How important is it to you that a webhost offers email storage on the server w/ webmail, etc, vs. offering unlimited virtual accounts/lists which forward to offsite email accounts?

It's nice to have POP3's available, but I can live with forwarders.

I am having a PIII server on FreeBSD where 60% of the resources are going to be used for hosting just pop3 emails. If you ignore pop3, you are seriously ignoring a significant market share

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Fool I am , I presumed you are a host.. if you are a customer then my post is irrelevant!

</Edit>

Cheers
Balaji

I despise forwarders :D
If a host didn't offer at least one POP3, I wouldn't go with them. I mean even some free hosts [eg: digitalrice.com] offer POP3.

YOu will basically need to get POP or IMAP mail from someone. If your host doesn't provide either )I prefer POP) then you'll have to go elsewhere to get mail service and receive all the forwarded emails. Obviously Yahoo, Hotrmail, etc. will do that, but why should you have to pay for hosting and not get email?

Most people/organizations start with web hosting for their presence on the Internet which includes their "branded" domain name. They probably will want email accounts with that domain name. Not just aliases, IMHO.

If you have a subdomain at your hosts domain, then you might be okay with not having POP3, or even web mail, if you could have your e-mail forwarded to an existing account (eg hotmail.com). However, I offer POP3, IMAP and web based e-mail to all of my subdomain customers, only one e-mail account, but including unlimited aliases. eg. you@hostfox.net, alias1.you@hostfox.net, alias2.you@hostfox.net, etc.

If you have your own domain, then you will expect your host to be able to provide unlimited e-mail addresses at your domain, not just forwarding accounts. eg you@yourdomain.com, you1@yourdomain.com, you2@yourdomain.com, etc, and you will expect to be able to check these accounts by POP3 if you wish. Again, I provide access by POP3, IMAP and web based e-mail.

I can see why you might only provide e-mail forwarding for a subdomain hosting account, but if you are hosting someones domain then you should be able to offer them full use of that domain, including e-mail.