You should know that webmail and email client are the two most common options for working with your email. We hope that this article will serve as a starting point for you to understand the difference between the two.
Let's start with the basics: what is webmail?
Let’s say you sign up for a hosting plan that offers business email service with your domain name. For example, your website is www.businessname.com and you can have the custom address “[email protected]”.
Well, when you create your email account on the web server, the hosting service will create an access so that you can read and compose your emails using what is known as webmail.
Webmail is a web-based email access system; that is, to view your emails you need to access them from your browser. If you have ever checked your free email (from accounts like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo) on your computer, you have already dealt with webmail in some way, the only difference here is that you connect to your hosting server and not to the server of the company that offers you the free email.
What GoDaddy webmail looks like
GoDaddy webmail example. Image by Sane Box
To access webmail you need to enter a web address (i.e. a link) that your business email administrator will provide you. This address will point directly to your website server and will present you with a very simple interface where you will need to enter your username and password, basically like any other service.
Once you log in, and if this is your first time, you will need to select the web brazil business email list mail tool you prefer to use. There are several options, but fear not. Personally, after suffering for a while between choosing one alternative or another, I came to a conclusion: out of the three options offered by my hosting service - Roundcube, Squirrelmail and Horde Mail - the one that most closely resembled what I thought I “should” get was Roundcube.
While using it (albeit for a short time), I was finally able to feel less frustrated with its design, layout, ease of use, and available features. However, I won’t go into details about how it works, as I prefer to talk about…
What are email clients?
For some years now I have been working on my own and in different work environments with email clients, mainly with Outlook, which is one of the most popular.
But hey… you should know that an email client is a software that you install on your computer (either Mac or PC) so you can check your emails without having to open your browser. All you need to do is enter some data that the email administrator on your website must share with you, such as:
Incoming servers.
Outgoing servers.
IMAP or POP3 protocols.
Inter alia.
I know it sounds complicated, but in the installation process this simply results in copying and pasting information.
Once you have all the necessary data, as well as your username and password confirmed, all you have to do is wait for the emails to start “falling” into the program’s inbox and you will be ready to write or receive messages from the application.
What an email client looks like: Outlook
Outlook example. Image from Office Support
The great advantage of working with Outlook, for example, is that you can perfectly synchronize it with your work rhythm, integrating calendars, contacts, reminders, filters and assigning priorities to certain emails, among other features that, even after using it for years, you probably don't realize are there, such as the wonderful function of recovering an email that hasn't been read yet and even exchanging it for a new version (if you have Office 365 or Microsoft Exchange).
The email client is a convenient and uncomplicated tool that will undoubtedly change the way you work.
And at the end of the day, what are the differences between webmail and email client?
To check, send, create and delete emails in webmail you need to access it from a browser (like Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Internet Explorer, to name a few) and have an internet connection. To do the same in an email client, you need to download the application of your choice on your computer, and you also need an internet connection to sync new emails.
Email clients are ideal if you have multiple email addresses with different domains, and you need to manage them all in one place.
On the other hand, with webmail you can have a single inbox for all your accounts, so you don't need to access each account separately.
A client like Outlook is functional for accessing your past emails even without an internet connection. Whereas with a webmail, even if you download the app for your mobile phone, you may not be able to check certain emails if you don't have mobile data or WiFi.
If you prefer to log in to your browser instead of downloading an app, webmail is a great option. It's also useful if you can't download apps because you're using a computer that's not yours.
