Do I use SmarterMail or my other email program?

OnALot.com offers you 2 ways to get your email. You can use Microsoft's Outlook Express (or Outlook, or Windows Mail) or OnALot's SmarterMail. There are important differences that you should know about.

Note that on this page, we refer to Outlook Express, but you can also use Microsoft Outlook or Windows Mail instead.

How Does Email Work?

When someone sends you an email, it first goes to their ISP's server, then routes it through the Internet to OnALot's server, where it is stored waiting for you to view it. Our server is very robust, and will also filter out most junk email. That email will sit on our server until you use either Outlook Express or SmarterMail to look at it.

When You Use Outlook Express

When you use Outlook Express, it will remove any emails that are sitting on our server and download them onto your computer. Once removed from our server, you cannot get them from any other computer. Only the computer you used with Outlook Express will have those emails on it. Outlook Express is a computer based email program.

So, to re-cap, Outlook Express does the following:

1. Downloads all emails that are sitting on our server, and puts them onto your computer
2. Removes those emails from our server permanently. They cannot be accessed again
3. If you have more than 1 computer, and they all have the same email address on them, the first computer that you open Outlook Express on gets all the emails. You cannot download the same emails on the other computers because they are no longer on our server, but are on your first machine. For this reason, we don't recommend you have the same email address on multiple computers when you use Outlook Express.
   

When You Use SmarterMail

SmarterMail is different than Outlook Express, as follows:

1. SmarterMail does NOT download any emails onto your computer
2. SmarterMail does NOT remove any emails from our server

When you log into SmarterMail, it allows you to "peek" into our server to see your email. You can log off, go to another computer anywhere in the world and log back in through SmarterMail to see those same emails again. They are still on our server and have not been removed. SmarterMail is a Web based email program.

If....

1. IF you use Outlook Express to look at your emails, you cannot use SmarterMail after that to look at the same emails. They are no longer on our server
2. IF you have 2 or more computers, and you have the same email address on all of them, and you use Outlook Express, the computer that you used to first get the emails will have them, and no other computer can see those emails. They are no longer on our server.
3. IF you want to see your emails from more than one computer, use SmarterMail only
4. IF you only have 1 computer, and don't plan to look at your emails from any other computer, use Outlook Express.
5. IF you have used Outlook Express to get your emails, you cannot re-send them back to your account so you can see them from another computer.