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bstone · Sep 1, 2004, 02:07 PM

I use Thunderbird for two email account (.mac and university account). I travel a lot and find wifi networks wherever. Thus said, sending mail from thunderbird is difficult (check ain't no issue usine IMAP). Anyone know of a universal smtp server i can use?

thanks!

CatOne · Sep 1, 2004, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by bstone:
I use Thunderbird for two email account (.mac and university account). I travel a lot and find wifi networks wherever. Thus said, sending mail from thunderbird is difficult (check ain't no issue usine IMAP). Anyone know of a universal smtp server i can use?

thanks!

You'd have to pay for an account somewhere to do this -- because if not it would be an open relay, and these get closed or blacklisted as they're used for SPAM.

.Mac has one, though you're still going to have issues when firewalls get in the way.

You could also use the SMTP server on your Mac itself -- look into "Postfix enabler" as Postfix is already on your box, you just need to turn it on and configure it. Then as long as port 25 outbound isn't blocked at your firewall, you can send mail.

Truepop · Sep 1, 2004, 03:36 PM

you are going to have a problem even if you don't travel. most universities only allow you to use their SMTP server so they reduce spam. so even if you find a SMTP server that can be used everywhere (the .mac server should just make sure you turn on authorize) it may not work at your university. assuming that you check your email on campus.

I went to a college last year that blocked every port but 21, 80, and 443 or I couldn't check email or send it. I could only do webmail.

mdc · Sep 1, 2004, 04:45 PM

2nd for postfix enabler. i have it running and set my mail.app to use my localhost as an smtp server and it works perfectly fine.

bstone · Sep 3, 2004, 10:27 AM

postfix enabler has saved the day. man i love OS X and this community. the only issue is i cannot seem to get smtp ssl working properly. i created the test certs and then set thunderbird to use outgoing ssl, but it keeps erroring out saying it cannot connect to the server.

ideas?

larkost · Sep 3, 2004, 11:16 AM

One problem with running smtp on your own box is that if you don't have a static and named ip (that is if you are not reverse DNS-able), then a lot of big IPSs (namely AOL) will not accept mail from you.

C.J. Moof · Sep 3, 2004, 02:14 PM

And you'll typically get a bunch of points from a SpamAssassin install, increasing the probability that you'll get flagged as spam.

bstone · Dec 20, 2005, 11:23 PM

postfix enabler is now charing $9.99 for using it. anyone have any other ideas?

brettcamp · Dec 22, 2005, 01:15 AM

I, too have a university email account. I don't really understand smtp (or even POP or IMAP), but I was just traveling for the past couple weeks and had again resigned myself to using only my university webmail (rather than Mail or another email client, which means problems with attachments, mailing lists etc) to send messages, when I discovered that I had no problem using Mail to send messages via my new gmail account. so that's what I did. It worked in two different cities, but I'll leave it to someone in this forum who's more knowledgeable about these issues to explain why, and whether it might work for you.