Talk to me about Exchange

tres · 1 Feb 2010 at 16:41

Hi all,

I've been asked by someone to help with their network. It's working perfectly, but email is only on a single computer via pop. They want roaming email.

I've had previous (as it turns out, inaccurate) advice, but i'm still not quite fully understanding.

If we aren't able to run mail servers on our broadband connection, can we use a pop/exchange connector/downloader?
http://www.msexchange.org/software/POP3-Downloaders/ <- that page for example lists some.

I take it the background service downloads the mail via pop, then routes to the exchange server for forwarding onto individual mailboxes.

Outgoing mail, how does that work? Can they still send from their own addresses?

Appreciate your time

Sp00n · 1 Feb 2010 at 19:57

Doesn't the pop email have a webmail front end?

Failing that, set it up on gmail, exchange is waaayyy OTT for a single email.

tres · 1 Feb 2010 at 20:08

It's for 5 or 6 email addresses for half a dozen users, for roaming email.
Using outlook is a requirement!

wij · 1 Feb 2010 at 21:02

Didn't you just make a more or less identical post a couple of days ago?

Same advise would apply here IMO, a few users and they want to use Outlook then SBS is a perfect candidate but comes with the cost of hardware etc.

Maybe look at a hosted exchange solution, plenty of people offer them for a few £/mailbox per month, should work out reasonably well as it would provide outlook web access for when away from their regular computer and the last time I looked modern version of Outlook would be able to sync to it over HTTP(S).

wij · 1 Feb 2010 at 22:23

tres said:
I take it the background service downloads the mail via pop, then routes to the exchange server for forwarding onto individual mailboxes.

Yes, in you can set this up at regular intervals and have the resulting POP3 mail delivered into whatever exchange mailboxes you have set up.

tres said:
Outgoing mail, how does that work? Can they still send from their own addresses?

You want to look at something called a smarthost if you're not going to be sending mail via your own servers.

Sp00n · 2 Feb 2010 at 08:08

smarthost = your ISP's smtp server

tres · 2 Feb 2010 at 09:17

Thanks all. I did ask for some other Exchange info a couple of days ago, as I was looking at roaming PST files, but couldn't get it working too great and the size of the files was going to get far too big.

Smarthost sounds good for the outgoing mail. I'll look at one of those pop connectors/downloaders and smarthost then

Luffy · 3 Feb 2010 at 12:41

It looks like you have decided on a solution, but thought I would mention I have several users using ymail (Yahoo).

The email for [email protected] is forwarded to mailboxes on a cheap hosting account, each ymail account is configured to collect email via pop from the specific mailbox and each ymail account is configured to send as the [email protected].
If you must use outlook, just collect from the ymail account and leave the messages there so you have the email backed up.
Just a cheap solution that works well.

bigredshark · 3 Feb 2010 at 18:46

Sp00n said:
smarthost = your ISP's smtp server

No, no, no!

You have no idea how much this ****es your ISP off.

Your ISPs mail servers are optimized for end users sending directly, not for people pumping mail out of their own servers. I have seen ISPs actively limit connections and delay mail from customers who're using them as a smarthost.

Send by DNS, get your SPF records and all the rest sorted.

bigredshark · 3 Feb 2010 at 18:51

My strong advice would be if you can't have mail routed to your exchange server directly and are having to consider using a POP connector then you shouldn't be installing a mail server in that environment.

If you still want exchange then a hosted solution - either a hosted server (or for your requirements a high end VPS running exchange) or a simpler hosted exchange setup with fee per mailbox would be your best bet.

The pop connector route has always sucked.

Or look at Google apps for domains to be honest, it's a reasonable service (but doesn't tie to your outlook use requirement so well)

Sp00n · 3 Feb 2010 at 20:20

Thanks for the advice, I've been taught to use the ISP's smtp as a smarthost on our clients which don't pay for our smarthost, might have a word with them about it. Never had a problem, never had a complaint.

Cheers though

anything I don't mind · 3 Feb 2010 at 23:57

depends how many people require email. if you are in between the amount that is reasonable for a pop server and a full exchange server, you might want to consider hosted webmail accounts. basically an exchange server that is hosted on the internet. fully managed even. they just get mail. but you can setup exchange then you will realy need two servers minimum, one for the domains and one for exchange.

something like, ovh or leaseweb, depending on your location.

http://www.mailstreet.com/ (never used just found in google)

or you could have hosted pop accounts.

http://www.ovh.co.uk/products/mxlarge.xml

then they can access there email anywhere.

bigredshark · 4 Feb 2010 at 08:54

Sp00n said:
Thanks for the advice, I've been taught to use the ISP's smtp as a smarthost on our clients which don't pay for our smarthost, might have a word with them about it. Never had a problem, never had a complaint.

Cheers though

To be honest there are only a very few situations where you should be using a smarthost at all, sending by DNS is far more logical but because there's some effort involved in setting it up people just configure a smarthost.

Smarthost config should be used when you want to route your email through another mail server internally (maybe a filtering system for instance) not to offload all your outgoing email for someone else to deal with...