Plusnet IMAP config for emClient

So according to Plusnet's guide to setting up your email client (what other settings to I need), I need to use the following settings:
server: imap.plus.net
port: 993
STARTTLS: yes

I'm configuring emClient to use these settings and it doesn't work, I get the following error reported by the operations log of emClient (my plusnet email name is replaced for security):

11:32:01 [email protected] [IMAP] MailClient.Accounts.ConnectionException: Courier-IMAP server shut down by signal.
---> MailClient.Imap.Base.ByeException: Courier-IMAP server shut down by signal.

I've contacted support who recommended using port 143 but this doesn't work. SMTP works fine and I can send emails using emClient.

Is anyone successfully using emClient with Plusnet IMAP?

What about user name, password, and authentication method?

I'm using my Plusenet usernasme and password, along with port 993 and SSL/TLS (legacy)

Apparently it's a known issue since March this year and still PN are saying "bear with us"

Time to get yourself ISP-independent email. Either free gmail or Microsoft Outlook (ex hotmail) or if like me you don't fancy those pay a small amount for a domain and a mail service.

Usually all working within minutes of doing that. In your case, today!.

I use Tsohost (now owned by GoDaddy) and ionos (ex 1 & 1). Both are fine. For years it was just Tsohost but then I needed a lot more web and mail space and that got expensive with them. Ionos is also getting more expensive for space but at the moment I'm on a legacy cheap completely unlimited web space product. Until they decide to "retire" it of course.

A once-off hassle is letting all important contacts know the new one, but you ease the pressure by telling them using the
Plusnet one and asking them to acknowledge to the new one. You can do that over a few days starting with the frequent ones.

No need to tell most commercial contacts. Just change it in your account details with them. They should be given a unique "alias" so if you get spam to that address you know where it leaked from so can block it and change it again in your account with them. Which you can't do with a standard ISP-based address. Good providers allow unlimited aliases.

Start sending (and replying) purely from your domain but continue to listen to both the new and old ones until you are confident nobody is sending to the ISP address. (Possibly you can set the ISP one to forward to the domain anyway).

The problem of your email address if you migrate to another ISP is solved for ever. Nobody needs to know.

Similarly, changing your email provider is not a biggy, as you can fairly easily move the domain host if you wish or just leave it where it is and change the name server links in the domain account. The two do not have to be with the same provider.

+1. Great service and value from Plusnet but its webmail is a disaster, gave up after an afternoon trying to set it up when we joined PN, many complaints on PN forum this year but in fairness it's a basic budget package. Fastmail basic package is about £3 pm, used with Thunderbird, no problems in seven years.

Time to get yourself ISP-independent email. Either free gmail or Microsoft Outlook (ex hotmail) or if like me you don't fancy those pay a small amount for a domain and a mail service.

I think you may be right. I already have a GMail account but it's not my main email and I'd prefer to pay a little per month for a service that's not mining my information and/or selling me advertising.

I'll take a look at Ionos and Godaddy/TsoHost, I already have my own domain name registered with easily.co.uk and redirecting to my Plusnet email, it's worked fine for years but after reading the pretty dire Trust Pilot reviews for Easily, I'll look at moving my domain when it comes up for renewal, perhaps to the same company that ends up providing my email.

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

+1. Great service and value from Plusnet but its webmail is a disaster, gave up after an afternoon trying to set it up when we joined PN, many complaints on PN forum this year but in fairness it's a basic budget package. Fastmail basic package is about £3 pm, used with Thunderbird, no problems in seven years.

Thanks, I'll check out FastMail

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

+1. Great service and value from Plusnet but its webmail is a disaster, gave up after an afternoon trying to set it up when we joined PN, many complaints on PN forum this year but in fairness it's a basic budget package. Fastmail basic package is about £3 pm, used with Thunderbird, no problems in seven years.

I've signed up and successfully imported all of my Plusnet email to Fastmail, a very smooth and easy process with good logging to show what's been done. I'm impressed so far.

According to FastMail's pricing plans, the basic budget package doesn't include "Your choice of email apps (Outlook, iPhone Mail)", does that mean you can't connect to it with any email client (I see you said it works fine with Thunderbird)?

FastMail uses app passwords to allow clients to connect (you can't use your Fastmail account password) so I'm wondering if app passwords are not a feature of the basic package and hence you can't connect an email client such as Outllok, Thunderbird etc?

In reply to a post by joconnell:

does that mean you can't connect to it with any email client

Yes, seems like you can't do that which is a stingy limitation for a paid provider:

In reference to www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058752854:

Users on a Basic plan will not be able to use Fastmail on third-party mail clients, or create app passwords.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

In reply to a post by joconnell:

does that mean you can't connect to it with any email client

Yes, seems like you can't do that which is a stingy limitation for a paid provider:

In reference to www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/articles/360058752854:

Users on a Basic plan will not be able to use Fastmail on third-party mail clients, or create app passwords.

Thanks, I hadn't spotted that article.

I'm currently on a 30 day trial of the Standard package and I've setup all my email clients on all devices, so I wonder if they'll be denied access when my trial expires and I choose the Basic plan.

Sorry but as non-techie this is over my head. My wife and I have a Fastmail account each on a PC each and both have used Thunderbird from the start with no issues. We have a couple of iPads which also receive and send emails via the inbuilt Apple app. I think the PCs use POP3 and the iPads use IMAP if that makes sense.

We had a few setup problems due to our own inexperience but Fastmail support was swift and helpful. We don't bother with the Cloud etc as we are retired and our mail is not critical so this package meets all our needs.

We keep all our emails on the PCs in folders with various subjects and going back for years. They are backed up using a Tbird utility and backup to a separate drive every month or so. We have noticed that if we delete emails from the iPad before opening them on the PC they do not reach the PC at all. Hope this helps ...

Edited by Malwaremike (Wed 20-Oct-21 14:35:05)

I suppose it is possible the specifications of the Basic plan changed for new customers whilst existing customers were unaffected.

@Malwaremike,

For the record, I think your PC's also use IMAP as POP3 downloads emails to the PC's and deletes them from the mail server. If your PC's were using POP3 then there would be nothing for your iPads to download. Personally I always use IMAP as then the mail server is the ultimate backup source and I can access from any device even if there is no email app configured.

[Edited to change SMTP to POP3. Momentary dumbness....]

HTH,

Edited by mking90031 (Wed 20-Oct-21 16:59:53)

Uh? I think you mean POP3, not SMTP?

Welcome to the Community of Senior Moments! We do use POP3 but although Tbird -- tools -- Disk Space gives the option to delete emails from server after receipt, we don't. Fastmail basic has a storage limit so I open webmail now and again to delete old mails which, as I said, we keep in Tbird folders.

Incidentally our old BT mail still works although we ditched BT years ago when they tried to charge for it even though BT Yahoo was being hacked by the thousands. Tbird runs it as a separate account in the left column, below the Fastmail folders which run from the top. Never had any bother and if we can't screw it up nobody can

Email hosting is included for no additional cost with either Apple iCloud+ (the paid tiers) or Microsoft 365 (the subscription version of Office). At the moment I use a free Gmail account which does have excellent spam filtering but as you say it comes at the expense of datamining your email. I'm thinking of trying out either Apple or Microsoft instead.

The Apple hosting is new in the last couple of months so might have some teething problems still and I'm not entirely convinced that Apple's email servers are the best. Other users with email addresses on your domain seem to need to be added to your Family Sharing group too, which might complicate things if they're not children/partners.

The Microsoft 365 non-business personal/family tier requires you to move your domain registration to GoDaddy, but if you have a search there seem to be ways to work round that (it's suggested that it's only for ease of changing domain mail settings). With the family tier of 365 you can have six family members with email addresses on your domain.

Basic iCloud gives 5GB of storage at nil ongoing cost. Obviously that's not very much these days, but you don't have to go to the paid tiers if your requirements are modest (or your ruthless archiving and deleting attachments!)

In reply to a post by Chardonbleu:

Email hosting is included for no additional cost with either Apple iCloud+ (the paid tiers) or Microsoft 365 (the subscription version of Office).

Only the business MS365, not the domestic "Personal" or "Home" (ie, family) versions annoyingly.

The Microsoft 365 non-business personal/family tier requires you to move your domain registration to GoDaddy, but if you have a search there seem to be ways to work round that (it's suggested that it's only for ease of changing domain mail settings). With the family tier of 365 you can have six family members with email addresses on your domain.

I have 365 Home for the family at the £79/year. I also have multiple Exchange Online mailboxes at £3.00+VAT a month. My domain names (various) are managed by Gandi and the MX records are set to point to Exchange Online, and I have still been able to implement SPF, DKIM, and DMARC.

MS365:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/buy/co...

Exchange Online:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/exchan...

Edited by jchamier (Sat 30-Oct-21 19:51:36)

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Chardonbleu:

Email hosting is included for no additional cost with either Apple iCloud+ (the paid tiers) or Microsoft 365 (the subscription version of Office).

Only the business MS365, not the domestic "Personal" or "Home" (ie, family) versions annoyingly.

Microsoft 365 Family & Personal support own-domain email hosting: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-a-per...

The GoDaddy restriction is pretty unreasonable though.

In reply to a post by Oliver341:

Microsoft 365 Family & Personal support own-domain email hosting

I see what they've done, this is adding a domain to an outlook.com account, whereas the business plans give you a virtual Exchange server that you can configure.

The GoDaddy restriction is pretty unreasonable though.

That is far too US centric.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

I see what they've done, this is adding a domain to an outlook.com account, whereas the business plans give you a virtual Exchange server that you can configure.

Yes, it seems pretty fussy. You need to sign up to Microsoft 365 with an Outlook.com email address and then you can alias a personal domain address to it. Nevertheless, it isn't bad value if you have Microsoft 365 anyway.

That is far too US centric.

GoDaddy have a fairly big UK presence now but are not cheap, UK domains cost as much as 123-Reg.