Tuffmail

[mikev99]

Is Thunderbird mapi compliant - can it be set up to be the default windows email client?

One always has backup issues. As I remember an utility is available that will allow one to compress the entire IMAP store and download it to backup media?

I could use Outlook as my IMAP client if I could figure a way to sync the rest of the items (calendar, contacts, and tasks) across 3 machines. I have tried importing those items from the master system and replace duplicates, but that process does not remove items deleted on the master from the "clone."

Anyone have ideas?

[rmns2bseen]

Originally posted by mikev99
Is Thunderbird mapi compliant - can it be set up to be the default windows email client?

One always has backup issues. As I remember an utility is available that will allow one to compress the entire IMAP store and download it to backup media?

As far as I know, Thunderbird is MAPI compliant.

It may not be quite the utility you had in mind, but for backup purposes I've found that IMAPSize does all that I need.

[Cantello]

Originally posted by aleinss
Of what interface? The IMP4 interface is very cool IMHO.

Speaking of the IMP interface: Does anyone know if it is planned to implement some kind of synchronisation into Tuffmail? It is available for HORDE (in HEAD at least) and as such could be used without too much hassle, right?

Would be perfect for me!

[beq]

I also wanted to say how excellent Tuffmail's support has been for me over the years, even when I hadn't yet paid.

Frankly it's amazing to me how promptly my questions have been answered and my requests accommodated (no matter how busy John Capo might be at any given day, and I know he's very busy).

Even general discussions have been answered with helpful explanations. Late evenings and weekends didn't seem to matter...

I just checked my support message folder and counted over 200 email exchanges with Tuffmail!

Sure it's easy to be helpful at any given instance, but to have such a level of consistency over the years?

[nbarr]

Originally posted by beq
Frankly it's amazing to me how promptly my questions have been answered and my requests accommodated (no matter how busy John Capo might be at any given day, and I know he's very busy).

Even general discussions have been answered with helpful explanations. Late evenings and weekends didn't seem to matter...

My experience with Tuffmail / John Capo has been identical.

[William9]

Originally posted by beq
I just checked my support message folder and counted over 200 email exchanges with Tuffmail!

Why would one have that many message exchanges? Over 200 email exchanges sounds like more than a customer would ordinarily have with their e-mail services provider.

[Cantello]

I'm currently trying TM and I wondered if I can actually configure how SpamAssassin and the Bayes filter work. I can activate both via the account manager but not set any specific settings.

Am I missing something or is it not really possible?

Other than that it is totally great, especially the HORDE/IMP interface (which is not exactly clean *and* full-featured but I prefer it to Squirrel nonetheless).

Helge.

[beq]

Originally posted by William9
Why would one have that many message exchanges? Over 200 email exchanges sounds like more than a customer would ordinarily have with their e-mail services provider.

Oops, actually I'd only counted Tuffmail's replies (not including the emails I sent)

It's just a lot of back-and-forths over the years I guess... It took me awhile to get a grasp on some technical features/functionalities without guidance, and I'd been the curious sort (John did say some of my questions had never been asked before). Other times I'd wanted to justify myself when requesting changes. IIRC I'd also tried to beta test a few things for him...

There were also account considerations as we'd upgraded and purchased additional accounts with specialized services. And my follow-up reminders for him to send the late invoices (he certainly seemed to prioritize service and support over sending the bills heh).

In short John's been a great fellow. We'd even talked about my family (one was in the region hit by the tsunami, another had an operation, etc). I was also concerned about his boat when Florida was rocked by those back-to-back-to-back hurricanes...


P.S. I do feel bad for taking up his time on these one-to-one exchanges, though I'm guessing I'm not the only one who liked to badger him (incidentally there have been a few threads by others here requesting a Tuffmail forum)? But he's always been gracious and said that much of it would be helpful to wind up in the FAQ (and he would usually thank me for being a knowlegeable customer, though we both know that isn't true, haha).

Edit: Hmm, if there was an easy way to mine these Tuffmail email replies and extract any useful (but non-private) info, I wouldn't mind it being published if it could help save them time...

[beq]

Originally posted by Cantello
I wondered if I can actually configure how SpamAssassin and the Bayes filter work. I can activate both via the account manager but not set any specific settings.

As you said you can customize general Bayes setting per mailbox, including enabling/disabling, weight of SpamAssassin score modification, tagging of various headers (and Subject header mod), and training notification. AFAIK the actual per-user Bayes training is done by your moving (your own custom set of) messages to the Ham & Spam subfolders under Auto-Train (though I can't recall if the Bayes DB is pre-seeded by some sample corpus, or if the SA scoring is in turn fed back to the algorithm in some way?).

Other than Bayes and some other techniques such as anti-backscatter SRA (and of course the dual antivirus), the main anti-spam defense involves first-line MX restrictions (ie. SMTP rejection and/or greylisting), plus second-line SpamAssassin scoring. These work in conjunction with sender whitelisting/blacklisting (of both the MX restrictions and/or SA scoring), based on message envelope sender address and/or sender host IP! (Recipient blacklisting is achieved by setting up reject addresses in your account.)

You can configure the second-line SA scoring (which together with the whitelist/blacklist is referred to as the 'Policy') in terms of enabling/disabling, tagging/modification of many various headers, dual spam thresholds (spam/high spam) and what to do with each, etc. Furthermore with Sieve scripting you can write your own mailbox filter that only targets certain SpamAssassin hits or ignore others if you need really specific behavior (which should be familiar to FastMail users as well).

Now, the beauty is that the SA scoring and whitelist/blacklist can be configured separately in a hierarchy. You can have a set of configurations for the whole account, and also specific to each domain in your account, and also specific to each address (in each domain in your account) including the catchall.

The first-line MX restrictions are configured per address, and is very granular in letting you enable/disable many different types of checks (under some conditions, some checks are guaranteed 100% to only catch spam with no false positives).

Sorry didn't mean to ramble...

[mikev99]

I too have been impressed with TM customer support. I am using TM as my frontend for myself and my wife. I am consolidating all our email addresses into his and her domains. However, I need a flexible and robust web interface. I need to be able to do email from a variety of computers, some of which may not be mine. Hence, an IMAP email client won't work for me. I find the Tuffmail webmail options archaic. John has indicated that they are not for prime time use but rather are for quick access when on the road. As a result, my approach is to use Fastmail WebMail as my client. I get all the smtp, MX, Sieve, Spamassassin, and so on capabilities of Tuffmail and the webclient of Fastmail. I just forward everything to a catchall personal domain at Fastmail and all works great. I use a single mailbox account at TM since I do not ever use the TM system to hold mail. Having everything connected via my own domains also makes it easy to move things should the need arise.

Now, if one or the other offered everything ....

I use to use a program called OpenWebMail which runs on Linux on one of my servers. It was very robust and user friendly. Now if John would offer that as an option ...

[beq]

Continuing reply from another thread:

Originally posted by mikev99
So, I use Tuffmail for my frontend and forward all to my own domain alias at Fastmail. Convoluted, but it works.

Originally posted by mikev99
I use a single mailbox account at TM since I do not ever use the TM system to hold mail.

Hmm, if you're not using your mailbox at TM (just filtering), have you considered switching to an MX relay account at TM (which would be more transparent in terms of relaying your mail to FM and keeping the same message envelope recipient address)?

For my main TM account I still use a mailbox account, and have TM domain map '@mydomain' to '@beq.fastmail.fm' (to be received at FM). Not as transparent, but I still retain the localpart of the envelope recipient address, which is the only part that my FM Sieve script tests for on any envelope recipient filtering. (I could also filter on the original message envelope recipient address via the X-Envelope-To header that TM adds.)

On the flip side, I get additional benefits using a TM mailbox account, including as interim-backup mail storage, whereby I can immediately read any new messages in my TM mailbox if the FM mailstore server is down.

As an interim backup, the TM mailbox folders can be set to be auto-purged regularly so as not to accumulate mail. Another way is to have FM POP fetch the messages from the TM mailbox (which FM would only be able to do once their server is back up) and rely on the duplicate suppression to delete extra copies of messages (FYI TM also supports POP fetching from individual folders other than the Inbox, like FM). In my case I have FM POP fetch from my TM mailbox, but I set FM to just discard those fetched messages right away...

Originally posted by mikev99
Now, if one or the other offered everything ....

[mikev99]

Originally posted by beq
[b]Continuing reply from another thread:Hmm, if you're not using your mailbox at TM (just filtering), have you considered switching to an MX relay account at TM (which would be more transparent in terms of relaying your mail to FM and keeping the same message envelope recipient address)?

Did not know a MX relay account was available. Nothing on the TM page I can find that describes such a product?

I looked at webmail.us, but wanted the control over the specific MX restrictions. I prefer to set my own criteria for spam control rather than letting some general algorithm be in charge.

I use to use a program called OpenWebMail

If Openwebmail was an IMAP client and did not use the filesystem to store user metadata, it would be considered.

Info about MX relay accounts will be on the web site later this week.

Hey bitman

[beq]

Originally posted by mikev99
I looked at webmail.us, but wanted the control over the specific MX restrictions. I prefer to set my own criteria for spam control rather than letting some general algorithm be in charge.

You know, I thought along the same lines when I had looked at Webmail.us in the past. Ditto for MarxMail...


P.S. When I think of MX relay I think of Postini and those other corporate filtering services (with McAfee and others having jumped in as well to target small businesses). Of course you'd be paying a whole lot more for them In fact the Postini/McAfee resellers still call us at work to follow up, even after we'd decided on Tuffmail...

[o0o]

Originally posted by JCapo
Info about MX relay accounts will be on the web site later this week.

I'm looking forward to learning more about this service!
Hopefully it is not limited to business accounts!