Webmail

Due to significant issues with abandoned emails, HATS Software servers will no longer be providing “Webmail” access for hosted accounts.

PLEASE do not panic! There is an alternative. ALL of the major email services offer the ability to check your email online. Google, Yahoo, HotMail, etc, all provide the ability to check “POP3” email through them.

Before going into the details, I would like to describe the problem and the reason for the change.

In the ideal setup, the web site will host mail boxes for each desired email address. These “boxes” are nothing but temporary storage for emails. They are not designed for permanent storage. Unfortunately, many people do not understand this and they try to use the server as their permanent storage. This can be dangerous as the user has no control over the server and may lose all emails should something happen to the server.

It is far better to usea local email client such as Outlook on the local computer. With Outlook, the emails are DOWNLOADED and REMOVED from the server based email boxes. This has the dual benefit of providing the security of having control over one's emails and keeping the server from being overridden with defunct emails.

Webmail, on the other hand, is designed to provide access to email when a user is AWAY from his/her computer... it is designed to provide TEMPORARY access to email boxes.

As suggested earlier, the major web based email systems offer the ability to check your email within their service. I will attempt to provide instructions to set this up for Google and Yahoo. Others probably offer this as well, but you will need to check their help system in order to do so.

Instruction for Google.

  1. If you do not yet have an account, create one by browsing to http://gmail.com
  2. Sign into your Gmail account
  3. Click on Settings in the upper right corner
  4. Click Accounts and Import
  5. In the Check Mail using POP3
  6. Click Add POP3 email account
  7. enter your email address
  8. enter your user name and password (your user name is your WHOLE email address)
  9. enter your POP server (mail.YOURDOMAINNAME.com)
  10. check “Leave mail on server” if you wish to be able to store the email in Outlook at a later time.

Your account has now been created!

You will be given the opportunity to set up this account to be able to SEND email with the same credentials... This is optional but can be desirable if you are out of the office and you wish to use your normal reply-to address. Just enter the fields and click Next Step. When prompted to use the Gmail server or the domain server, please chose the Gmail server.

That's it! Now, when you click on “refresh”, Google will log into the domain's email account and get a copy of the message and place it into your Google inbox.

Instructions for Yahoo.

Yahoo offers a couple of email applications. These instructions are for their “all new” mail service...

  1. If you do not currently have a Yahoo account, you can create a free one by browsing to http://yahoo.com and clicking “Yahoo Mail”
  2. Log into your Yahoo account
  3. Click on Options at the upper right
  4. Click on Accounts – Add/Edit Account
  5. Click Add
  6. Enter a name for this account - continue
  7. Enter your name and email address – continue
  8. Enter your mail server (mail.YOURDOMAIN.com)
  9. Enter your user name (this is your FULL email address)
  10. Enter your password
  11. Select your indicator color so you can see the email extracted from this account
  12. Select your options
  13. If you Leave it on the server... you will be able to download these emails to Outlook at a later time...
  14. All done!