13 replies to this topic

[Wazzup]

Hi guys,

Firstly I apologize if this is the wrong place to ask the question, but I couldn't find anywhere else appropriate to ask

My question is that I'm in the process of setting up a small business with my brother, and I was wondering how we would integrate Cpanel's Email System with an Email Client such as Microsoft Outlook.  I've tried looking everywhere but can't seem to find what I need, and was hoping someone out there might be using a similar method.

Basically I would like to be have several email addresses eg sales@domain.com, enquiries@domain.com, complaints@domain.com, and have a folder for each email address in the email client, so it would separate the emails up depending on where the customer sent the emails too.  I've not used Outlook in like...forever, so have little idea on what I'd need to do.  I've tried Google Apps but it comes with a lot of features with I don't really need.

If anyone can be of any help at all, it'll really be appreciated.


Thanks!

[Wazzup]

Just realized it is in the wrong forum, but there doesn't seem to be a forum for Business hosting!

[Nepherim]

What you're asking for isn't very much to do with hosting, but more to do with how to setup Outlook filters.

From an ASO perspective you can approach this in a few ways, given that ASO lets you create as many email accounts as you want.
1] Create sales@, enquiries@, as separate email addresses, using Outlook to pickup each account separately. Personally I find Thunderbird handles multiple accounts better, but it's down to personal preference.

2] Create one real email address, and then create Forwarding email addresses. You can forward these to the one 'real' email address. That way you only need to configure Outlook for a single email address. But you need to create Rules to look at the email address and filter to different folders.

Personally I'd go with #1 since if you grow you may want different people to actually manage each address. Either way you can always switch to the other method though, so it doesn't matter too much which you initially choose.

[-ASO- Anthony]

There doesn't really need to be a separate topic for Business Hosting.

If I remember correctly, if you setup IMAP accounts in Outlook, it shows each email account separately.  I believe Thunderbird also does this.  As my operating system is Ubuntu Linux, I've opted to use Evolution as my email client.  Each IMAP account I setup more or less has its own separate folder.  

Try setting up your mail client to use IMAP instead of POP and I believe you'll procure your desired setup.

[Wazzup]

Thanks for your help guys - I'll try and set it up using Outlook.

I'm guessing, if we were to reply to the email, we can configure it so that it looks like the reply has come from the address which the email has been sent to?

ie. customer emails to "sales@domain.com",  we reply, and it will appear to the customer that the reply has come from sales@domain.com


Cheers

[IBBoard]

If you have a folder per address in your client (i.e. are going with IMAP or setting it up to keep them separate) then most decent email clients will respond with that folder's email address.

I've got about five or six different addresses set up at home in Thunderbird (including a GMail, a few here and one with my ISP that goes in to the generic "Local Folder") and they all respond to whatever address that folder is for. The one limitation is that if you set up aliases then your email will come from the receiving account, not the alias. So, for example, emails to special-sales@example.com that get forwarded sales@example.com would be replied to by sales@example.com. AFAIK there isn't an easy way around that because the alias isn't a login and so couldn't be used directly, and no clients seem to support using the "to" address in case you're just a CC.

[Wazzup]

I'm actually getting somewhere which is great - so thanks for that guys.

The only thing I'm not sure about is whether to use IMAP or IMAP SSL.

Oh, and is there a way to delete items straight away in Outlook as opposed to just getting a strikethrough effect through the subject and then having to close Outlook for it to disappear?


Thanks again!

[IBBoard]

IMAP SSL is better, since IMAP (and POP and SMTP) transmit passwords in the clear. The only down-side on shared hosting is that the certificate is for servername.asmallorange.com, so you either have to tell your email client to ignore the incorrect server name (which Thunderbird has an extension for) or you set it up to use the server name instead of your domain name.

As for the strike-through effect, that'll be related to some "purge" behaviour. I don't know what the settings are in Outlook, but Thunderbird handles it properly by moving files to the "Trash" folder on delete and not showing them in the inbox.

[Wazzup]

I think I'll stick with IMAP for the time being - it sounds simpler and is working great!  I mean, we shouldn't require passwords to be sent through email anyway.

It's good to know that we can always change email clients though!

As for the strikethrough thing - I'll look into it properly.


Thanks for your help IBBoard - you've been really helpful

[IBBoard]

If you don't require passwords then your email is highly insecure and anyone could send from your account I think that's just a misunderstanding, though.

Basically, when you log in to POP or IMAP to download your emails then you have to say who you are (so the server knows which emails to deliver) and prove that you should have access to the emails. To do that your computer sends your account name (normally an email address) and password to the server. If you just use POP or IMAP then that password is sent in plain text and anyone who intercepts the communications can read it.

Some people ignore the risk because they don't think that they are important enough to have someone tapping all of their communications, but it can also happen if there is a server with a malicious script that is running in "promiscuous" mode connected to the same subnet/switch at either end of the connection. That script can be sitting and listening for passwords, record them as they go past and have no-one any the wiser.

POP and IMAP with SSL, on the other hand, (sometimes called POPS and IMAPS) encrypt all of the communication between you and the server. As well as the content of the emails that you download being encrypted, your username and password is also encrypted. That means a promiscuous script could see the packets, but wouldn't be able to do anything with them because it couldn't decrypt them (without brute-forcing the SSL protocol, which would probably take years).

SMTP and SMTPS (SMTP with SSL) is the same, but for sending email: username and password as well as email content sent in the clear versus everything (including your sending account details) encrypted.

[Wazzup]

Whoaa Thanks for the explanation.

Quote

If you don't require passwords then your email is highly insecure and anyone could send from your account I think that's just a misunderstanding, though

I think it was - we do have passwords for the various email addresses.  I thought SSL encrypted the actual email itself, and I was thinking we wouldn't need SSL because we wouldn't be sending Passwords through email (therefore no need to use SSL - does that make sense? lol) - I didn't actually think about the fact that when checking emails, when you entered your password, it is sent in plain text if you don't use SSL...


I did actually happen to download Thunderbird and I must say, it is a lot more clutterfree than Outlook - best thing is that you can customize it.


But what is the extension you were referring to earlier when you mentioned this :

Quote

IMAP SSL is better, since IMAP (and POP and SMTP) transmit passwords in the clear. The only down-side on shared hosting is that the certificate is for servername.asmallorange.com, so you either have to tell your email client to ignore the incorrect server name (which Thunderbird has an extension for) or you set it up to use the server name instead of your domain name.

Are there any other extensions which you'd recommend?


Thanks as usual

[-ASO- Anthony]

If I remember correctly, in Outlook, once the message(s) has a strikethrough, if you go to the Edit menu, there's an option for Purge Deleted Items.  Then again, that option might be under the Tools menu.  I don't remember exactly but it was somewhere in one of the menus "Purge Deleted Items."  That should force the messages with the strikethrough to be removed immediately.

[IBBoard]

Thunderbird is quite nice and usable. I'm actually running Thunderbird 3 quite successfully on one of my machines - it's only in Beta, but Fedora have it in their repos. It's good when you integrate Lightning as well for the calendar. Other than that there aren't many "must have" extensions other than a couple of simple ones (like an "open broken links" one for where URLs get split across lines, and I don't remember the last time I used that!)

As for the certificates extension, it is the remember mismatched domains extension.

[Wazzup]

Thanks for your help guys - you've been a great help! (especially IBBoard )

I will look into those extensions and go from there