How Many Email Addresses Do I Get?

If you're not a web customer, then you get as many as you wish to pay for. If you're a web customer, you get a pre-allotted number that differs depending on which type of account you've purchased. See the Web Site Hosting page for details.

How Do I Set Up My Email Program To Work With Your Server?

A very good question. And because there are a wide variety of email clients out there, there are an equally wide variety of answers.

If you've already got an email address with your ISP (and chances are, if you're on the net, you do), the simplest way to do things is to ask us to forward your mail to your existing email box. For example, if you set up an account with us named johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info, and you already have a mailbox set up named smithj123@aol.com, we can configure our mail server to automatically send any mail for johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info to your current mailbox of smithj123@aol.com. All you need to do is reconfigure your email client, replacing instances of "smithj123@aol.com" with "johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info", so that when you send mail to people, they see your new domain name.

If you ever change mailboxes (for example, if you change to another ISP), you let us know what your new mailbox is and we change the forward-to address. Or you can do this yourself by logging into our webmail service (see next paragraph).

Another option that you might prefer is our "Webmail" service. This allows you to use our server, but you don't have to set up an email program for it: instead, you use your web browser to send and receive email. See the Webmail FAQ for more information.

For a number of reasons (as stated in our Email Service page), you may opt instead to use our server as your POP3 mailbox and/or SMTP outgoing mail server. In other words, when your mail is received here, it stays here until you come and collect it. Outgoing mail is sent from your computer via our server to the destination.

For this, you will need some information. Here it is:

POP3 Server: mail.GaryNuman.Info
SMTP Server: mail.GaryNuman.Info
User ID: your complete email address (ie: johnsmith@garynuman.info)
Password: the password you selected at sign-up

(Note: some POP3 mail clients will not allow you to put an @ symbol as part of your userid. If that's the case, use the $ symbol instead.)

Here are some example settings for some popular email clients. In these examples, we will assume that your userid is "johnsmith@garynuman.info" and your password is "common".

Netscape Mail

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server: mail.GaryNuman.info
Incoming Mail (POP) Server: mail.GaryNuman.info
Mail Server User Name: johnsmith@garynuman.info
Your Email: johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info
Reply-to Address: johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info

Eudora

POP Account: johnsmith$garynuman.info@mail.GaryNuman.Info *
Return Address: johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info
SMTP Server: mail.GaryNuman.Info

* - Eudora uses a non-standard way of determining what your POP server is, thus the non-standard format of this. Even if your email address is bonded to your own domain name, you must use this format.

PMMail (OS/2 or Windows 9x)

Under ACCOUNT - PROPERTIES - GENERAL - enter these values in both the "From Information" section and the "Reply-To" information:
Email Address: johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info
Real Name: John Smith

Under ACCOUNT - PROPERTIES - RECEIVE - select "POP", then enter these values:
POP Server: mail.GaryNuman.Info
Port: 110
User ID: johnsmith@GaryNuman.Info
Password: common

Under ACCOUNT - PROPERTIES - SEND - select "SMTP", then enter these values:
SMTP Server: mail.GaryNuman.Info
Port: 25

I'm Using Your POP3 Server As A Mailbox, But Must I Also Use Your SMTP Server?

No. It's there for your convenience, particularly if you're working from a laptop computer and thus connect to different dial-in points all the time. If you are using a desktop computer and always connect to the same ISP, then it will be faster and easier for you to use your ISP's SMTP server instead.

In the above examples, to set this up you'd need to change the references to "SMTP Server" from mail.GaryNuman.Info to whatever hostname your ISP assigns for SMTP service. They may call it the "mail server" or something equally vague - check with them if you're not sure.

Why Is It Faster To Use My ISP's SMTP Server?

To answer this, it helps to give you a brief description of just how email travels around the internet. Assume that you've just written a message to your friend at janedoe@somedomain.com. Your email client (Netscape, Eudora, whatever it is that you use) doesn't know the first thing about Jane, about somedomain.com, or indeed about anything much at all. All it knows how to do is to deliver your message to an SMTP server. It is the SMTP server that has to figure out how the heck to route the email and get it into Jane's mailbox.

You are faced with a choice: do I use my ISP's SMTP server, or do I use the one at mail.GaryNuman.Info. If you use your ISP's server, the transfer will potentially be much faster, particularly if you're using a high-speed link such as a cable modem or ADSL line. Why? Because your ISP's SMTP server is physically located very near to where you are, probably in the same city. Your mail has to go over fewer "hops" to get to its destination, and remember: as far as you're concerned, the "destination" is the SMTP server, not the recipient's server. Once your email client finishes delivering the message to the SMTP server, it is free to go about its business - the SMTP server will take the message the rest of the way.

But if you use the SMTP server at mail.GaryNuman.Info, your message must travel further. Your email client, wherever you happen to be, has to push your message all the way from your location to the wilds of Western Canada, which is where our server is located. This results in a lot more "hops" to get the message delivered to an SMTP server capable of sending the mail onwards to its destination. Sorry, but that's just how the internet works. :-)

There's one other concern: some ISP's won't permit you to send a message through their server if it is both from and to addresses not in their own domain. The better ones will: they can tell just from the IP address you're using that you're a "valid" user, but some cannot. In that case, you MUST use mail.GaryNuman.Info as your outgoing SMTP server.

If you're a dial-up user, the difference in speed is, in fact, not all that noticeable - unless the internet is having a bad day and things are somewhat congested. It's a lot more noticeable with a high-speed link. Either method (usually) works just fine - if you're not comfortable with playing around with system settings on your computer, just go with the settings laid out above and you'll be just fine.

How Big Is My Mailbox?

There are no set limits at this time, although we reserve the right to impose size restrictions in future if the need arises. We have devoted an eight gigabyte (eight billion individual characters) disk partition for email purposes. So long as we don't start running out of room, we have no desire to start enforcing email size restrictions. However, you should bear in mind that while you are not bound by size restrictions, many of the people you send mail to may very well be. If you send a 40-megabyte file to your friend in Australia, his ISP's mail server may "bounce" the email. This does two things: it stops it from arriving at your friend's mailbox, and... it boomerangs it RIGHT BACK AT YOU. If you thought it was rough waiting for that 40-meg email to upload, just think how it'll feel to have to spend that time AGAIN waiting for it to download! That's especially galling since you already HAVE the file and don't need another copy of it!

Play it smart. If you must send excessively large emails, make sure that the person you're sending it to has already checked with his/her ISP and made darned sure that such emails will be accepted.

Also, please be aware that the Webmail client uses a separate mail directory. Please don't keep your email kicking around there for longer than you really need it. And, DELETE YOUR TRASH BIN!

Which Email Client Is The Best?

That's like asking me which car is the best. The answer depends greatly on what you want it to do, and how you'd like it to do it.

I've mentioned three clients above. Other good ones include Microsoft Outlook Express, Pegasus Mail, and Agent.

If you're looking for a personal recommendation, though, then I can give you an answer: my email client of choice is PMMail 98. It's actually available in both Windows and OS/2 flavours, and it's one of the most full-featured email clients available. It supports multiple email addresses very well, can handle HTMLmail, and a whole caboose-load of other cool bells and whistles. I've been using this program for about four years now and it's never let me down.

Can I Sell Email Addresses?

Yes. It's up to you to set the price and collect the money, though. Further, you will be the only person I'll deal with - if your customers have problems figuring out how to work things, it's up to you to support them (so I suggest that you direct them to this page!) If you are a website customer, you can buy additional email addresses from me for $10 each per year. If you're not a website customer, the price is $15 each per year. Whatever you sell them for is between you and your customer.

I Have A Question That Isn't On This List.