E-mail is a mission critical part of many businesses. There are different ways of setting up your e-mail system:

• Webmail

  This is the fastest and easiest way to setup your e-mail. When you use webmail, all your e-mails are stored on the server and you access it through a website, for example, yourwebsite.com/webmail or gmail.com. This service is usually included in your hosting service. You just have to create e-mail accounts and you are ready to go, there is nothing to install or maintain.

• POP

  POP stands for Post Office Protocol (and also POP3). In POP, you use a mail client to download your e-mails from the POP mail server. You can use a local mail client (such as Thunderbird or Outlook) or a webmail client (such as Gmail).

There are a few things you can do to make e-mail more reliable and flexible.

• Do not use a third-party e-mail address

  Always use your own domain for your e-mail addresses, never use a third-party e-mail address. For example, if your website is www.yourcompany.com, always use bob@yourcompany.com, instead of bob@hotmail.com or bob@comcast.net. Using a third-party e-mail address is very unprofessional. You can route (forward, POP) your e-mails to a private third-party e-mail account (such as Gmail, more on this later), but in the public, always use an e-mail address that matches your domain.

• Configure webmail and POP to work together

  When you configure your POP client, set it to leave your e-mails on the server until you delete them. This means that you can access your e-mail either through the internet or from your local computer. If you don't have your computer with you, you can still access your e-mail through webmail if you have internet access. If you don't have internet access, you can still access your e-mail in your mail client if you are in front of your computer. Furthermore, your e-mails will be mirrored at two sites, remotely on the server and locally on your computer, this works like a backup system. If you use Gmail, you can also configure Gmail to send e-mails as different senders. This means that you can use Gmail to send and receive e-mails for different accounts.

• Set quota limits on the server

  If you store your e-mails on a server, you should set quotas on the mail boxes so that one rogue account won't bring down the whole system. For example, mail boxes on the server can easily grow until they exceed your hosting plan's storage limit and prevent other people from using their e-mail or prevent your website from working properly.

• Clean out your mail box regularly

  Your system will run faster, smoother and reduce the chance of encountering problems such as exceeding quota limits.

• Backup your e-mails regularly

  If your e-mails are important enough, perform your own regular backups. Don't assume someone else is backing up your e-mails or that backups will always work.

• Avoid running your own mail servers

  Unless you have a server environment that is as reliable as the average datacenter and you have professional system administrators, you should not run your own mail servers.

• If you pay an ISP to get online, do not use the e-mail account supplied by your ISP

  For example, comcast.net or sbcglobal.net. The reason is, if you decide to cancel your ISP service, you'll probably lose your ISP provided e-mail account.