SMTP vs POP 1

[jamesbird]

Wondering about changing customer's inbound mail connection from the POP connector to full blown SMTP/ MX hosting.
I've been a lover of the POP route till now cos it allows me to uncouple any local broadband unreliability from any mail delivery problems i.e. customer's broadband fails, mail still received by ISP and held untill we go get it. No mail bounce back to senders etc.
Question - I upgrade the exchange server to full SMTP service, what happens to inbound mail if e.g. customer's broadband if out for a day? An invisable resend, gives up and doesn't get resent?
Any comments?

 

[TechyMcSe2k]

It will all depend on the senders network email setup and how long it will try sending that message. If the Broadband is down for a short while, it should be fine. But for a whole day, the sending mail environment will probably time out after 3 tries and deliver a NDR to the sender

 

[mofusjtf]

You can also look at a hosted Exchange solution which will provide some more flexibility with Outlook Anywhere and Outlook Web Access. So it is better than pop but not as expensive as full blown exchange.

 

[ShackDaddy]

What I do for all my clients and partners is set them up with an account at MXLogic. That provides excellent spam scrubbing, but there's more than that: if their server or WAN link goes offline, MXLogic immediately begins queuing their mail and checking every 15 minutes or so to see if the link/server is back online, and then delivering the queued mail when the link test is positive. During that downtime, users can log into the interface at MXLogic and view/reply to any mail that MXLogic processed during the last 7 days. That means if you have a full day outage, users can still access all the previous week's mail and get business done via hosted webmail till the server/link comes back online.

I've heard nothing but good things about the service since I started providing it to my clients, and it makes it a lot easier for me to do upgrades and migrations since I know that when the server is offline, it's automatically queuing nicely.

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting

 

[jamesbird]

Thnaks David, I'll look at MXLogic, that's the sort of service I need I think.
All the best
James