Webmail 1.5: 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 1.5 on
a shared Web hosting platform.
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: What happens if Webmail
users are sent e-mail messages that exceed 8Mb 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 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 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 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 RapidSite 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: "ketext">The current version
of Webmail is not designed to parse HTML code
in messages. We apologize for this inconvenience.
Note that our high-level Technical Support associates
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. Please let us know
if we can be of further assistance.
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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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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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Customer-oriented
Webmail Advice
Webmail, as is the case with any other Web-based
application, continuously uses server resources.
Therefore, it is always a good idea to have users
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.
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 appropriate Technical 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.
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