The original sender of an email.
An email message in transit.
Our email servers.
Your computer.
Mailbox
A mailbox is a final destination for an email. Emails sent to a mailbox are stored on a mail server until your retrieve them - so it's like a letter box. If you have a web based email account (like Hotmail or GMail) then this is a mailbox.
You can access a mailbox using an email application on your computer such as Outlook Express or Thunderbird. Alternatively you can use our webmail service to send and receive your emails through a web browser, giving you access to your messages when on the move.
Redirect
A redirect takes an email sent to it and sends it on to another address.
For example, you may have an email address provided by your ISP such as john.smith@myisp.com. You can configure an address using your domain name, such as john@example.co.uk, which redirects to your ISP address. An advantage of this is that if you change ISP (and therefore lose that address), you can simply reconfigure john.smith@example.co.uk to redirect to your new email address and not need to tell all of your friends and family about the new address.
Mail Group
This is similar to a redirect, except that it can redirect messages to more than one email address.
For example, if you have a sales team of three people, you can have all emails sent to sales@example.co.uk be sent to these three people - john@example.co.uk, jane@example.co.uk and chris@example.co.uk.
Autoresponder
An autoresponder sends a response to all emails sent to it, instantly and automatically. The response can even include file attachments.
A popular use of an autoresponder is to send an "out of office" message when you are away from work to inform people emailing you when you will be back, and/or to give an alternative contact address or telephone number.
A single email address can be configured to use several of the above options - for example, an address could be a mailbox and also have an autoresponder associated with it.