Technical email advice pls. IMAP or POP3?

[Erin]

Hopefully the collective wisdom of some of the ribnet IT bods can help me here.

We've got a small peer to peer network in the office, though one computer is dedicated as a 'server' and stores all work files. We each have an email address (5 of us) and use pop3 to receive onto our own machines. Now, whilst we don't swap desks very often, the 2 receptionists do, and I've been told that IMAP would be a better system so that where you sit doesn't matter and you can also work from home with all your archived mails available.

This all sounds fine, but I'm slightly sceptical about all our emails remaining on the ISP server. Is there a way to get all mails downloaded to the 'server' pc and then use that as the IMAP server? I know this might complicate working from home by requiring a VPN, but we can live without that if necessary. We use XP home and pro at the moment. Am I barking up the wrong tree?

Any thoughts?

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Erin

This all sounds fine, but I'm slightly sceptical about all our emails remaining on the ISP server. Is there a way to get all mails downloaded to the 'server' pc and then use that as the IMAP server?

yes... although I trust a half decent ISP to do the backup (and be able to restore it if required) more than I would trust someone in a small office presumably who isn't an IT specialist.

[codprawn]

http://www.pmail.com/downloads_s3_t.htm

Use mercury mail on the server. Pegasus on the clients if you need it.

Long time since I used it but it's still pretty good. We always setup using Exchange or Domino but you need dedicated servers/software for that.

[Richard B]

The other alternative is to get all grown up about it and do something like Small Business Server SBS2003 and get the benefit of lots more functionality.

One thing this depends on is how your customers, suppliers and external contacts send email to you - if it's erin.ribster@my-isp.com then you might as well stick with the low/no-cost pop3 route. However if you use, or want to use, something like erin.ribster@professionalcompany.com then you might as well look at moving to SMTP and thinking a bit bigger. The downside is budget - you would easily blow £1000-ish on software alone for server and client access liceneses.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Richard B

The other alternative is to get all grown up about it and do something like Small Business Server SBS2003 and get the benefit of lots more functionality.

One thing this depends on is how your customers, suppliers and external contacts send email to you - if it's erin.ribster@my-isp.com then you might as well stick with the low/no-cost pop3 route. However if you use, or want to use, something like erin.ribster@professionalcompany.com then you might as well look at moving to SMTP and thinking a bit bigger. The downside is budget - you would easily blow £1000-ish on software alone for server and client access liceneses.

richard thats the route we run here for a similar sized company - and I don't really see a benefit over the IMAP route. In fact for an average small company without dedicated IT knowledge its probably a waste of money - since things like Sharepoint services, and the group policies need an understanding to use both as an administrator and to some extent even as a user to get proper benefit needs some hand holding for people who are used to working stand alone.

if you are planning to become 20 people then consider it. if its for 5 its potentially a PITA for no gain, you will spend big £ on licences, a server capable of running it, and tech support to do it. Then everyone else wants extra cash too - e.g. your virus checker wants more and so on. If you like the exchange server option then at your size it might make more sense to use an outsourced package (I think BT business offer one) but then you are trusting someone else with your mail safety then.

[Erin]

Interestng thoughts. Thanks.

I had considered going down the SBS 2003 route, but it means a fairly major upgrade of hardware and software, something like £3 or £4k. We are a small firm of surveyors, so we don't need a web presence or any kind of on-line systems. It is mainly MS word, access and emails that we use. Our exisitng 'server' pc has raid and a NAS backup routine. I just want to be able to centralise the emails for easier archiving and access by everyone.

From my point of view, if all emails got downloaded to one pc and could then be viewed from the other local stations as well then that would be fine. I'll take a little look into Codprawns link. All our IT stuff is looked after in-house by me, we can't justify the expense of getting too advaned and fancy just for the sake of it!

We have a domain name through oneandone, with five email addresses at present. What was the background to your comment, Richard, about SMTP?

Cheers
Keith

[Richard B]

Yep, all fair comment (Polwart)! I do like your suggestion of hosted services as that gives you the flexibility and features whilst mitigating the cost element. Get good service level agreement with a well established player in the market and you shouldn't feel nervous about trusting them with your email safety. Remember, their reputation rests on the integrity of your email, and this is their core business so they ought to do a very good job.

If you put "Hosted Exchange" into Google, there's thousands of companies offering the service.

[codprawn]

Whilst on the subject of backup many people are still stuck in the dark ages - I mean who uses tapes for anything else these days?

We push our customers to use 2.5" USB external hard disks. Use 2 of them so one can always be taken off site - small enough for the office staff to slip into a handbag or a pocket and yet they hold enough data for full server backups.

We have saved quite a few companies using this route. Tape backups are often too small to do a full system backup - they aren't cheap either!!!

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by Erin

We have a domain name through oneandone, with five email addresses at present. What was the background to your comment, Richard, about SMTP?

Cheers
Keith

Simply that if you're already using, or planning to use your domain name as your email suffix, it gives you the flexibility to either redirect email to wherever you want and avoids being tied to any particular ISP. Presumably oneandone manage your MX record which points to one of their mail servers and they relay the email to a delivery point (POP3) for you? Or do you use the ISP's email suffixes?

[Richard B]

Originally Posted by codprawn

Whilst on the subject of backup many people are still stuck in the dark ages - I mean who uses tapes for anything else these days?

Most large companies!

Originally Posted by codprawn

Tape backups are often too small to do a full system backup - they aren't cheap either!!!

Autoloaders and robots. Automatic spanning of tapes.

Disk staging, virtual tape, near line storage, archiving, storage area networks. Different approaches to different requirement. Your USB technique suits small companies, different technologies suit large companies.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by codprawn

small enough for the office staff to slip into a handbag or a pocket .

in some industries that may not be a selling point! My tapes have an advantage - the chance of a member of staff having the same obscure brand of tape to restore all my information somewhere else is pretty small!

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Most large companies!

Autoloaders and robots. Automatic spanning of tapes.

Disk staging, virtual tape, near line storage, archiving, storage area networks. Different approaches to different requirement. Your USB technique suits small companies, different technologies suit large companies.

The only reason large companies still use them is because senior IT bods are getting on a bit and don't like change!!!

Why anyone would want to backup to tape instead of disk arrays is beyond me. My web designer has a few servers in a large server farm and some of his most important websites he was hosting were down for almost a week because the tape backups weren't capable of doing a full sytem backup. He had no control over this as they were managed by the server farm people.

Why the hell buy a powervault when 1tb hard disks are so much cheaper and have higher transfer speeds?

I remember people used to think I was mad when I said SCSI was a waste of money and multiple IDEs was a better way to go. It turns out that one of the biggest storage places in the world used exactly that approach - Google!!!

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Polwart

in some industries that may not be a selling point! My tapes have an advantage - the chance of a member of staff having the same obscure brand of tape to restore all my information somewhere else is pretty small!

That's a good point but then again wopuld they have the knowledge either?

If you are worried about data it should be encypted or at least under lock and key!!!

Pity the government don't realise that.............

[Richard B]

OMG here we go again...

[codprawn]

Originally Posted by Richard B

OMG here we go again...

I could say the same.........

[Erin]

Originally Posted by Richard B

Presumably oneandone manage your MX record which points to one of their mail servers and they relay the email to a delivery point (POP3) for you? Or do you use the ISP's email suffixes?

Hang on a second please... I'm starting to get lost here. MX record?

All our emails use our domain name e.g. keith@surveys-r-us.co.uk, joe@surveys-r-us.co.uk etc. Each of our local machines gets the mails from the 1and1 server via pop3. I don't have a full understanding or knowledge of the other types of email systems as I haven't experienced them, but I'm keen to learn to make sure we're using the mosts sensible method. Althought not the main point of my quest, currently, if we send an email to eachother in the office it goes via the 1and1 server. Although not a problem, presumably the only way to avoid this would be with SBS2003 where our 'server' pc would handle the internal mail communications. The Pegasus Mercury system seems to be along the lines of what I was originally thinking.

Keith

Is there anywhere that the differnet email protocols and methods are clearly and succinctly documented? I know most people learn by experience and trial and error, but I want to get this right first time.

[Poly]

Originally Posted by Erin

Hang on a second please... I'm starting to get lost here. MX record?

don't worry about it. When someone wants to send mail to you they have to know where the server that handles surveys-r-us.co.uk is, and also what to do if that server is not responding. The MX record is part of the "address book" for your server. As you use one and one it will all be transparrent to you. If you were using a more sophisticated package you would be able to edit this to do different things.

I think you could avoid uploading and downloading the interal mail using an IMAP server based in your office - but you would need to configure it correctly. The only obvious advantage is bandwidth?

[tinker]

So you want access to your email form any location plus pop3 access?

IMO Get cpanel server space and point the namesever settings on oneandone account to this space. Then set the cpanel email accounts as required(names, passwords, usernames...)
You can then have web access, using a browser, from any location to the server containing your emails and still have pop3 access from your local PC or mobile phone, blackberry.....just make sure your pop settings leave the read mail on the server, it can delete them after being read.
Back your email up from cpanel, easy and cheap.