I often have discussions with clients regarding their email accounts. When I develop a new website for them, I encourage them to use a domain-based email address rather than using their pre-existing free email account. But once they’ve been convinced to use a domain-based email address, they are confused with how they will read this email and also still read their free email account.

The solution: use a desktop mail application.

Having a desktop mail application is like having your own personal delivery person whose job it is to go and retrieve all of your email from where ever it may be and delivery it right to your desktop.

I’ve tried to create a picture below that describes how using a mail application to retrieve and delivery mail from various web mail accounts works. When you have web mail, whether it’s using one from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) like Comcast, or whether it’s from a free web mail service like Google, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail, or whether it’s from your website’s domain – all of them reside on different web mail servers. Each has it’s own separate place on the web that you need to go to, login with a different userid and password, and different interface that allows you to read new mail and send mail.

There are many disadvantages of having to check, one by one, each different email account – the waste of time, confusion, having to learn each different web mail interface…and the worst of all, the time delay that a potential new customer experiences when they send mail to a mailbox that no one is checking regularly.

Here’s the picture of web mail versus using a mail application:

The desktop mail application does the work for you. It remembers where the different web mail accounts are, each of their userid’s and passwords, and constantly monitors them to check to see whether new mail has arrived. It also allows you to reply and send emails out via each web mail account with separate “from” addresses that match that account and signatures. It keeps your personal and business emails separate – but integrates them into one, simple application that you view on your desktop.

There are many mail applications out there. Most of my clients seem to use Outlook. I’m on a Mac, and I prefer to use Thunderbird, which is free. Thunderbird retrieves email from my three separate email accounts (one business, two personal) and puts them into one nicely organized inbox. It continuously checks my mail accounts for me, and makes a noise whenever new mail arrives. I send and reply to my different email accounts from one place, without ever having to login to anything.

Using Thunderbird, or any other mail application, will greatly simplify your email life, and it’s something I highly recommend to all of my website clients. Even if you only have one web mail account, it will save you time and frustration.

If you found this article helpful, please take a moment to share it with your friends, it will be much appreciated. Thanks! Jill