What is the speciality of e-mail provided by ISP?

Question

I have a SIFY broadband connection. They offer e-mail facility. What is the difference between e-mail facility offered by them and other service poviders (from yahoo,google).

Answer 1

That depends on whether they provide pop3 service! If so, you can use a home based E mail app like outlook. If they have this service, All you have to do is open your Outlook express and they send mail directly to your PC. Keep in mind tho, if it IS available, I use mine for personal friends and family and NEVER give it out on the web! I use a second web based mail server like Yahoo for all web activity. This keeps most spam and viruses from getting close to my PC.

Answer 2

As someone else stated, you can use standalone programs to read your email, which may be easier than web-based and lacks advertisements. (Though for an extra fee, Yahoo and perhaps others allow you to use POP3 as well.) Also yahoo and others tend to get a lot of spam; you may get less spam with SIFY. SIFY may also be able to serve you mail on your own domain name, which is kind of a cool feature. If you do this you'll avoid one of the main drawbacks: non-portability, i.e., if you leave SIFY, you'll lose your email address. The other drawback of using POP3 is that your email is located in just one place, namely wherever you download it. (Also you are responsible for backing it up; if your hard drive crashes, goodbye mail.) If you read your mail on your PC at home, then shut it off and go on a trip, that email is totally inaccessible, whereas with Yahoo, Gmail, etc. you can access your email everywhere at all times. However, if SIFY offers access to mail via IMAP, this doesn't apply; you can read mail everywhere (although you may need your own laptop, unless SIFY offers webmail access).

So, to summarize, check with SIFY to see if A) they offer IMAP; B) they offer webmail access; C) they will host email on your own domain name (if you want to do this). If so, you'll really have not much of a disadvantage over the web-based email services, and may get less spam. This kind of email offers no advertisements and, I would argue, a cleaner interface. Also you'll be able to pick a cooler username (most of the nice ones are used up on web-base services). However, if you are not picky, are not technically inclined (hosting your own domain is a big pain, especially when you switch providers), and just want something that works and works anywhere and works forever, the web-based email services may be best choice for you.

Answer 3

ISP give out several email addresses and they are ok as long as you are with them or keeping SIYF as your ISP. Once you discontinue with SIFY you will loose all your email addresses.

Yahoo, Google and Hotmail are non ISP based addressses which I prefer so that I do not have to keep on changing my email addresses every time I change the ISP. They are easy to track and are available thru any computer overseas. My choice is yahoo, they give you more space [2 GB] than hotmail and they do not inctivate your account if you forget to use in a month and you can store more files there.

I hate it when I get emails every so often regarding the address changes when they change their ISP or relocate to other city or state.