E-mail There are many ways of handling email in your business. Some are free and some chargeable. Some offer only basic features, while some let you do all kinds of clever things. Webmail Webmail usually means a free service (like Microsoft's Hotmail) that you can access using a web browser (like Internet Explorer).You may have to use the webmail company's address (your name@hotmail.com), although some providers can offer you a personal address (you@ yourcompany.com).You can access your webmail from virtually any web broswer, which means that you can read your emails no matter whether you're at your desk in the office or anywhere else.Most of the main webmail providers offer some spam filtering, so your inbox won't fill up with rubbish. However, free webmail is often funded by advertisers. That means you'll see adverts when you login to check your mail. Some webmail services even append advertising to the bottom of emails - fine if you're writing to your friends, but maybe not-so-fine when you're contacting an important client. POP3 email POP3 let's you download your email from your internet service provider (ISP) to a program on your computer like Outlook Express. Some ISPs will let you register a company domain name but mostly you use the ISP's address. However,you usually get at least one POP3 account free with your internet connection, and many ISPs include spam filtering and virus scanning as part of the package. POP3 email is also quite easy to set up. Your internet service provider will give you details of a server to log into, along with your username and password. Once you've entered these into your email software of choice you're ready to go. Beware if your business employs anyone else though: you'll probably only get a limited number of addresses as standard, and multiple accounts and passwords make it difficult to manage lots of different users. POP3 email is also very limited in functionality; you can forward emails, but that's about it. You can't manage the email centrally, backup or archive easily. Microsoft Exchange Exchange is Microsoft's " messaging and collaboration server " . It lets you do much more than simply forward or download your emails; it allows you to use email to work together and manage your email, company-wide. Exchange offers centralised, secure email, with extensive spam filtering built in. Using your Microsoft Outlook 2003, you can set any number of rules to manage your mail - highlighting all mails with particular keywords in them, or flagging messages from important clients. You could even lock an email so the recipient cannot forward it further. You can pick up your email through Exchange with a wide range of clients and devices including web-browsers, Pocket PCs, SmartPhones and Blackberries. You can implement a company-wide address book so that everyone's details are on-hand. If you go on holiday you can set up an automatic reply to messages to let the sender know when you'll be back. Finally, Exchange goes beyond just email. It has a built-in calendar function, which means all your company's employees can manage their time electronically. Scheduling meetings becomes easy because - when calendars are shared - your employees can see when each other are free without picking up the phone. Of course, there is a price for all this. Unlike the other two options, Exchange isn't free, and doesn't normally come bundled with an internet connection.