What is email? Electronic mail explained
Email is so familiar that it's easy to forget how it works. Here is a plain-English definition, what happens when you press Send, and the words you'll see.
Email, short for electronic mail, is a way of sending messages, files and pictures from one person to another over the internet. Each person has an email address like name@example.com. Messages are sent with a protocol called SMTP and stored by an email provider, such as Gmail or Outlook, until the recipient reads them in an email app or web browser.
Definition
Email (noun): a message sent electronically from one device to another over a network, usually the internet; also the system for sending such messages. As a verb, "to email" someone means to send them an email. Both email and e-mail are correct, but "email" is now the common spelling.
How email works
- You write a message in an email app or website and press Send.
- Your provider's outgoing server sends it with SMTP.
- The internet's address book, DNS, tells it which server receives mail for the recipient's domain.
- The recipient's provider accepts the message and checks it for spam.
- The recipient reads it in their app, which uses IMAP or POP to fetch it. See email ports explained.
The parts of an email
- From and To: the sender's and recipient's email addresses.
- CC and BCC: extra recipients, visible or hidden. See CC and BCC meaning.
- Subject: a short title for the message.
- Body: the message itself.
- Attachments: files sent along with it.
- Headers: hidden technical details about the route and checks. See email header fields.
Examples of email services
Free email services include Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail and Proton Mail. Businesses often use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 with their own domain. Compare them in the best free email services.
A short history
Ray Tomlinson sent the first network email between computers in 1971 and chose the @ sign to separate the user from the computer. Email spread to businesses in the 1980s and to everyone with web services like Hotmail in the 1990s. Read the full history of email.
Questions people ask
- What does email stand for?
- Electronic mail.
- What is the difference between email and webmail?
- Email is the messaging system. Webmail is a way to read it in a web browser, such as gmail.com, instead of an app. See webmail vs email.
- Is email free?
- Personal email from providers like Gmail and Outlook.com is free. Business email with your own domain usually costs a few dollars per user per month.
- Who invented email?
- Ray Tomlinson sent the first networked email in 1971 and introduced the @ sign in addresses.