Suggestions for new email aggregator platform...

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jmroberts70

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 15, 2002
Messages
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Well it looks like I'm going to leave Yahoo Mail after 16 years. I'm probably going to either buy a dedicated domain name or use one of the 70 I already have. That means I'm going to need a new system to aggregate my incoming email. I think Outlook.com looks good but I've not seen it in action...

There are 3 features I'd really like to see in a new email platform:

1. Tabs. Yahoo just disabled this feature in their new GUI and it just kills my productivity. I need to have multiple messages open while I'm writing a new one.

2. Embed images. This was something that Yahoo Mail never was able to do and I have found it very useful in conveying information. I would wind up writing messages in Outlook just for this feature.

3. Integration with mobile Android.

Can anyone suggest a system that can pull this off? Hell, maybe I just need to start using Outlook with IMAP at home and on my phone and a simple web interface when I'm away from my office.
 
You can sign up for a free trial of Office 365 Enterprise which includes Exchange Online Plan 2, if you like it you can buy a license of Online Plan 1.
//Danne
 
Yeah, that may be the best idea. Push email, I can use the full Outlook client at home, and sync pretty well. I've worked with Exchange in my IT support days in large enterprises and still like a lot of what it can do... I think $8/mo is just about how much I'm willing to pay for it too. Thanks!!
 
So I managed to setup Outlook 2010 since I owned a copy and managed to get it configured to an IMAP connection to Yahoo (may not work if you don't pay for it --I don't think the free Yahoo Mail supports IMAP). It took nearly 12 hours to download all 10 years of email I've had up there!! As much as I considered it nice to have all my mail online and available, I forgot just how powerful Outlook can be. I now have an archived copy of my mail locally (about 12GB) and plan on starting up a hosted Exchange account shortly. Since I now work from home most of the time, Outlook is working just fine for me. Still, when I get on the move again, using Exchange with my smartphone will definitely be the ticket. Thanks everyone for your help!!

The cool thing was that I wanted to setup an AUTOREPLY at my Yahoo account just to catch people that I couldn't inform of my new email address. Yahoo only has a "Vacation Response" function. So I setup the AutoReply from Outlook within my Yahoo IMAP connection and now it's working perfectly. I have to keep my PC up and connected but I already do that.
 
Depending on confidentiality you might be better off using the Outlook app rather than Exchange sync as you remotely can wipe the mailbox in case your phone gets lost.
//Danne
 
Rent a VPS for $2 a month and do it yourself? Why this need to feed your data to shady cloud companies?
 
I have been hosting it myself since practically forever. Would not do it any other way, especially with the NSA stuff going on. It wont be 100% secure against them especially if the traffic is going in clear text, but it will be more secure than some cloud company that is willingly feeding them all the data. Once you have postfix/dovecot working with virtual domains it's pretty easy to manage too.
 
TCM2 said:
Rent a VPS for $2 a month and do it yourself? Why this need to feed your data to shady cloud companies?
Click to expand...

The best I can seem to find is $5/mo. What VPS service are you referring to?

Red Squirrel said:
I have been hosting it myself since practically forever. Would not do it any other way, especially with the NSA stuff going on. It wont be 100% secure against them especially if the traffic is going in clear text, but it will be more secure than some cloud company that is willingly feeding them all the data. Once you have postfix/dovecot working with virtual domains it's pretty easy to manage too.
Click to expand...

Am I to assuming that you mean hosting it on a machine at your home? I'm not too hip to doing that but I guess there are pros and cons to such a setup...

I'm not at all familiar with postfix/dovecot. I've tried searching for a simple explanation of exactly what it is but can only seem to find places that explain how to set it up and not WHY. Could you elaborate?
 
"Dovecot is an open source IMAP and POP3 email server for Linux/UNIX-like systems"

"What is Postfix? It is Wietse Venema's mail server that started life at IBM research as an alternative to the widely-used Sendmail program."

Straight from the homepages of the projects. If that doesn't really tell you anything, ignore the VPS comment and look for a hosted solution.
 
jmroberts70 said:
The best I can seem to find is $5/mo. What VPS service are you referring to?



Am I to assuming that you mean hosting it on a machine at your home? I'm not too hip to doing that but I guess there are pros and cons to such a setup...

I'm not at all familiar with postfix/dovecot. I've tried searching for a simple explanation of exactly what it is but can only seem to find places that explain how to set it up and not WHY. Could you elaborate?
Click to expand...

You could do it from home (easiest and cheapest) but VPS/dedicated server is preferred, as ISPs usually wont allow servers, and RBL agencies tend to block residential IP ranges so you'll have issues with mail getting to where it needs to.

Though if you are not familiar with Linux/servers this may be a little too much.
 
Runnnig a mail service by your own requires quite a bit of time as you should ways run the latest software, spam protection etc so it's far from a "set it and forget it"-solution.
//Danne
 
Ok, thanks everyone. That's very good to know. I've setup a Linux box about 8 years ago so I'm hardly qualified to pull this off without turning it into a full-time job for a while. At least I understand what's behind it...
 
I am surprised so many are suggesting to do your own mail server.

Sign up for any Hosted Exchange provider and forward all your mail to that one spot.

Doing your own mail server for 1 user is kinda silly.
 
marley1 said:
Doing your own mail server for 1 user is kinda silly.
Click to expand...

It's as silly as repairing your own car or fixing your own house. If you do it yourself, you have full control over the outcome.

Outsourcing stuff is always a bandaid for when you can't do it yourself properly.
 
No, it's just a waste of time and effort compared to buying the service. You're better off spending that time on familiy and friends.
//Danne
 
I would consider it worth the effort to "roll my own" with setting up my own mail server simply for the experience of doing it. If I was going to be running email servers as part of my skillset or wanted to have the knowledge to make me a more valuable tech, sure. Hell, it may be beneficial just for the challenge of pulling it off. I wouldn't down-play the endeavor completely.

However, in my case, it isn't the hill I want to die on.
 
TCM2 said:
It's as silly as repairing your own car or fixing your own house. If you do it yourself, you have full control over the outcome.

Outsourcing stuff is always a bandaid for when you can't do it yourself properly.
Click to expand...

So to it properly you will need:
- redundant internet connections - business
- redundant servers and networks
- redundant power

Do you think you can do that for $8/month for a hosted exchange account?

Now if you just want a server at the house, you need business grade ISP at a minimum which will increase you by $10-15/month for Static IP, you will need Spam Service which will be about a $1/month per email account.

Doesnt make sense.
 
It makes sense if you want the experience of pulling it off. It makes sense if you want the challenge of learning how it's done. It makes sense if you want to better understand all the ins and outs of this type of technology. Hell, for an IT career in networking for businesses, it actually makes a lot of sense.

I know that in the case of the small business I worked at a few years ago where I was more like their IT guy when they didn't want to hire outside, running our own Exchange server was a good enough experience to know when using a hosted Exchange service was a worthwhile cost. I talked them into it when we moved offices. After that, we shut down our server and never looked back...
 
marley1 said:
So to it properly you will need:
- redundant internet connections - business
- redundant servers and networks
- redundant power

Do you think you can do that for $8/month for a hosted exchange account?

Now if you just want a server at the house, you need business grade ISP at a minimum which will increase you by $10-15/month for Static IP, you will need Spam Service which will be about a $1/month per email account.

Doesnt make sense.
Click to expand...

You don't NEED all that stuff, sure it's nice to have, but if you are trying to save money you can get away with it. Though, for a mail server that gets lot of important email redundancy IS pretty important if you don't want lost email if it goes down. Also what is this "spam service" you speak of, if you are running your own server you ARE your own spam service.

As a business the biggest reason to do it is privacy. I can't imagine hosting a business email on some random server I have no control over. Heck even my own personal email I refuse to.
 
So in that case, you seriously think that your connection isn't tapped if need?
//Danne
 
You are more likely to know about it and it's less likely it happens. At least they also have to work for it. If it's a provider they'll just get direct access. Ex: there are more chances that the NSA is reading every gmail email, than a small server with only a few acounts on it. Does not rule it out 100%, but reduces the odds.
 
diizzy said:
So in that case, you seriously think that your connection isn't tapped if need?
//Danne
Click to expand...

Because one attack vector exists, it's futile to eliminate others? Awesome argument.

If your line is tapped and you do mail yourself, you're still not giving all your mails to scumbags who scour it for marketing value.
 
Yeah, if your concern is absolute privacy, I can definitely see the value of rolling your own email server. Email providers in general will turn over your data to government authorities with far less than a subpoena in the past --and that's unencrypted data in the clear. If someone wanted to tap your line, good luck getting through an SSL tunnel if it's set up properly. Hell, they could set up shop in the next room and connect directly to your LAN for that matter and still not be able to pull your email out.
 
No, but the privacy part is just ridiculous at least by suggestion that hosting your own email which needs a lot of resources done properly is the solution. If you're paranoid you're much better off doing pgp encryption for instance.
//Danne
 
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