WebMail Functionality
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WebMail is a useful, convenient, and reliable productivity and communications tool. However, as with all on-line tools, WebMail operates within a well-defined performance envelope. In other words, although powerful, WebMail has some limitations that need to be both understood and observed. This document provides a list of some of the functional expectations that one should have when using WebMail 1.5 on a shared web hosting platform.

The five WebMail-related areas covered in this document are:

• Attachments and Message Sizes
  
• Incoming and Outgoing Messages
  
• Folder-related Size Limits
  
• International Language Support
  
• WebMail Advice

Attachments and Message Sizes

The maximum size an e-mail or e-mail attachment, either sent or received, should not exceed eight megabytes (8 MB). E-mail messages that have a total size that is larger than 8 MB may not be delivered successfully if the WebMail recipient's resources are too low.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What happens if WebMail users are sent e-mail messages that exceed 8 MB in size?
A: WebMail neither detects nor restricts the size of inbound e-mail messages and attachments. However, the successful delivery of any e-mail message depends on the amount of free disk space that is available in the recipient's hosting account. If the necessary free space and resources are available, the e-mail message will be received successfully.

Q: Is there a maximum number of attachments that can be sent per e-mail message?
A: WebMail allows up to five (5) attachments per e-mail message. As with any WebMail message, the total size of the message -- regardless of the number of attachments -- should not exceed 8 MB.

Q: What is the maximum number of recipients that can be included in an outgoing WebMail message?
A: Each e-mail message that you send through WebMail can have up to 100 recipients. This 100 recipient limitation is the accepted industry standard as stipulated in RFC821.

The WebMail 100 recipient per message limitation pertains only to e-mail messages that are comprised of basic text. Messages containing considerable amounts of graphics, attachments or other non-text elements may cause complications that reduce the number of recipients that are possible per message.

If any of your outgoing e-mail messages contains more than 100 recipients, WebMail will display the error message, "You have exceeded the limit of 100 email addresses."

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Incoming and Outgoing Messages

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does WebMail check incoming e-mail messages at regular intervals?
A: WebMail does not automatically check for incoming mail. However, any time that you click the WebMail Check Mail function, the Folders tab or any other element in WebMail that interacts with IMAP, incoming e-mail messages are checked and all relevant on-screen information is updated instantly.

Q: Do recipients receive error messages if inbound e-mail messages are dropped due to excessive size?
A: No. As WebMail neither detects nor restricts the size of e-mail messages, we cannot notify either the senders or the recipients that an e-mail message has not been delivered due the message exceeding the 8 MB size limit.

Q: Do senders receive error messages if outbound WebMail e-mail messages are dropped due to excessive size?
A: No. As our servers do not detect nor restrict the size of outbound e-mail messages, we cannot notify either the senders or the recipients that an e-mail message has not been delivered due to the message exceeding the 8 MB size limit.

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Folder-related Size Limits

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does WebMail place any restrictions on the size of its Inbox, Trash folder or any of its other folders?
A: No, there are no restrictions as to how many megabytes of data (attachments, messages, etc.) can be stored in any of the WebMail folders. Folder size is restricted only by the amount of disk space that is available in one's hosting account.

Note that if many users store their e-mail on the WebMail server your disk space may be used up quickly!

Q: Is there a limit as to how many contacts can be listed in the WebMail Address Book?
A: The WebMail Address Book can hold many entries. However, WebMail is not designed to replace dedicated personal information managers (PIMs) or e-mail clients that can hold a very large number of contacts. WebMail can handle approximately 400 contact addresses. Exceeding that number of addresses may inhibit the ability of WebMail to function normally.

Warning: The WebMail Address Book can hold many entries. However, WebMail is not designed to replace dedicated personal information managers (PIMs) or e-mail clients that can hold a very large number of contacts. WebMail can handle approximately 400 contact addresses. Exceeding that number of addresses may inhibit the ability of WebMail to function normally.

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International Language Support

WebMail v.1.5 contains improved support for UTF-8 encoding as well as for a variety of character sets, specifically ISO-8859-1, ISO-2022-JP and ASCII.

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WebMail Advice

WebMail, as is the case with any other Web-based application, continuously uses server resources. Therefore, it's always a good idea to administer the operations of WebMail properly. Because so many people use e-mail to communicate with each other for business and personal purposes, intelligent WebMail usage practices are essential. To assure the proper functioning of their WebMail services, end users should follow these practices:

• Delete any unneeded e-mail messages from various WebMail folders. Do not just move unwanted messages to the Trash folder. Rather, completely delete the unneeded messages.
• Check the available disk space regularly. If the remaining disk space is small, WebMail may soon stop accepting e-mail messages due to a lack of disk space.
• POP (that is, download) WebMail messages to the local computer. This frees disk space on the remote server.
• Disable the Save to Sent option as it automatically saves sent e-mail messages to the Sent folder.
• Manually delete any e-mail messages that are located in the Trash folder. As an alternative, it is possible to configure WebMail to clean the Trash folder automatically. To clean the Trash folder automatically, activate the Automatically at logout option.
• Keep the Inbox folder as clean as possible. Note that this does not mean creating another folder and then simply moving the contents of the Inbox to that folder. Such a maneuver does not free up any disk space.
• Ask senders to compress any large file attachments that they will be sending. In particular, when attaching any type of Microsoft Office document (Word, Excel, etc.), "zip compressing" that document greatly reduces the size of that attachment, saving disk space on the remote server.

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Please note: the information on this page applies to ITS web hosting plans. It may or may not apply to other environments. If you are looking for a feature described here, or better support from your hosting provider, please consider hosting your site with ITS!

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