- What is an ISP address?
- What type of ISP do I need?
- Do I need multiple ISP addresses?
- What is a POP address?
- What is a Forwarding address?
- What is a Webmail address?
- Why have my own web address?
- Why is an informational web site design so cheap?
- What will it cost to host my website?
When you sign up for Internet access service with an ISP (Internet Service Provider), you are given one or more e-mail addresses for you to use.
The choice is yours.
Some ISP's require you to have your own e-mail application, such as Microsoft Outlook®, into which they download all your e-mails.
Others provide you with a mail browser that is not on your computer and may be accessed from any computer with Internet access. When you are traveling, this is a very useful feature.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both. You will need to check out the different options and choose what is best for you.
My experience is that sending and receiving e-mail through the application on your computer, provides the best attachment options.
Whether you have your own web site or not, the question is:-
Do you have more than 1 person on your ISP account who only needs access to their own e-mail? If the answer is YES, you need multiple e-mail addresses from your ISP.
Some ISP's provide multiple e-mail addresses depending on the package you purchase. ISP's like Comcast and Joi Internet provide as many as 5 e-mail addresses with their basic dial up package. This is not necessarily dependant on price.
Your hosted website will provide you with one or more POP addresses.
A POP address is a special e-mail address that your email application may be able to directly download mail from, instead of the mail being routed through your ISP's mail system.
Basically you access the mail from your website directly into your e-mail application via the Internet. Sounds confusing but it isn't really.
Your website hosting comes with 10 or more forwarding addresses.
Forwarding addresses are used to take mail sent to your website and forward it to an e-mail address that is not on your website, such as the one provided by your ISP.
This allows you to specify personal e-mail addresses on your business cards, letter heads and in your web pages, that will stay with you even if you change your ISP.
Of the forwarding addresses, one of these will be reserved for the webmaster (that's me) as a feedback address for web site comments at webmaster@ljdesigns.com.
The remaining addresses can be used to forward any e-mails sent to your site, to other e-mail address.
Lets say that your ISP gives you 3 e-mail address and you assign one to Mom (Vera), one to Dad (Bob) and the other to little Johnny.
Your hosted website (mysite.com) could forward mail sent to bob@mysite.com to BobSmith1234@myispsite.net. Then you decide one day to change your ISP and your new ISP address is RobertJSmith482@mynewISP.net. All we have to do is change the forwarding for bob@mysite.com.
A good example for a home based business is ljdesigns.com. I have all mail forwarded to the same ISP address (one of the five I can use) and then use filtering in my e-mail application to separate the mail from sales, orders, feedback etc. into different folders. Having 5 ISP addresses allows me to keep the business and personal emails separate.
Your hosted website will provide you with one or more POP addresses.
When an account is set up for you, one of those POP addresses is assigned by default with the name of your login Id.
E.g. supposing your account was set up with a login Id of "myaccount" at "mydomain.com", the default email address would be myaccount@mydomain.com.
To access the e-mails that are sent to this address, you could access your account using http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail and login using "myaccount" and your allocated password.
For a long time my web site was hosted by a local ISP. The web address on my business cards was http://www.elnet.com/~user/ljdesigns
I was happy with my e-mail address of louisjr@elnet.com too.
But then Elnet sold out to ANet and even though I did not change my account, my business cards and letter heads were useless.
In 1998, I decided to invest the $35 per year (that's what it was then) to register www.ljdesigns.com and have that hosted by a company in New York. I carried on using ANet as my ISP.
I reprinted my business cards and letter heads showing www.ljdesigns.com and my e-mail as robert@ljdesigns.com
Since then I have changed ISP's twice and my hosting service 3 times. Until the end of 2003, I was still using the same business cards, letter heads, purchase orders and invoices. I would have spent more on reprinting for one change than I have spent to date on web address annual registrations.
Too many designers think that making a website that is artistically pleasing, full of graphical shapes and loaded with images that change when you move you mouse over it, give the impression that the business can afford high priced web design and therefore charge accordingly.
My belief, and you can see that from my own web site, is that a web site should be easy to navigate and should represent your business, not the designers business. My intention is to sell you as a business.
The person who accesses your web site should be able to easily find what you have to show them.
Look at my Links page to see some of the web sites I have designed.
- The basic annual cost will be the monthly package price x 12.
The annual fee runs from August 1st to the following July 31st.
A prorated monthly charge will be added if there are less than 6 months from the activation date to August 1st., otherwise the first payment will be for the exact number of months until August 1st.
- The yearly registration fee for the first domain name is free.
Additional domain registrations are $10 per year each.
- Example 1. The contract is activated on March 5th. 2005
- A "Basic" package is $120 for 12 months (August 2005 - July 2006).
- The prorated hosting charge will be $50 (March 2005 - July 2005)
- One time setup fee $50
- One registered domain name $0
- A total charge of $220 for hosting until July 2006
- Example 2. The contract is activated on November 25th. 2005
- A "Basic" package is $120 for 12 months (August 2005 - July 2006).
- The prorated hosting charge will be -$30 (August 2005 - October 2005)
- One time setup fee $50
- One registered domain name $0
- A total charge of $140 for hosting until July 2006
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