

The address was typically the user’s login name on the system, such as 432654,6564 when using CompuServ, which was one of the largest online services that supported many types of electronic mail. The earliest email addresses had to identify one user from another on one homogenous system, such as a minicomputer or mainframe.

In early email systems, a wide variety of non-internet email address formats were used before the form was instituted in the 1980s. Businesses and websites can purchase custom email addresses for their domain through one of these options or through their website hosting provider. Popular email providers for business or personal use include Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook, and HubSpot. When an email is sent to this address, the message is sent to Jane Doe at the domain name.ĭomain names can be commercial or personal. The (pronounced “at”) symbol is the connector between the domain and the person who the email address belongs to. The combination of the organization name and TLD is the address entered into a browser to go to the organization’s website. This could be any name, but familiar ones include or. The domain name is the specific name of the organization. com: Used by entities engaged in commerce com component represents the top level domain (TLD) for the email address. Since the 1980s, all email addresses follow the same format: An example is the far right, the. An email address is a designation for an electronic mailbox that sends and receives messages, known as email, on a computer network.
