NetHeaven accounts include at least two mailboxes. Some accounts include more, and some people rent many additional mailboxes.
Mailboxes are sometimes called email accounts. We prefer not to use that term, because it is also used to refer to dialup accounts that are used only for email. Such accounts have both a network login component and a mailbox component.
One mailbox for each account is created automatically. Its name is the same as the login name or username, so username@netheaven.com is its default email address.
For example, suppose John and Kathy Doe share an account with login username johndoe. They automatically have a mailbox with the same name, and the email address johndoe@netheaven.com delivers mail to that mailbox.
They can also choose a second mailbox named, for example, kathy.doe, and the email address kathy.doe@netheaven.com will deliver mail to that mailbox. Then they have one mailbox for John and one for Kathy.
Kathy and John will each have to tell the mail server which mailbox they want to access when they download their mail, so they need to know how.
Attaching to the network is a necessary first step for anything
else you do. In this stage, your networking software tells our network
who you are by sending your login username. It then sends
your secret login password to prove that you are authorized to log
in with that username.
Once connected to the network, you have access to the services on the Internet, including your mail. To access your mail, your mail software must perform a mail login to the mail server. Your mail software sends your mailbox name as your mail username, along with your mailbox password.
(The mail login uses a language called "POP", for Post Office Protocol. The mail username is usually called a POP3 username. The "3" indicates POP version 3 is being used..)
For accounts using only one mailbox, the network login username and POP username are usually the same. The network login password and and mailbox password are usually the same too.
Additonal mailboxes are not additional network login names.
So in that example both Kathy and John would log into the network with network login name johndoe, and John would use the same name as his POP username to tell the mail server he wants the mail in the johndoe mailbox. Kathy would use kathy.doe as her POP username to tell the mail server she wants the mail in the kathy.doe mailbox.
Unfortunately, most mail software does not make it easy to use more than one mailbox. The POP3 username and corresponding email address tend to be buried in configuration properties, with an assumption the software will be configured once and rarely or never changed. Extra mailboxes are most useful when used from different computers.
This is beginning to change, with some newer software enabling multiple email configurations.
In principle, mailboxes can be accessed from anywhere on the Internet. However, we enable this only by special arrangement. Contact us in advance if you want access from off our network.
Multiple passwords: Normally, the network login password and the primary mailbox password are the same, but they don't have to be. In the example above, if John and Kathy want their mail to be private, there can be three passwords, one they both know for logging into the network, a second one John knows for his mailbox, and a third Kathy knows for her mailbox.
While we can set up separate passwords this way, we discourage it because it leads to awkward situations like John calling support and asking for Kathy's password, saying Kathy forgot it and asked him to call.
Mailbox vs. email address: It would probably surprise few people to learn that the email addresses sales@netheaven.com, support@netheaven.com, and staff@netheaven.com deliver mail to more than one mailbox. You alsdo probably won't be surprised that some peoples' mailboxes can be reached by more than one of those addresses.
The point is that mailbox and email address are different concepts. Email addresses are used by people sending mail, mailboxes are used (as POP usernames) by people receiving mail.
This is similar to postal mail. Your postal address is something other people write on envelopes to send mail to you, while a mailbox is a place the Post Office puts your mail so you can go get it.
Where email differs is that it is possible for
In fact, it is possible for an email address to deliver mail to
a mailbox here and to forward mail to an address on another service.
Use with domains: An email address can be completely different from the name(s) of the mailbox(es) it goes to. This is primarily of interest to people with their own domains, who can have addresses in their domains mapped to mailboxes here with unrelated names. For example, if John and Kathy have a business selling jugs with domain jug.com, they can have email address sales@jug.com delivered to one of their mailboxes - or even both mailboxes.
Also, although Kathy's mailbox name is kathy.doe, she could have her primary email address be kathy@jug.com. Then kathy.doe would be the mailbox name she would use as a POP username to receive her mail, but kathy@jug.com would be the email address she would give people to use to send mail to her.
In other words, the email address to mailbox translation for Kathy and John could be