hMailServer External Accounts

External Accounts in hMailServer is one of the most powerful feature which gives hMailServer following functionalities:

  • hMailServer is configured as per scenario #2 discussed in Email Server configuration scenarios, and users want to fetch emails from their other email accounts on external servers and deliver to their hMailServer account or can also be redirect to external accounts using rules.
  • hMailServer is configured as per scenario #3 discussed inEmail Server configuration scenarios, when primary server is offline all emails will be delivered to secondary email server and stored there in a single catch-all account or individual email account or multiple email aliases pointing to a mailbox. Now when primary comes back online it will download emails from secondary email server from catch-all account or individual email account or a common mailbox referred by aliases and then will either deliver emails to specific email account or distribute them depending on the MIME headers of email messages.
  • hMailServer is configured as per scenario #4 discussed in Email Server configuration scenarios, here all emails addressed to the domain are stored on an external email server from where hMailServer will download emails regularly as per interval specified and will either deliver them to specific email account or distribute them depending on the MIME headers of email messages.

All of these stuffs are possible due to the feature called External Accounts in hMailServer. Now, let us see how to configure external accounts.

Configure hMailServer External Accounts:

  •  Edit email account under which you want to setup external accounts by following below steps
    • Login to hMailServer Administrator
    • Expand Domains
    • Expand the domain name under which the email account is, then expand Accounts
    • Click on the email account which you want to edit.
    • Click on External Accounts tab.

hMailServer External Accounts - 1

  • Click on Add button to add an external account which will pop-up a window as shown below.

hMailServer External Accounts - 2

  • Name: This could be anything required to identify external account. Even multiple external accounts could have the same name. I use the email address from where this external account will fetch emails.
  • Enabled: If checked hMailServer will download emails from this external account.
  • Server Information :
    • Type: Select the protocol used to download emails. Only POP3 is available right now.
    • Server address: Address of incoming (POP3) server from where emails will be downloaded.
    • TCP/IP port: TCP port of incoming (POP3) server to which hMailServer will connect to download emails.
    • User name: Username of the email account whose emails required to downloaded using external account.
    • Password: Password of the user.
    • Use SSL: Select if SSL is required.
  • Settings:
    • Minutes between download: hMailServer will attempt to download emails from this external account regularly every X minutes specified here. If you want to initiate downloading emails manually then you can do so by clicking “Download now” button after saving the external account configuration.
    • Deliver to recipients in MIME headers: By default hMailServer delivers downloaded emails to the email account under which this external account has been setup. But in cases where there is a catch-all account or a common mailbox referenced by aliases, we will need to download and deliver emails to recipients in the headers. In such cases this option must be selected, so that emails will be distributed depending upon recipients contained in MIME headers and all unsorted email will be delivered to email account under which this external account has been setup. Delivery to recipients in MIME headers may cause some issues in case of BCC/undisclosed recipients etc. where recipient will not be available in MIME headers and hMailServer will not know whom to deliver such emails.
    • Allow route recipients: If you choose recipients in MIME headers, any recipient existing in the MIME header, but is not created in hMailServer and if you want to deliver emails to such recipients by using routes created, then select this option.
    • Retrieve date from Received headers: By default when hMailServer downloads email from external server it sets internal date of the message current date and time. By selecting this option hMailServer will try to determine when the external POP3 server received the email and set the internal date to the same. If it can’t determine then it will use current date and time.
    • Anti-spam: hMailServer will scan downloaded emails for spam if this option selected. If you think the external server from where the emails are downloaded is checking for spam then you may disable this option to improve performance.
    • Anti-virus: hMailServer will scan downloaded emails for viruses if this option selected. If you think the external server from where the emails are downloaded is checking for viruses then you may disable this option to improve performance.
    • Delete messages immediately: hMailServer will delete downloaded emails from external server immediately after successful downloaded.
    • Delete messages after: hMailServer will delete downloaded emails from external server after X days specified here.
    • Do not delete messages: hMailServer will never delete downloaded emails from external server.
  • Click “OK” button to save the external account configuration.

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2 thoughts on “hMailServer External Accounts

  1. its great to learn external internet email account to link with internet email Accout. its good to learn.. thanks for Article.

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