What's a POP3 mailbox?

POP stand for Post Office Protocol and is the standard email protocol used on the internet,  and provides a private username/password protected mailbox to store your email.

Only you, or someone who knows your username/password combination can access the stored email.

What are Email Aliases?

Aliases seem to be the most misunderstood aspect of email that we come across, so we'll try to explain what they are, and do.

OK... Assuming you have created a new 'user' (via your Control panel) on your domain called john.smith
The server will set up a new POP3 mailbox with a username of john.smith and a password (whatever you typed as the password).
The new POP3 mailbox on your domain will now accept email addressed to john.smith@yourdomain.name 
Assuming that the new user wants to also accept and collect email addressed to:
john@yourdomain.name
johnny@yourdomain.name
js@yourdomain.name
johnsmith@yourdomain.name
smithy@yourdomain.name

You would add the following alias names to the alias list on the john.smith mailbox...
john
johnny
js
johnsmith
smithy

You don't need to add the name/alias of john.smith because that name is the 'username' and the server will accept mail for the name john.smith@yourdomain.name by default.

Forwarding Your Email

You can set up email forwarding to any other email address, either to any 'off server' email address (like hotmail, for instance), or any other email address (or alias) within your domain.

We strongly advise that you don't attempt to forward (using the above alias example), mail addressed to john.smith@yourdomain.name to john@yourdomain.name !!!
The mail will not arrive because it will 'loop' around through our mail system until it ends up in the undelivered (black hole) box.

Vacation Messaging

Vacation Messages are an automated reply/response system that sends out an email to anyone who sends an email to you... Only 1 response message will be sent to each 'sender' in a 24 hour period.

You can type up a 'Vacation Message', also known as 'Out of Office Reply', for any POP3 account on your domain.
Many people also use this automated system to let senders know that their email has arrived in your mailbox.