between Gmail, Yahoo Mail and Outlook
Features GMAIL OUTLOOK YAHOO

Storage 15GB(free) 15GB(free) 1TB(free)

Spam filtering Highly effective effective effective

Mobile Apps
Present for both Present Present Present
Android and ios.

Colorful and clean and

Interface Clean and modern
customizable professional

Attachment limits 25 MB 20 MB 25 MB

Integration with Integration with

other services Deep other services Deep Integration with
Integration with
integration with integration with Yahoo News,
other services
other google other google Finance, etc.
services like Docs, services like Docs,
 Features GMAIL OUTLOOK YAHOO

Drive and Calendar. Drive and Calendar.

Deep integration Deep integration
with Microsoft with Microsoft
services like Office , services like Office ,
One drive and One drive and
Calendar. Calendar.
Integration with Integration with
Yahoo News, Yahoo News,
Finance, etc. Finance, etc.

Professionals and
Individuals and Users who value
businesses who
businesses who rely large storage space
Best for prefer Microsoft
heavily on Google and a casual
integration and
services interface
advanced features

Can integrate to
enhance its features
as its owner
Can integrate Ai as company Microsoft Can use api service
Future Aspect its owner company have partnership of AI or devlop to
google owns Bard. with Chat Gpt. Can improve itself.
use api service of AI
or devlop to improve
itself.

Advantages of Webmail
 Accessibility from Anywhere: Webmail allows us to access email account from
anywhere and from any device which is connected to internet and have a web
browser.
 No Installation Required: Unlike desktop email clients that are required to be
installed on each device there is no such requirements of installation in case of
webmail services .This also eliminates the need for software updates and
compatibility issues.
 Integration with Cloud Services: There are any webmail services that are
integrated with cloud storage some examples are Gmail linked to Google drive and
Outlook.com linked to One drive. This features is useful in sharing of files and
attachments as well as document collaboration .
 Cross-Platform Compatibility: Web mail is platform independent which means
that it works independently of operating system and devices so it can work on
various operating systems, including Windows, macOS, Linux, and mobile
platforms like Android and iOS. This versatility makes it very good choice for us
who switch between devices and operating systems.
 Enhanced Features: Many webmail platforms offer features like video
conferencing (in case of Gmail you might have heard about Google Meet),
document collaboration, and calendar integration which cab be used as reminder.
 This makes webmail more useful and advantageous and also security with features
like two-factor authentication and spam filtering, guarding our data from
unauthorized access makes it more assuring to use.
Disadvantages of Webmail
 Reliance on Internet Connection: As webmail requires an active internet
connection to access emails without which it can be considered useless. Areas with
poor internet or network connectivity or during outages can be victim of this type of
disadvantage.
 Vulnerability to Security Threats: While platforms have security measures,
phishing scams and malware attacks can still target webmail users as phishing
emails can trick us into revealing sensitive information which is not good as our
whole information can be leaked and our email can be used in wrong way.
 Privacy Concerns: As webmail service providers collects our(user) data for ads
and analytic purpose. This can concern privacy issue as our emails and activity are
being analyzed and probably shared with third party.
 Spam and Clutter: Although spam filters feature is present in webmail, spam
emails can still find their way to inboxes leading to adding of clutter and wasting
time. Managing and sorting the unwanted emails can be frustrating and inefficient
thus can be counted as one of the disadvantages.
 Reliance on Service Provider: As we are dependent on webmail service provider
for the availability and performance of the service . If the provider experiences
some technical issue or is not able to provide service for sometime it can lead to
many problems as not accessing our mails during required time, data loss, etc.
Conclusion
Webmail has become an integral part of modern communication which offer the users
a flexibility and convenience of accessing their email accounts from any device with
an internet connection and a web browser . on basis of the comparison in article we
are able to view that Gmail, Outlook.com, and Yahoo Mail, each platform has its
unique features and strengths so in conclusion it can said the decision of using
webmail or not totally depends on individual preferences, needs, and considerations
of convenience and security.