Setting up and accessing a mail server.

Turner

Ok I will give the scenario.


Office 1 - Single computer running 512 dsl windows xp no static ip

Office 2 - Dsl line with no static ip used by two computers sharing using a router.


Need to have a mail server with the address info@joebloggs.ie

Both offices need to be able to access mail on this server, using outlook express.


Would a webhosting company be needed to host the joebloggs.ie name and a mail server set up there or is there any other way.


Bit of a n00b to all this so excuse my ignorance.


Chief.

seamus

There are two ways (that I know of).

Get a static IP.

Fetchmail

Never used fetchmail, but that's probably what you're looking for. You can get email hosting for jobloggs.ie and set fetchmail up on one of your machines, and then treat that as your mail server. I think.

oscarBravo

A hosting company would be the easiest way. Just make sure they support IMAP, and set up OE (or, better yet, Thunderbird) on all the computers to use IMAP instead of POP when checking mail.

This leaves the mail on the server, so beware of quotas. I'd look for a host that provides SpamAssassin, and get it to send spam to /dev/null.

towbar

Would recommend host especially if you plan to have users access email from home or remotely out of hours. The problem with hosting yourself is that if the mail server goes down out of hours somebody has to go to the office to resolve the problem. Email hosting is fairly inexpensive at this stage and alot lest than the cost of a dedicated server.

Cryos

one to look at is http://www.ipowerweb.com it is web hosting and e-mail, but i use it for both and find the e-mail side of it excelent, an infinite amount of pop3 accounts and fowardings, also includes an auto responder.

http://www.networksolutions.com are ok for e-mail based hosting but i dont think they support the .ie domain

Ro

I'd go with one of the Irish hosting companies. You can get email from Hosting365 for €13 a month that supports IMAP. They also do .ie domains for a lot cheaper than the IEDR.

http://www.365.ie
http://www.host.ie
http://www.blacknightsolutions.com

ressem

Unless your really dealing with high security stuff or high volumes, then one of the hosting companies is fine, especially as you have dsl.

Areas to look out for
Pop/ Imap/ Webmail client access
Shared folders
Quotas and what mail is thrown away when the quota is hit.


If you're using shared accounts like sales that everyone need to access I'd stick to pop with the leave mail on server enabled on each Outlook client.
Make sure that using webmail will not clear out the pop folder with your chosen ISP.

Then someone/something has to clear out the old entries using the webmail or imap view every few days.

And find out whether it cleans out old mail or rejects mail when it hits the quota.
Pay for a large quota to leave room for the spam, viruses and powerpoints.

If you choose imap for shared folders then it might be worth forwarding all incoming mail to a backup account.

OT seamus: For an in-office mail server
how about ODMR reversible SMTP and dynamic DNS which is built into some new home routers?
Are there any mail servers with good ODMR support that anyone knows of? Fetchmail does, postfix doesn't. Supposedly Exchange 2000 and Mdaemon do. Anyone use it?