Although the corporate move to cloud computing has been measured and cautious, many average computer users have made the move without even realizing it. Users of Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, and other web-based email, have all entrusted their communications with cloud services.

Generally speaking, this is not a bad thing and provides the users with a lot of flexibility, but there are at least 5 reasons to think twice about using cloud email with your own website.

1. A commercial company will have the only copies of your data.

2. Archiving may be a pain if you ever decide to shut down the email accounts but keep the messages.

3. When you cannot connect to the Internet, you cannot see those emails.

4. You are at the mercy of the email company, which can change their software or even shut down completely.

5. You cannot control mail server configuration, except what your service provider allows.

Some cloud services offer a happy medium by providing users with web-based email and pop/imap service. That way, your data is still ultimately yours.

Photo Source: Flickr

Continue reading: 5 Reasons NOT to Rely on Web-based Email

These days, many email users rely on free services such as GMail or Yahoo! Mail for their messaging needs, but these services lack the customization that some business customers may want (i.e. myname@mydomain.com). For that, they have two options: setup cloud services with Google or another service provider, or use the email accounts offered by their web hosting providers.

If your web hosting customers opt for the latter, you have some things to consider. POP3 and IMAP offerings are a given, but if your customers want a web-based option, you will need to provide one. Some hosting control panels come with web-based email solutions. If you have that option, use it.

If you do decide to install your own web-based email, make sure you choose secure, well-tested software that is easy to upgrade and maintain. The last thing you want is to have to manage poorly written software and spend your time fighting off hackers who exploit its security holes. Finally, make sure that things like quota control limits are easily enforceable and that the server load is not too high. You and your clients will hopefully be happy with the results.

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Continue reading: Offering web-based email on your web server

Dovecot is a popular POP3/IMAP server for Unix-like operating systems. It is available through most distributions, including RHEL, CentOS, and Fedora. To enable secure mail transactions, you will need to edit your /etc/dovecot.conf file as root.

Uncomment the following lines:

# Disable SSL/TLS support?
ssl_disable = no

ssl_cert_file = /etc/pki/dovecot/certs/dovecot.pem
ssl_key_file = /etc/pki/dovecot/private/dovecot.pem

You can also optionally disable non-secure logins:

disable_plaintext_auth = yes

Finally, you need to restart dovecot:

service dovecot restart

Continue reading: How do I enable SSL/TLS in Dovecot mail server?

When signing up for web hosting, a new user will encounter a lot of new jargon. Among those many new terms are: POP3, IMAP, and Webmail. All three are related to how a mail server delivers and presents email. Although webmail is becoming one of the more popular choices, with services such as Gmail and Yahoo Mail, there are many reasons why someone might choose one of the other options, which are also available even from those popular webmail services.

POP stands for Post Office Protocol, and POP3 is the third version of POP. To use POP, the user must have an email client, such as Mozilla Thunderbird, Eudora or Microsoft Outlook. Once configured with the username and password, the email client contacts the POP3 server periodically and looks for new messages. When it finds messages, the client downloads them to the user’s computer, deletes them from the server (or leaves them according to user specification) and disconnects.

IMAP, which stands for Internet Message Access Protocol works by contacting the mail server and displaying the messages that are available. The messages stay on the server and can be viewed by multiple clients consecutively or simultaneously. IMAP4 even allows clients to stay connected to the server so long as the email client is active.

Continue reading: POP3, IMAP, and Webmail