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.

Optimum Online web hosting provides at least one POP3 email account with every hosting plan. You can use SiteMail, Optimum Online's web hosting ’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. Optimum Online web hosting 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.optonline.net.

Yes. Optimum Online's web hosting '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."

Our standard spam filtering system, which utilizes 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 categorized 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 customize spam filtering to meet your unique needs.

Yes. Optimum Online's web hosting '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."

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 customize the virus scanning to meet your unique needs.

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

SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a protocol for sending email messages across the Internet. It is used in conjunction with both POP3 and IMAP, protocols that enable you to download messages from a mail server to your computer. SMTP is used for outgoing mail while POP3 and IMAP are used for incoming mail. Optimum Online web hosting does not support IMAP.

If you want to use an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Netscape Communicator to send email messages, you will need to configure the client so that it connects to the correct SMTP mail server each time you send mail.

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.

Optimum Online web hosting 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.

Optimum Online web hosting 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.

Optimum Online web hosting 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. You can add additional email accounts to your plan as necessary. Visit our Web site for pricing information.

When you first activate your Optimum Online web hosting account, one default email account is already set up for you. Usually, this 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.

The catch-all function enables you to accept emails whose intended recipient does not exist in your domain. For example, let's assume you created two POP email accounts (john@mydomain.com and sales@mydomain.com) and one email alias (mary@mydomain.com that redirects to sales@mydomain.com) in SiteControl. If someone sends an email to johndoe@mydomain.com, an account that currently does not exist, then the email will still be received.

However, a substantial disadvantage to the catch-all function is that it catches far more spam than legitimate emails. As such, we are starting to phase out the catch-all feature and will eventually remove it entirely, so we suggest that you do not rely on it.

Yes. Optimum Online web hosting 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 Optimum Online's web hosting ’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 favorite email application, but when you’re traveling you can just log in to SiteMail.

To use SiteMail, simply point your browser to http://sitemail.webhosting.optonline.net 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. Optimum Online's web hosting ’s User Guides and Manuals provide detailed instructions for setting up the most common email clients.

So long as an email account remains below its size quota (for example, it's 75 MB on the Gold Plus Plan), there is no limit to the number of messages.

If you would like to increase your email account's quota, then in the Email section of SiteControl click Change Quota next to the appropriate email account.

You can send and receive attachments up to 10 MB in size, as long as this does not cause your mail box to exceed the email account quota as determined by your plan.

The mail server limits all outgoing and incoming emails to 10 MB.