Messaging vs. Email

      What's the difference between digital cell phone messaging and email?
      Both allow users to enter text messages, press a button and send that message to another user. By the broadest definition — text messages sent electronically — they're the same thing. But the terms email and messaging generally describe two different kinds of electronic communication.
      Cell phone messages move over the cell phone company's digital network. They originate in your phone and end in the phone at the other end. Service providers also allow anyone to message customers from a company web site. But even a message entered on a web site actually reaches the customer over the phone network. That means the message can only travel where there is digital network coverage.
      What we think of as email, on the other hand, travels over the Internet. It travels from the sender's computer to a server. Usually that server belongs to the sender's Internet service provider, say, AOL. The email is relayed from there across the Internet to another server, usually operated by the receiver's Internet service provider. There the receiver can download that email from anywhere there is Internet access.
      Email was one of the first uses of the Internet and is still the most popular.