POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) is a protocol used for downloading email messages from an email server to your computer. With a POP3 email account, all of the email messages sent to your email address are stored on a POP3 mail server until you log on to the server and download the messages.

Hostway provides POP3 email accounts with every hosting plan. You can use SiteMail, Hostway’s Web-based email application, to download your messages from the server or you can use a traditional email client such as Microsoft® Outlook®, Eudora® or Netscape® Communicator.

Spam is the term used for mass, unsolicited emails. Usually these are promotions or advertisements sent in “bulk” to the email addresses of people who have not requested this information. Hostway strictly prohibits sending spam from any email address on our mail servers or advertising your Web site in other company's spam mail. For more information on our policy, visit www.hostway-uk.com.

Yes. Hostway's CleanMail and CleanMail Plus provide spam and virus filtering that helps keep your email span- and virus-free. All incoming email messages are automatically scanned to detect for viruses and to determine if the message meets specially defined "spam criteria."

Our standard spam filtering system, which utilise SpamAssasin, is built around a set of spam rules that have been carefully developed to provide you protection from spam while reducing the number of valid email messages that may be mistakenly categorise as spam.

All incoming emails are evaluated against these spam rules and are assigned a "spam score." This score determines whether the message will be classified as spam. For standard filtering, the threshold is set at 5, meaning any message with a score of 5 or higher is classified as spam. Messages scoring between 5 and 10 will be delivered, but will include a spam notification in the subject of the email so that you can immediately identify and delete these messages. The following illustrates a sample subject line of an email message that scores between 5 and 10.

*****SPAM*****FREE PAY-PER-VIEW for life!

Messages that receive a spam ranking above 10 are automatically deleted so that they do not end up in your in-box.

Upgrading to CleanMail Plus enables you to customise spam filtering to meet your unique needs.

Yes. Hostway's CleanMail and CleanMail Plus provide spam and virus filtering that helps keep your email spam- and virus-free. All incoming email messages are automatically scanned to detect for viruses and to determine if the message meets specially defined "spam criteria."

As soon as an email reaches our mail servers, our virus filtering system scans the incoming message and any attachments using the latest virus definitions. With standard virus filtering, if an email is found to contain a virus, the email is automatically deleted and a notification is sent to both the sender and the recipient. Upgrading to CleanMail Plus enables you to customise the virus scanning to meet your unique needs.

Our virus definitions are updated on a daily basis to provide the greatest security.

If you use Imail, then please note that your Imail server utilises an anti-spam method known as SMTP Filtering. Although it reduces the number of spam messages and enhances the performance of the server, it is possible that legitimate emails may be filtered. For more details, please click here.

Email forwarding is a way for you to have email messages that are sent to one address automatically forwarded to a different address. For example, your customers may send all of their requests for information to the email address information@yourdomain.com. You could set up your email so that all of the messages sent to that address are automatically forwarded to your personal email account at yourname@yourisp.com.

Hostway provides unlimited use of email forwarding. You can set up different forwarding addresses in SiteControl.

An email alias is a “virtual” email account. It enables you to use an email address that doesn’t really exist and have all the messages sent to that address routed to a real email account.

For example, you may want to provide a link on your Web site that enables visitors to send email to the Web Master, who is really you. You can use the email alias webmaster@yourdomain.com but have the email routed to your real email account.

You can also use email aliases to overcome problems with duplicate email addresses. If the email address you want to use is already taken, you can still use it as an alias and then route the email to a valid address.

Hostway enables you to set up an unlimited number of email aliases.

An email autoresponder sends an automated email response to each incoming message that is sent to a specific address. For example, a potential customer may send an email to sales@yourdomain.com asking for more information about some of your products. You can have the autoresponder send a prewritten message back to the customer thanking them for their interest and letting them know that a sales representative will be contacting them shortly. This feature helps you to improve your company’s image, as your customers will know right away that you have received their email and that you are responsive to their needs.

Hostway enables you to set up an autoresponder for each of your email accounts.

The number of different email accounts you can set up depends upon your hosting plan. For example, the Gold Plan comes with 10 accounts, while the Platinum Plus Plan includes 100 accounts. You can add additional email accounts to your plan as necessary. Visit our Web site for pricing information.

When you first activate your Hostway account, one default email account is already set up for you. This default account acts as a "catch-all" account—all email messages sent to your domain that are not addressed to an actual email address will be sent to this mailbox. Usually, this account will be in the format domainname@domainname.com. This email account is associated with your Master User account, and you will use your Master User account password to access this account’s mail. You can view the details of this account in SiteControl by selecting the Email link.

If your plan includes multiple email accounts, you can set these up in SiteControl as well. The SiteControl User Guide provides step-by-step instructions for creating and modifying email accounts.

If you would like to create additional email accounts, you can do so from within SiteControl.

Yes. Hostway offers a tool called “MailMan” that enables you to create and manage mailing lists. For each mailing list you create, Mailman creates a Web page that your site’s visitors can use to subscribe to and unsubscribe from lists. Mailman provides other features such as archiving, mail-to-news gateways, integrated bounce handling and spam prevention.

You can create and manage your Mailman mailing list directly from SiteControl. The SiteControl User Guide provides detailed instructions for using Mailman

You can change your email password in SiteControl. Click the Users/Passwords link and then click the Change Password link next to your account. The next time you check your mail, you will use the new password. If you are using an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Communicator, be sure you make the necessary changes to your connection information.

If you change the password for your Master User account, remember that you use the same password to connect to the Web server and transfer files, so be sure to change the password in your FTP client or in Microsoft FrontPage.

You can check your mail using a traditional email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Navigator or by using Hostway’s Web-based email application, SiteMail.

SiteMail enables you to check your email using your Web browser from any location as long as you have access to the Internet. One of the advantages of SiteMail is that you can use SiteMail and traditional email clients such as Outlook to check the same email account. So, when you’re in the office you can use your favourite email application, but when you’re travelling you can just log in to SiteMail.

To use SiteMail, simply point your browser to http://sitemail.securepod.com and then log in using your email address and password.

If you want to use another email client you will have to configure it so that it can connect to the mail server. You will need to know your incoming (POP3) server name, your outgoing (SMTP) server name and your user name and password. Hostway’s User Guides and Manuals provide detailed instructions for setting up the most common email clients.

Your mail box on the server can hold up to 25 MB. This includes both your messages and any attachments. Once you download your email to your computer, these messages are no longer in your mailbox on the mail server and are not counted toward the 10 MB limit.

If you need additional disk space, you can order that from within SiteControl using the Usage Details module.

You can send and receive attachments up to 6.5 MB in size, as long as this does not cause your mailbox to exceed the 10 MB limit. For example, if your mailbox is currently at 2 MB, you could receive a 5 MB attachment. However, if your mailbox is at 7 MB, a 5 MB attachment would be returned as undeliverable.

The mail server limits all outgoing and incoming emails to 10 MB. Keep in mind that attachments require additional overhead. So a 6.5 MB file attached may actually be 10 MB.

This occurs when you have not been properly authenticated. An SMTP authentication is required In order to prevent spammers from accessing the outgoing mail server and using your account to send spam. Each time you log in to your email client, you will need to be authenticated before you can send mail. All you need to do is check your email (that is, connect to the POP3 or incoming mail server). Once you do this, you will be authenticated for the entire time you remain signed on.

You can use SiteControl to automatically "bounce" all incoming email messages from specified addresses. When messages from these email addresses arrive at the mail server, they will be returned to the sender automatically and will not end up in your in-box.