Any email gurus out there?

[Glynne]

I have had the same email provider for many years (Tiscali, albeit now part of TalkTalk).
This was set up on POP3 and SMTP and has generally been OK apart from a few recent glitches where I could receive but not send emails and required me to mess about with the SSL check box. I've run this system on PCs and more recently iMacs.
However I now run an iPad as well and the set up essentially operates as 2 "separate" email accounts by which I mean that they don't synchronise - so I get a copy of incoming emails to both devices (and have to separately delete) and any sent emails only appear on the device I send them from.
I'm now waiting for a new iMac (old one got taken out last week in the lightning storm) so I'm wondering whether it might not be better to move over to IMAP which I understand will synchronise across both devices and let me see the same folder structure?
I've had a Google over the merits of both and IMAP seems to come out on top but I wondered what other people's views were and whether there were any IMAP users on TalkTalk or Tiscali.
I don't receive a huge number of emails but I tend to use email as a storage media so being able to see this on my iPad would be useful.
Not sure whether it is connected but on the last 2 occasions I've taken the iPad on holiday, I've only been able to receive emails and not send them which is something of a pain?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Not sure whether it is connected but on the last 2 occasions I've taken the iPad on holiday, I've only been able to receive emails and not send them which is something of a pain?

I have the joy of being with Tiscali/TalkTalk. I use linux and POP3, my colleage uses Windows 10 and IMAP, both mostly work but he seems maybe to have a few more problems than me with e-mail connectivity, but whether that is POP/IMAP or Windows/linux I can't be sure.

The problems sending e-mail from anywhere, I am amazed is not more of a hot topic. The outgoing mail servers won't accept connections to port 25 (SMTP) unless it comes from one of their clients - i.e, you are at home connected via WIFI & TalkTalk broadband. When out and about, connected through your mobile provider, the connection will be refused silently. Or you can elect to use port 587 and password authentication, which the server will accept from anywhere - but this seems to greatly increase the chance of non-delivery because it's so often used by spammers. Resorting to the webmail interface seems the only reliable solution. This is the same whether you use IMAP or POP for receiving mail.

 

[RobinBHM]

If you are using them mostly for storage rather than communication, you could set up 2 new gmail accounts and forward from your emails. You can then pick them up anywhere. The problem comes when you reply to an email and then with a repeat email trail gets moved to a new email address.

I swapped to IMAP from POP3 and its been great, no issuse with synchronisation between home, work, tablet. However that was not a talk talk server

 

[nev]

If your new mac is setup with the same Apple ID as the iPad, i believe that they will sync automatically (I know mine do (gmail)).
AS an aside if you have trouble using your mail app whilst out and about, you should be able to use your account via a web browser e.g. https://www.talktalk.co.uk/mail/

 

[DiscoStu]

I use imap and as you say it syncs across all of my devices iPad, Mac, PC and phone without a problem.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[woodpig]

It's not really been an issue but I did wonder why I could receive emails on my phone but not send them so thanks for that Tony. :wink:

 

[Glynne]

Thanks everyone for the quick replies, especially Tony as I thought it was a problem only I was experiencing. I'll try the webmail suggestion next time I'm away.
I might have a think when my current TalkTalk package (line rental, phone, broadband & TV) expires as to whether I might be better changing to another provider.

 

[Nelsun]

Sounds like Tony hit the nail on the head regarding TalkTalk. Long term I would possibly suggest separating your email from your ISP; the main benefits being you're free to switch provider without losing your email address and you can pick one that works reliably. Gmail is an obvious free offering that's actively supported (and synchronises very well) on any platform going and isn't tied unnecessarily to any other service. Just a thought.

 

[ChrisR]

I had used (Tesco net) as an internet service provider right back to the dial up days, no problem with Email’s, but ever since (Talk Talk) took over (Tesco net), I have not been able to send Email’s.

The monthly charge is lower than with (Tesco net), so maybe Email is not included with (Talk Talk), and that’s why their monthly charge is less ??. :?

Chris.

 

[RogerS]

From the web:

IMAP and POP are the protocols or technologies using which you can download messages from mail servers on your computer and access them with the help of mail clients such as Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird etc. The main advantage of this technology is that you can access your emails via a feature-rich browser-independent mail client. In case of POP, you get offline access to old mails too.

Difference between IMAP and POP
IMAP and POP are two different protocols. There are many differences between these two. The main difference is that IMAP(Internet Messaged Access Protocol) always syncs with mail server so that any changes you make in your mail client (Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird) will instantly appear on your webmail inbox.
On the other hand, in POP(Post Office Protocol), your mail client account and mail server are not synced. It means whatever changes you make to your email account in the mail client will not be transferred to the webmail inbox.
In simple terms, if you are using IMAP and mark a mail as read, it gets marked as read in your web based inbox too (because the changes are happening on the server). However, this won’t be the case if you are using POP, because the mails are downloaded to your PC and the changes won’t reflect on the server.

The biggest advantage of using IMAP is you can access your mail from multiple mail clients and each client detects the change in real-time. Suppose mail server is connected with two different mail clients (let’s say Client 1 and Client 2) on different computers. If the user deletes a message in mail client 1, the change will appear on mail server immediately and also on mail client 2. In IMAP all messages from mail clients and servers are synced with each other.

With POP, you can download emails from mail server to your PC. After downloading, the original mail is removed from the server and hence you can’t access it from another computer (Note: In Gmail there is an option to keep the copy of mail in inbox. Thunderbird also provides an option to leave messages on server until you delete them). But there are lots of other options missing (for ex. if you send a message from mail client then you won’t find that message under sent items in your mailbox). In Apple Mail, you can also set things to leave a copy of the message or not on the server.

From me:
Changing from POP to IMAP ....gotchas to be aware of

The biggest downside is forgetting the way that these two systems work when you migrate from using a POP based email to one that is IMAP based. You got so used to having a copy of the email on your computer(s) that you never gave a second thought to deleting them when you wanted to do a bit of decluttering of your inbox on, say, your iPad. After all, you've still got the email sitting on your iMac sitting at home. Only with IMAP, you haven't. When it's gone on one computer/tablet it's gone from all of them. DAMHIKT. Unless, of course, you have a set of rules as I do in Apple Mail that will move an email, say, from UKW notifying me of a response to a thread I am subscribed to. In Unix speak, that is a copy and delete...ie it copies the email into your mail folder called, say, UKW and deletes it from the server. So if you are used to using your smartphone to retrieve your emails while out and about but you also have your home PC/Mac running then when a notification comes into your Mailbox, your home PC does it's move business and you will ever see that notification on your smartphone. Not that much of an issue as long as you are aware of the ramifications and plan accordingly.

 

[Glynne]

Thanks again everyone.
I'm just in the process of setting up my new machine (fortunately I use Time Machine on an external hard disc as back up) and I think I'll stay on POP for the reasons Roger suggests.
My main gripe was the inability to send emails when away but it appears that is down to TalkTalk rather than the email protocol and I should be able to get around that using webmail so I'll stay on the system I know.

 

[RogerS]

Personally I prefer either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner for my regular backups on my Mac. I only use Time Machine for recovering documents that I might accidentally have over-written.

 

[morfa]

Not sure if I'm a guru, but I've been running an email server for 10 years and doing it professionally for about 5.

Most of the points above about IMAP are spot on. It's what Glynne should be using for sure. Just remember that when you delete an email on one device it'll be deleted across other devices. Honestly POP is awful. I don't run a POP server any more and I'm kind of surprised TalkTalk still do. But there we go.

The problem you're having with not being able to send emails is most likely due to the hotel wifi blocking port 25, which is the port used to send email. Well technically 25 is the port for mail relay. The port for message submission is 587. Which the 'new' spec in RFC 6409. Port 25 is from RFC 821. To be honest tho most SMTP servers will still be setup for port 25. However due to massive amount of spam trundling around the place (eg 80% of the email to my email server is spam) port 25 is blocked on a lot of networks.

Sheffield Tony:

I can assure you spammers mostly use port 25. But 587 will be used as well. Also the mailserver should be making you authenticate regardless of the port used. I would be quite surprised if email goes missing when submitted via 587. If you've actually sent it to your smtp server, it'll get there regardless of the port you used to connect to that server. I suspect that you're potentially being blocked on 587 and your client isn't sending the email correctly. Or as you're using TalkTalk's mailservers which are probably in most DNSRBLS you'll be blocked thanks to them. If you can avoid using your ISPs mailservers, then that's probably a good thing.

 

[RogerS]

morfa...why do you say that POP3 is awful? Are you speaking from the perspective of someone who runs the mail server or someone who uses it as a client ?

 

[morfa]

Roger - Bit of both. POP was handy (and still could be) if you're on an intermittent internet connection. But very few people are. So even if you just have one client then IMAP with caching (which most mail clients will use) is vastly more useful. So I'd say for the vast majority of people that IMAP really is the way to go.

From a mail admin's point of view having IMAP and POP means more ports, more services, more attack vectors. Also most POP software is old and rarely updated. As the protocol is basically obsolete.

 

[Glynne]

Just as an addendum, I had a couple of issues when setting back up and I checked the TalkTalk site. Evidently, if you have initially set up on POP then you can't change to IMAP.