However, many people still don’t know that if you want to pull your email into third-party email software, it has to be capable of using secure connections. This means SSL (Secure Socket Layer), and TLS (Transport Layer Security). Both of these protocols use encryption, and are built in automatically to most up-to-date email software. Instead of using ports 25 and 110 to sends and receive, you’ll be using ports 465 and 995, and Gmail won’t work without it.

So what happens when you are asked to set up an email system to talk to Google Mail, which doesn’t allow those ports, and is so old it doesn’t know the first thing about encryption protocols? Well, one answer could be a little program called Stunnel. This little gem sits on your computer and converts standard emails into a format suitable for Google Mail. It can handle incoming and outgoing mail, and is robust enough to use on a network where many people are sending emails at the same time. It also uses very little system memory, and rarely crashes.

Setting up Stunnel is a easy. You simply run thorough the install process which will take all of about 20 seconds, and then edit a small text file which configures the program to use whichever email service you are using. Of course we are talking about Google Mail here, but this program could be used to interface with any email system using secure socket layers.

You can set up port mappings easily, so if your software will only receive emails from port 110, it will automatically translate that to port 995 for you, and the same with outgoing mail. It will also handle IMAP email as well.

You can install Stunnel on any computer running Windows. In a network environment you can install a copy on a server, and point all your workstations to it. Stunnel seems to allow multiple connections with no fuss whatsoever. I’ve seen a single instance of Stunnel handling email for up to 200 workstations. Of course if you have more, there are no reasons why you couldn’t install more than one instance of Stunnel to handle the extra traffic. It also installs itself as a service on server operating systems, which enables it to be started automatically. It can also be installed on individual machines, such as laptops.

This program finds favor with quite a few people. It’s simple and does exactly what it says it does. It’s also flexible enough to fit in with almost any network.

Dovecot is an open source IMAP/POP server that runs on either Linux or UNIX systems. Dovecot is suitable for both small and large installations (I just recently installed Dovecot on a 300+ user system) and will work in the background like a workhorse.

In this article I will show you how to install Dovecot and get it up and running with either IMAP or POP quickly and with as little pain as possible.

Installation

Since we are installing on a Ubuntu machine, installing Dovecot is as simple as running the command sudo apt-get install dovecot-common dovecot-imapd dovecot-pop3d. You can actually install either dovecot-imapd or dovecot-pop3d depending upon which protocol you need to support.

Once installed the executable command is /etc/init.d/dovecot start.

Configuration

There is only one configuration file you need to deal with. That file will be located in either /etc/dovecot.conf or /etc/dovecot/dovecot.conf. Believe it or not, the default configuration file is fairly well set up for you. You will only have to make a few modifications. So don’t let the 1,000+ line configuration file look you in the eye and defeat you. You can best this beast with little time.

The first configuration you will need to make is to configure the protocol. Look for the line:

protocols = pop3 pop3s imap imaps

You can just leave this as is, or, if you know you are only using certain protocols, edit to suit your set up. Just remove the protocols you do not need.

The next line you need to look for is:

mail_location =

There are two popular choices here:
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir # (for maildir)
or
mail_location = mbox:~/mail:INBOX=/var/spool/mail/%u # (for mbox)

In other words, if your users’ mailboxes will reside in the home directory, use the former. If the users’ mailboxes will reside in /var/spool/mail, use the latter.

Restart and test

Now restart Dovecot with the command /etc/init.d/dovecot restart and let’s give this system a test. We’ll test this with the help of telnet. Issue the command telent ADDRESS PROTO Where ADDRESS is the address of the server and PROTO is the protocol you want to use (either pop3 or imap). Here’s what the test will look like:
telnet localhost pop3
+OK dovecot ready.
user USER
+OK
pass PASSWORD
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 1 messages:
1 622

Where USER is a legitimate user on the system and PASSWORD is the password for that user.

If you see the +OK at the end, Dovecot is ready to go. If you have any problems, the best place to look is in /var/log/maillog. And the best way to run that check is by using two terminal windows. In terminal A issue the command tail -f /var/log/maillog and in terminal B run the Dovecot test above. Terminal A should report any issues which will be your starting point for troubleshooting.

Final thoughts

Dovecot really is that easy to install. Of course Dovecot is much more flexible than that. In later articles we will discuss other configuration options for this outstanding server.

Interested users find the email import option in the Gmail account settings. The second link is displaying as Accounts for users who have not had this new email import feature enabled and as Accounts and Import for those who have.

Gmail users have to provide account login data of the email service that they want to import into Gmail. Options that are provided allow the user to import emails and contacts, add a label to all imported mails and to enable email imports for the next 30 days.

Being able to import emails into Gmail is another feature of Gmail that is poised to become popular as soon as it is activated for most Gmail accounts.

Basically what I am asking this time, is do you use POP3, IMAP, or webmail, or maybe even something else? POP is the “oldschool” way of doing thigs. You download the messages from the server, but you are essentially making a copy of your real inbox on the server, the message structure, messages, etc are not changed on the server, no matter what you do in your email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc).

IMAP is the method of directly accessing your server real-time from a different application. If you delete an email from your client (Outlook, Thunderbird supports IMAP as well) you selete it from your server too, and vice-versa. Webmail is of course directly accessing your server on a nice graphical interface, like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and all the others.

There are many ways to manage yourself using any of these methods, but which do you think is best? POP is great for managing emails as tasks, and to keep backups, in fact, I think it is the most productive, but since it doesn’t modify your server too, it means your server will be a mess. IMAP is great for not doing double work, but is at times a bit inflexible and harder to use if you also want advanced features like labels, tags, folders, etc. Webmail is probably a mixture of the two if you have a good interface like Gmail. So which do you prefer, how do you manage your email?

There his however a simple method to enable POP3 access in Hotmail right away independently from where you are accessing Hotmail. Microsoft is checking the location stored in the Hotmail account to determine if a account should have POP3 access. All that needs to be done to enable both POP3 is therefor to change that location in the Hotmail account profile.

To do that select More Options by hovering the mouse over Options in Hotmail. Select View and edit your personal information in Manage your account and click on Registered Information. Information about the location should appear. Edit those information so that they are in a country that currently supports Hotmail POP3. You can later change it back if POP3 support is added for your country as well.

One easy way to find an address is to search for hotels in London using a search engine and copy their information into Hotmail. Make sure you change the postal code, timezone and country in the menu. You can for instance use that postal code for London: SW1V 4BN

Now that you have enabled POP3 access you need to configure your email client to access Hotmail this way.

Incoming Server: pop3.live.com
Incoming Port: 995
SSL Encryption: yes

Outgoing Server: smtp.live.com
outgoing port: 25
Authentication: yes
TLS Or SSL: yes

The username and password are the same that are used to log into the Hotmail site

I had some troubles in the past setting up POP3 and SMTP access for Gmail and a quick check on the Internet revealed that many users had similar difficulties. It actually took me 20 minutes to setup the new account in the email client Thunderbird correctly so that it would receive and send emails using Gmail’s servers.

While the following guide will visualize the settings in Thunderbird it can easily be adopted for other mail clients. The important parts are the server settings and not the menus.

POP3 access has to be enabled in the Gmail interface before anyone can even think of adding a Gmail account to a software email client. This is done by logging into the web interface of Gmail and clicking on the Settings link in the upper right corner next to the email address.

A menu with multiple tabs will open. Select the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab. Checking the Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded) entry and clicking on Save Settings will enable POP3 access for the Gmail account. If that would not be done the server would simply refuse the connection.

Everthing is set in Gmail, now it is time to setup the email client. Here are the general parameters:

Incoming server: pop3.gmail.com
Port: 995
User name: full email address
Secure Connection: SSL

Outgoing server: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 587
Secure Connection: TLS
User name: full email address

The main culprit are the port numbers and the secure connection settings. If you have any questions or difficulties setting this up let us know. It would also be nice to hear if other email clients use different names for the settings.

A component is a plugin for one of the mentioned email services which means that if you use AOL and Yahoo Mail you would download and install those two. The main advantage of webmail is that you can configure all settings in Thunderbird without having to run an external software that listens on the mail port.

Setup involves three steps. First you make sure that webmail is up and running. You do that by opening the options of webmail. It should display a graphic that looks similar to the one below.

If everything is up and running select domains from the tab bar and make sure that the webmail providers that you use are in the list. If that is the case exit the options.It’s time to create a new account to retrieve and check email from those webmail accounts.

POP3:

Server Type : POP
Incoming Server : localhost
username: your email address which has to include the domain, e.g. @yahoo.com

SMTP:

Server Name : localhost
User Name : your email address which has to include the domain, e.g. @yahoo.com

Check out the setup guide if you are unsure about this, it explains every step with pictures. My thanks to Si Howard for pointing this out. Another option would be Freepops that I wrote about as well.

We are going to use a software called YPOPs! – POP3/SMTP Access to Yahoo which acts as a proxy on your system. It basically works like this. You setup the Yahoo account in your mail client like you would normally do. The only difference is that you do not add Yahoo Mail Pop3 and SMTP servers but a link to localhost instead.

YPOPS! listens there and acts as a proxy to retrieve and send mail using an email client and Yahoo Mail. In Thunderbird you use the following information after installing YPOPS!:

Your Name: Obvious, ain’t it ?
Email Address: Your Yahoo Email address
Type of Incoming Server: Pop
Incoming Server: 127.0.0.1
Incoming User Name: Your Yahoo Email address

Settings for outgoing mail (SMTP) are almost the same:

Server Name: 127.0.0.1
Use name and password: Yes
User Name: Your Yahoo Email address

That’s it. Settings in Outlook and other mail clients are virtually the same. Thanks to the How to Geek for finding the software.

Others however do not offer this at all officially. Some clever guys created FreePops for that reason. It enables Pop3 access for hundreds of webmailers. Some of those offer Pop3 access while others do not. What I like about FreePops is that mail accounts are added in the mail program that you use, you do not need to configure the software at all.

You basically add a new Pop3 mail account in your email client and use localhost and port 2000 as the Pop3 server. FreePops automatically understands which mail service you want to reach because you had to add the email which includes the domain name during the configuration.

I suggest you take a look at the supported webmailers to see if the one you are using is among them. This is actually easier than setting up the accounts using the information you find at the webmailers website.

FreePops uses roughly 4 Megabytes of space in the background.

The second change might be interesting to users that have to work on different computers. Gmail now offers the option to access mail accounts that support the pop3 protocol from within gmail making it easy to use gmail as the central platform for all your incoming and outgoing emails. This new feature does not seem to be available to anyone yet, just check your settings in the gmail account and click on accounts.

If the option Get mail from other accounts: is visible you can add other accounts to your gmail account. I’m however not really convinced to use gmail for my mail consolidation and administration. I have the same objections when it comes to online storage devices.

I do not trust companies enough to have important mails or files stored online on a server. There is always the possibility of misuse and I don’t want to take any risks. Maybe I’m a little paranoid about this whole thing.

Still, I will continue to download my mails from gmail using Thunderbird and I’m happy with the solution. Mainly because I only work on one computer. I can see the advantages if you work on more than one in different locations.

Update: Four years later and Gmail is still offering to retrieve mail from other providers. Providers like Hotmail have in the meantime started to offer similar options so that their users can also retrieve emails via Pop3 from other mail providers. This is handy for users who only use a website to do email.

Chris Brogan described another method which should be fine for most purposes. He suggests to create a pop3 account for gmail to be able to download all mail that is new in that account. Once downloaded you could backup the mailbox file and schedule the mail client that way that it is downloading mails from gmail regulary to reduce the chance that you lose mail. The steps to backup your gmail mails in detail:

It is probably not necessary to backup the gmail mailbox locally. You could create a backup of all of your mail profiles instead which would be a better way I think.

Mailman is a firefox extension that is able to get that information from gmail, hotmail, yahoo and pop3. Mailman adds itself to a toolbar and displays a message if new mail did arrive. You will have to add your login details to the extension to be able to do so. I do understand that this raises security concerns but this is the trade off.

Mailman has some additional nice features. Once you see that new mail did arrive you may click on the link and will be directly taken to the mail account using an auto-login feature. Right, you do not need to login a second time. You may define the update frequency and add sound alerts if you like. (I would never use sound alerts because I would hear a constant sound then, with all the spam that is flodding my mail boxes.

It also offers a search function to search your accounts from within firefox. Some users seemed to have problems with hotmail. I do not have a hotmail account, maybe someone else could verify if problems exist ?

All you need to do is locate the file user.js which should be in your profiles folder. The user.js file does not exist by default and you might need to create it my right-clicking and choosing new, text document and naming it user.js. Once this is done you are ready to add the following lines of code to it.

user_pref(“mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new”, true);
user_pref(“mail.check_all_pop_folders_for_new”, true);

Once this is done restart thunderbird and mail from all accounts should be automatically received.