Integrating Zimbra into our current POP3 solution

[DWJames]

Hi,
we have a small office that's currently serviced by POP3 email provided by our ISP. We would like to move to a server based email solution so we can share contacts, calendars and such and have local control of our mail database so we can back it up centrally.

Our office internet connection won't be always on and with a fixed IP address, so we would like to retain the ISP's mail server as a primary point of contact for our email service.

So we'd like to use Zimbra to collect all email from the POP3 server, to host individual mailboxes for us and to send emails back out via the POP3 server.

It looks like Zimbra is a great solution for most of what we're after, but is the POP3 in and out functionality we're looking for possible?

thanks,
James

[phoenix]

Welcome to the forums.

Yes, there's pop3 functionality in Zimbra and it can be set by each user on their account. The only functionality missing at the moment is the ability to download it on a schedule (that feature is targeted for the next major release) - currently the user needs to hit the 'get mail' button to collect their pop mail. As you're not permanently connected that may not be of concern to you.

[DWJames]

thanks

So there's no way of setting Zimbra to fetch the mail from our pop3 server every few minutes?

[Klug]

Originally Posted by DWJames

So there's no way of setting Zimbra to fetch the mail from our pop3 server every few minutes?

Not yet, it's a 5.0 feature : http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=14527

[phoenix]

Originally Posted by DWJames

thanks

So there's no way of setting Zimbra to fetch the mail from our pop3 server every few minutes?

Not within Zimbra until release 5, you could always use fetchmail until then.

[DWJames]

Originally Posted by phoenix

Not within Zimbra until release 5, you could always use fetchmail until then.

If Fetchmail will do what I want and isn't massively complicated to set up, that's fine
Can I natively use our existing POP3 server for outgoing messages or will fetchmail handle that as well?

[phoenix]

Let me just ask a couple of questions before we go on, does the pop3 mail at your ISP all get dropped into one mailbox or is it multiple mailboxes? If it's a single mailbox the, IIRC, most ISPs don't have a true multidrop mailbox which is what you'd need. What's the set-up at your ISP?

The other question relates to how often/long your connection will be on for?

[DWJames]

Sure,
I have a control panel for our POP3 mail. We have our own domain name and email accounts are currently set up individually per user, plus some extra address such as sales@ and info@ which auto-forward to other mailboxes.
I can change this setup and do whatever I like with the email for the domain to make it work with Zimbra.

Our office connection is an ADSL line with a dynamic IP address that will be on for 99% of the time, so can be considered 'always on' for most stuff, but I would like to keep the the MX record for our domain pointing at the ISP's email server so that we don't have to worry if we need to turn the server off for a bit.

thanks for your help,
James

[phoenix]

OK, the answer to your fetchmail question is yes you can get the mail with that. As the mail is in individual mailboxes you will need to know the password for each users pop3 mailbox.

Ok, that's effectively an always-on connection.

Turning the server off wouldn't cause you any great problems as the sender should have the mail re-queued to send again if it can't make a connection.

Let me make another suggestion to you that might be more effective. You could host your DNS at a service that provides you with a mail backup store, that means if your server is offline it will queue the mail until it comes back on-line. I use that type of service at easydns.com where they host my dns records and spool the mail if my server is down, it keeps the mail for five days before giving up trying to deliver it. That is, I would suggest, more reliable than mot ISPs mail servers. I have no connection to easydns other than a satisfied user.

[kentm]

Pheonix,

What are the options if they all get dropped into one box?

I have this and so far I have had to keep my old e-mail server running in the background to do this (602 LANSuite) and I would like to ditch that and run just the one e-mail server. I only have 6 accounts running.

I understand the spam ramifications of the multidrop and catchall functions.

Thanks,

Kent