Mail Client Setup

We use a customized hostname for each customer.  The name is some version of your domain name as a prefix to -mail.limedaley.com.

So, if Microsoft ever decided to host with us, their hostname would be microsoft-mail.limedaley.com.  Contact us if you don't know the correct hostname.

Usernames are always your full email address of your primary account (some customers have secondary receiving accounts that use the primary account as the login for sending email.  Gmail doesn't really like that model, and often wants to have a separate login for every sending account).

There are two different methods for retrieving email: IMAP and POP3.

IMAP is generally what people want now, especially with multiple devices that access email.  If you use IMAP, mail is stored only on the server, and any folders you create are on the server, so all email is accessible from every device, and if you read it on your phone, it will be marked read on your desktop. If you use a sent and/or trash folder, you can set it up so all devices use the same folders, and so an email sent on your phone will appear in the sent folder of your desktop (often email clients use different variations of "Sent", "Sent Messages", "Trash", "Deleted Items", "Junk", "Spam", etc. so we find it most useful to configure all devices to use the same "Sent" folder, rather than having a "Sent Messages" folder on your iPhone and a "Sent" Folder on your desktop.

With POP3, there is only one inbox folder on the server, and any folders you create are device specific.  All email is delivered to one folder, and depending on how you setup each email client, the messages might be removed the server immediately, deleted after X days, or deleted when you delete them from the inbox.  Generally, each device will see every message as new, regardless if you have read it on another device.

In either case, you should have a system to not let your inbox grow unbounded, as you will eventually run into problems where your email client won't like having 20,000 messages in the inbox, or it will get slow to search through them, etc.  Some of our customers make a new folder every year and move all of last year's emails into that folder.  Some prefer the "zero inbox" approach and keep on top of deleting messages as soon as they aren't needed, or archiving them into a different folder.

Once you have decided which method to use, you pick that method in your email client, and then choose from the appropriate port numbers.  Bolded ports are our recommendations.

Receiving emails:
Secure IMAP: Port 993
Insecure IMAP (not recommended): Port 143

Secure POP3: Port 995
Insecure POP3 (not recommended): Port 110

Sending emails:
SMTP via SSL: Port 465
SMTP via TLS: Port 587
Insecure SMTP (not recommended, and most likely to be blocked by your ISP): Port 25 (Yes, TLS can be used on Port 25 as well, but 587 is far more reliable across ISPs)

Gmail specific instructions: Video