Electronic messages corresponding to a certain email account can be managed from any computer having an Internet connection only with the help of a web browser due to existence of webmail clients. Practically, the installation of supplementary software is not required and the inbox will be available from any location. The webmail client application runs on a web server and is called from a browser based interface.

Webmail clients could use both IMAP4 as well as POP3 protocol. Those protocols will determine the way a user will access (download) emails from a server. For example, IMAP 4 protocol allows users to connect to the same inbox with the help of two different webmail clients.

There are situations when, on your hosting account, there is not provided a webmail client or you want to setup others having more features. In case of web servers supporting PHP applications, there are many free webmail clients that could be used in correlation with a certain webhosting account or website.

Modern webmail clients supporting IMAP protocol, like AtMail are AJAX based, have a lightweight interface, include a spell checker, an address book and more. On the other hand, POP3 based webmail clients could also have modern interfaces, as MailBee WebMail Lite, which has a web interface AJAX driven, too.

MailBee WebMail Lite provides many other useful features that any webmail client should have: multilanguage support for its interface, an API that will simplify the mechanism of integration in a certain website and a security system containing filters for a certain type of content.

Other widely used PHP webmail clients are RoundCube and SquirrelMail. Both of them allow the rendering of web pages according to actual standards, are stable and provide all the expected features for a modern webmail client. In order to select a webmail client for production usage, you must check first if the server provides support for all the necessary application requirements.