Email Clients

In order to send and receive email you will need an email client.

There are two popular types of email client they are:

Client/desktop based often called POP3 email.
Web Based email

Client based or POP3 email

This is a dedicated email client; examples are:

Outlook express
Outlook (98,2000,2003,2007)
IncrediMail
Thunderbird
and many others

One of these clients needs to be installed on the computer you are using, and needs to be correctly configured before you can send and receive email.

The term POP3 client arises because the protocol they use to receive email is usually POP3 (post Office Protocol version 3). These types of client have been around since the birth of email when they were command line based, and they are still the type that most people use.

You should note that POP3 isn't the only protocol used see POP3 and IMAP4 Compared

Web Based Email Clients

These clients are simply web browsers with the work all being done on the web server. Hotmail was the first well known example and was purchased by Microsoft January 1998.

The advantage of this type of client is that no software other than a web browser needs to be installed on the user's computer. This means that access to email can be accomplished at any computer that has a web browser (almost 100% have).

Almost all email providers now provide access to email via a web based client.. The main disadvantage of this type of access is you need to be connected to the Internet in order to read/write emails.

There are three main providers of free email services that provide access primarily through a web browser. They are:

Hotmail
Yahoo Email
Google Gmail

You should note that free email accounts from Hotmail and yahoo are only accessible via Webmail but Google provides access via webmail,pop3 and Imap4.

From the three main providers of free email Google Gmail is my preferred option.

However you aren't limited to the main three. Almost all email providers now allow access using web based clients as well as the traditional POP3 and IMAP4 clients.

Email Access Using Multiple Clients

You can access your email using one or more clients located on the same or different computers. This situation arises when you:

Travel
Need to access work email from home or vice versa
Have multiple computers that you frequently use.
Have multiple Email Accounts/addresses and want to keep them completely separate

See Using Multiple Email Clients for more details.

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