What Is Email? | Importance, Types, Uses, Pros and Cons Explained

Email is a form of electronic communication that was developed in the 1970s in response to the need for faster communication during the age of letters and telegrams. This innovation fundamentally altered the way in which people communicate with one another. People often refer to Ray Tomlinson as the “father” of the email system since he was the first person to send a communication between two computer systems using the ARPANET. Email got its name because it was originally a form of electronic mail that could be sent to a person or a system without the need for a physical letter or piece of paper, in contrast to traditional mail. Email addresses and internet connections are necessary to fulfil the role of a postal service and a physical address, respectively.

What is e-mail or electronic mail ?

Email, or “electronic mail,” is the sending and receiving of computer-stored messages over the internet from one user to one or more recipients. Emails are a quick, cheap, and easy way to talk to people for business or personal reasons. Users can send emails from anywhere as long as they have access to the internet, which is usually done through an ISP.

Email is sent over computer networks, mostly the internet, but it can also be sent over public and private networks, like a local area network. Email can be sent to both single people and groups of people. An email reflector can be used to handle a shared distribution list. Users can join some mailing lists by sending a request to the list’s administrator. A list server is a computer that takes care of an email list automatically.

The TCP/IP suite of protocols provides a flexible email system that is built on basic protocols, such as the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) for sending mail and the Post Office Protocol 3 (POP3) for receiving mail. IMAP, which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol, can also be used to get mail because it lets you check your email from any device, anywhere. With POP3, the email message is downloaded from the email service and saved on the device that asked for it. It can only be read on the same device that asked for it.

Most email messages are written in ASCII format, which stands for American Standard Code for Information Exchange. Users can also send attachments that are not text files, such as graphic images and sound files. Email was one of the first things people did on the internet, and it’s still the most popular thing people do online. Email makes up a big part of all the traffic on the internet.

How important email is

• Business communication is easy and doesn’t pose any security risks. It’s also faster than any other way to talk. Also, it’s easy to keep track of contacts with email, and it’s better to check old messages often than to save them on a local server. This helps save space in the storage area.
• Most emails have a subject line, so it’s easy to figure out what they’re about and put them in the right folder. This makes it faster to check email. Emails that you don’t want can be easily ignored or moved to a spam folder.
• A tool for informal communication where the language doesn’t have to be formal because it’s made to sound like a conversation so that business can run smoothly. Emails are a quick way to start a conversation, which helps the business run smoothly.
• Email is faster than talking to someone face-to-face. Email is fast in both ways because it can be used to give information or to talk about business. No other tool makes sending messages this fast.

How does email work?

Email “clients” are the software programs and web browsers that send and receive email messages. Before reaching the email server of the recipient, each message goes through several servers. This is similar to how a traditional letter might go through several post offices before getting to its recipient’s mailbox.

Once an email has been sent, it takes a few steps to get where it’s going:

1. A Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) connection is made by the sender’s mail server, which is also called a Mail Transfer Agent (MTA).
2. The SMTP looks for the recipient’s email address in the email envelope data, which is the text that tells the server where to send a message. It then uses the Domain Name System (DNS) to turn the domain name into an IP address.
3. The SMTP looks for a mail exchange server (MX) that is linked to the domain name of the recipient. If there is one, the email is sent to the mail server of the recipient.
4. The email is stored on the recipient’s mail server and can be accessed through the Post Office Protocol (POP) or Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). The way these two protocols work is a little bit different: IMAP stores the email in the email client, so the recipient can access it from any connected device. POP sends the email to the recipient’s device and then deletes it from the mail server.

To continue the post office comparison, let’s say Emily sends David a thank-you note. She gives the letter to the mail carrier (MTA), who takes it to the post office to be sorted. A processing clerk (SMTP) at the post office checks that the address on the envelope is correct. If the address looks like it was written correctly and goes to a place that can get mail (called a “MX server”), another mail carrier brings the letter to David’s mailbox. David might put the note in his desk drawer, where he can only read it there (POP), or he might put it in his pocket, where he can read it anywhere (IMAP).

Note: The latest version of POP, called POP3, is called POP3.

Basic difference between Email and Webmail ?

We need to know that it works to tell the difference between email and webmail. Webmail is a type of email that is sent through a browser. Email also refers to email that is sent through an application and a browser. Outlook for Office 365 is an email service that doesn’t use a browser, while Gmail is an email service that does. We only need the internet to send browser-based email, but we need a special program to send non-browser-based email, which has some security advantages.

Structure of an email

There are three main parts to a single email: the SMTP envelope, the header, and the body.

SMTP envelope

SMTP’s “envelope” is the data that is sent between servers when an email is sent. It has the email address of the sender and the email address of the person who is getting the email. This envelope data tells the mail server where to send the message, just like an address on an envelope tells a mail carrier where to deliver a letter. Every time an email is sent to a different server, this envelope is thrown away and a new one is put in its place.

Header

The email header, like the SMTP envelope, gives important information about the sender and the recipient. Most of the time, the information in the SMTP envelope matches the information in the header, but this isn’t always the case. For example, a scammer might use a real email address in the header of an email to make it look like the message didn’t come from them. Since the recipient only sees the header and body of an email and not the data on the envelope, they might not realize the message is harmful.

The header may also have a few optional fields that let the person receiving the email reply, forward, file, archive, or delete it. The following are some other header fields:

1. The date the email is sent is in the “Date” field. This header field must be filled out.
2. The sender’s email address is in the “From” field. If the email address has a display name, that name may also appear in this field. This is also a header field that must be filled in.
3. The email address of the person who will get the message is in the “To” field. If the email address has a display name, that name may also appear in this field.
4. The “Subject” field is where the sender can put any information about the message that is important to the context. It is shown on a separate line above the email’s body.
5. The “Cc” field, which stands for “carbon copy,” lets the sender send a copy of the email to more than one person. The email address(es) in the “Cc” field can be seen by the people whose names are in the “To” field.
6. The “Bcc” field, which stands for “blind carbon copy,” lets the sender send a copy of the email to more than one person. The email address(es) in the “Bcc” field can’t be seen by the people whose names are in the “To” field.

Body

The email’s body is where the sender puts any information they want to send, such as text, images, links, videos, and/or other file attachments, as long as they don’t go over the size limits of the email client. You can also send an email without putting anything in the body field.

The body of an email can be formatted as plain text or HTML, depending on what the email client lets you do. Plain text emails don’t have special formatting (like font colors other than black) or media (like images). They can be used on any device and with any email client. Formatting and multimedia can be used in the body field of HTML emails, but some HTML elements may be marked as spam by email filtering systems or may not show up right on devices or clients that aren’t compatible.

What is an email client?

An email client is a piece of software or a web app that lets people send, receive, and save emails. Outlook, Gmail, and Apple Mail are all popular email clients.

Both software and web-based email clients have their pros and cons. Desktop email clients often have better security features, make it easier to manage email across multiple accounts, let you check your email when you’re not online, and let you save copies of your emails on your computer. Web-based clients, on the other hand, are usually cheaper and easier to use because users can log in to their account from any web browser. However, they need to be connected to the Internet and can be more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

*At first, “email” meant email clients that ran on your computer, and “webmail” meant web-based email clients. Today, the word “email” refers to both methods.

Understanding an email address

An email address is a unique string of characters that points to an email account, or “mailbox,” where messages can be sent and received. There are three parts to an email address: the local part, the “@” symbol, and the domain.

In the email address contact@download.zone, for example, “contact” is the local part and “download.zone” is the domain.

Think about how you would address a letter: the domain would be the city where the recipient lives, and the local-part would be the street and house number where the letter can be delivered.

Local-part

The local-part tells the server where an email message is going to end up. It can be a mix of letters, numbers, and some punctuation marks (like underscores). The maximum number of characters in an email address, including the local part and the domain, is 320, but the recommended length is only 254 characters.

Domain

The domain can be a domain name, like download.zone, or an IP address, like 192.0.2.0. In the first case, the SMTP protocol uses DNS to turn a domain name into an IP address before sending the message to the next server.

The Internet Engineering Task Force has set certain formatting rules for the domain, just like they do for the local-part (IETF). Domain names that are allowed to be used can have a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens. Instead of a domain name, an email address can also be set up with an IP address in brackets. This is rare, though. A domain name can have no more than 63 characters.

Different Types Of Email

1. Plain-Text Emails: Like other text message services, plain-text emails only have plain text. They don’t have any pictures, videos, documents, graphics, or other files attached. Like other text message services, these emails are also used to send random chats.

2. Onboarding emails: These are the first emails a user gets after signing up. These emails are sent to buyers to help them learn how to use a product and get to know it better. It also has information about the journey in the new group.

3. Promotional emails: It offer buyers something, like a discount on the price of the item, a free month of service, or lower prices for managed services. This type of B2B email is the most common.

4. Newsletter emails: This is the most common type of email that is sent regularly to everyone on a mailing list, whether it’s once a day, once a week, or once a month. Most of the time, these emails have links to the blog or selected content that was just published.

Newsletter emails are usually sent on a regular schedule and give businesses a way to give their customers important information from a single source.

How email is used

• The one use that comes to mind most often is that we can contact the person at any time of day, and they can read the mail and reply when it’s convenient for them. This shows that the email respects the person’s time and keeps them from having to talk too much.
• The old way to talk to people anywhere in the world was expensive. Mail can be sent to anyone with an email address with just one click, which makes it easy to stay in touch. And if the system is connected to the internet, this is done for free.
• Emails can be used for a lot of different things, depending on who sends them. It can be used as a way to tell people about a problem or an update. It can also be used to give the team instructions and guidelines to follow, a route map for a trip, cleaning or hospitalizing instructions, or anything else that seems important to the user.
• Emails can be used to apply for admissions, find out if you were accepted, and get job offers. It makes communication easy and smooth, and clicking the “send” button makes it simple for people.

Pros and Cons of email

Pros

• Easy and Quick: Writing an email is easy and one of the quickest ways to talk to someone. We can send an email in one minute by just clicking the mouse. It can be traded quickly and has a low latency.
  Email is a very convenient way to communicate with other people, and many email services are free for both individuals and businesses.
• Mass Communication: Email can be used to talk to a lot of different people at once.
• Environment-friendly: One of the best things about email is that it doesn’t need paper, pages, pens, or cardboard boxes.
• Reach Around the World: Email can close social and geographical gaps by getting rid of status signals.
• Can be Scheduled Delivery: Users can plan when emails will be sent and can also set up automated replies to emails.
• Multimedia emails: It’s easy to send photos, videos, and other files to more than one person in a single email, and they arrive right away. Also, it can be saved permanently in the mailbox as cloud storage. By email, you can save and sort all the information, including the time and the list of people who got the messages.

Cons

• Time-consuming compared to text messages: Email is a bit of a pain to use and takes more time to respond to than other messaging apps like Skype, Whatsapp, etc. Email is a good way to share short bits of information that are relevant to work.
• Malicious use of email: It is bad because anyone with an email address can send an email under their own name. The main problem is the attachment feature of email. Hackers can send viruses through email because sometimes the spam feature can’t tell which emails are suspicious.
• Viruses: One of the most common ways for viruses to get into devices is through email. The email itself could have a virus, or the virus could be in a file that was attached to the email. Infected emails can come from anyone or look like they came from someone you know and trust. When you open the email or attached file, the virus gets into the system and starts to spread.
• Personal touch missing: The email doesn’t have a personal touch. Some things should be said out loud or written by hand in a note or letter, while others should be written down and typed.

Read more: I recorded you email scam, things you should know

Conclusion

That’s all there is to know about emails, their pros, cons, and features. We hope that this article will help you learn something new and refresh what you already know. I’m glad you read.