Webmail: Functional Expectations
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 expectations that one
should have when using Webmail.
Attachments and Message
Sizes
The maximum size an e-mail or e-mail attachment, either sent or
received, should not exceed eight megabytes (8Mb). E-mail messages that have a total size that is
larger than 8Mb may not be delivered successfully if the Webmail recipient's resources are too
low.
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 8Mb.
Q: What is the maximum number of recipients that can be included in an outgoing Webmail
message?
A: Each e-mail message that is sent through Webmail can have up to 100 recipients. This 100
recipient limitation is the accepted industry standard.
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 outgoing e-mail messages contains more than 100 recipients, Webmail will display the
following error message:
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Incoming and Outgoing
Messages
Q: Does Webmail check incoming e-mail messages at regular intervals?
A: Webmail does not automatically check for incoming mail. However, clicking the Webmail Check
Mail, the Folders tab or any other element in Webmail that interacts with IMAP, causes
incoming e-mail messages to be checked. Further, 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 8Mb size limit.
Q: Do senders receive error messages if outbound Webmail e-mail messages are
dropped due to excessive size?
A: No. As WebMail does not detect or 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 8Mb size limit.
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HTML
Q: Why does HTML display incorrectly with Webmail?
A: The current version of Webmail is not designed to parse HTML code in
messages. We apologize for this inconvenience. Note that our Support Staff
are constantly evaluating and testing new features. Although we do not make advanced
announcements of new features, we do announce them formally when they are implemented.
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Folder-related Size
Limits
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.
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 Webmail's ability to function normally.
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General Webmail Advice
Webmail, as is the case with any other Web-based application,
continuously uses server resources. 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 Webmail services, you 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.
If users
allow disk space to run too low, they may be unable to delete unwanted messages from within the
Webmail application. To enable users to delete messages again, they will first need to a) free up
some disk space or b) download the messages to a remote computer via an e-mail program. Once the
messages have been downloaded, those messages can be deleted.
- Check the available disk space regularly. If the remaining disk
space is low, Webmail may soon stop accepting e-mail messages due to a lack of disk space.
- Download Webmail messages to a local computer using a POP-enabled
e-mail client. "ketext">This frees disk space on the remote server.
If users are unable to
download your Webmail messages, this may be an indication that one or more of the messages is
either too large or is corrupt. This can usually be resolved by deleting either the first or last
message received. However, if the user's disk space runs too low, the user will be unable to
delete any Webmail messages. In such cases, the user should contact the
Support team for assistance.
- Disable the Save to Sent option, which 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 automatically clean the Trash folder, activate the
"Automatically at logout" option.
Items contained in the
Trash folder will continue to occupy disk space until they are permanently deleted.
- 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 any disk space.
- Ask senders to compress any large file attachments that they will
be sending. In particular, when attaching any Microsoft® Office document (Word,
Excel, etc.) "zip compressing" that document will greatly reduce the size of that
attachment, saving disk space on the remote server.
- For security purposes, when users finish using Webmail, they should
be advised not to simply close the browser window or navigate to a new site. Instead, they should
choose the "Logout" option. This will ensure that no unauthorized users will be able to
access their Webmail account from that computer unless those other users know the correct login
information.
- Because the Webmail application is Web-based, it too can suffer
from the usual browser-related issues. If the Webmail application appears to be operating slower
than normal, try clearing browser cache of its temporary Internet files.