What is a email server please

Magic_x_uk · 11 Aug 2011 at 09:13

Hi. Thinking of buying one of the HP Proliant Microservers.

at the moment I use a desktop PC, a Laptop and my Blackberry for emails.

Desktop and laptop use Microsoft Outlook 2007 for emails. As well as I also use hotmail/googlemail for others.

What exactly does a email server do for me that outlook doesnt.

Thank you.

(This is just for basic home use) 1 user.

edscdk · 11 Aug 2011 at 09:20

causes you a load of hastle.

don't bother

will crash and go wrong
cost you a bomb in electricity as its got to be on 24/7
you will have to pay for a fall back system as if you internet is down people will get NDR's
you will have to pay for a static IP or configure dynamic DNS
you will have to pay to register a domain name and a basic managment package (all be it only a few £ a month)
you will end up getting blocked by some spam filters as your IP will be residential if oyu send from your email server
you may if you get a virus get your IP added to spam filters
you will ahve to work out how to backup the data and configuration

Sp00n · 11 Aug 2011 at 11:13

Not worth your time.

memyselfandi · 11 Aug 2011 at 13:23

There is no need or benefit for you as a normal home user to run your own mail server.

If you had a need for one then you would know what one was.

J.B · 12 Aug 2011 at 10:37

Nothing, Outlook is the front end connection to an email server so for the most part your functionality would remain the same.

Stick with your current set up TBH unless there is a specific function you were hoping for?

Sin_Chase · 12 Aug 2011 at 10:54

The only benefit I could see is running your own free copy of BES on-top Exchange for a fully fledged BB environment.

Exchange/Server is not cheap though so not really a fruitful exercise. You also need a domain and a static IP.

d_brennen · 12 Aug 2011 at 10:59

memyselfandi said:
If you had a need for one then you would know what one was.

RimBlock · 13 Aug 2011 at 03:39

Whilst, for the most part, I would mirror what others here have said, I am using an email server at home.

My reason for this is to enable me to collect all my email from multiple accounts (I have a few domains) and sort the email in to a few mailboxes locally. I can then configure outlook to connect and collect from my server. My mail is collected throughout the day so if the internet link goes down at home when I get home I have still got the emails that were collected before I lost connectivity. I can also configure Outlook to connect from a single mail server (mine) on each PC we have rather than collecting from multiple accounts (times 3 machines). My situation is unusual though.

For a single user collecting from a single email account I would not bother. As long as you can get your email via two separate links (home and mobile for example) you should be pretty well covered.

RB

Skidilliplop · 27 Aug 2011 at 12:51

Another advantage is backup and restore capabilities that you couldn't get from having sparsley scattered webmail accounts.

It's not necessarily a hard thing to do, there are apps like hMailserver out there that are very easy to set up and configure. And it won't lose you anything if you have a microserver already running to put it on.

Though I wouldn't go out and buy a server just for this. If you really wanted the features you can probably get them all from a hosted exchange service which would only cost £5/m and work out cheaper for at least the first 3-4 years

MarkA · 29 Aug 2011 at 16:58

stick with google. Can't go wrong!