Webmail Questions

[alan22]

I'm thinking of ordering the Baby plan shortly and have some questions concerning webmail that I hope you guys can help me out with. NOTE: Not being able to perform these actions will not necessarily change my decision to go with Hostgator. This would just be icing on the cake, so to speak.

I'll be creating approximately 50 webmail/email accounts.

1 - Passwords
a - Initially I'd like to setup the accounts with the person's first name as the password then force them to change the password the first time they logon. Can this be configured via the control panel or any of the webmail interfaces?
b - If someone forgets their email password can it be retrieved from the control panel or can a new password be set without knowing the forgotten password?
c - Can inboxes/outboxes be accessed by an administrator without knowing the email account password? We've had many issues where we were told that an email wasn't received or were told than an email was sent that never was.

2 - POP3
If possible I don't want to allow POP3 access to email. I want to allow webmail access only. Is this something that can be configured? Can it be done on a per account basis? Can it be done all at once? A few people would be allowed POP3, but most not.

3 - Contacts/Address Book
Initially I'd like to create & replicate the same email address book to each email account. Can this be configured via the control panel or can an address book be copied from one email account to another? Will I need to create an address book separately for each email account? I'm not looking forward to creating an address book with 50 contacts for 50 accounts.

4 - Notification Message
When a person logs on to their webmail I would like a message to pop up (that I can customize) saying something to the effect of "This email is to be used for company related communication only.....blah, blah, blah". Can something like this be configured?

5 - Quotas
Can storage space be set on an individual basis? How about all at once? Will a notification be sent to the email address if the account is nearing its quota? Can a notification be sent to an administrator (myself) if an account is nearing its quota?

Just so you know where I'm coming from, what I have here is a company with 50 small retail locations. We've been using email for the past 2 years from the ISP, but decided to change it using a domain we own. I've run into many issues and would like to minimize as many problems as possible. Many of the people using the email are not very computer literate or decide to use the email system for forwarding inappropriate emails & attachments. I'd like to make it as easy as possible for them to use email while trying to restrict it for company related communication only.

Thanks in advance for any and all help you can provide.

[slapshotw]

All of them are "no" except the last one (quotas) which is yes. You would be able to turn off pop3 if you used a dedicated server though. And replicating address books would be possible if you installed your own webmail client (squirrelmail/nutsmail or roundcube).

[alan22]

Thanks slapshotw.

So, if someone forgets their email password (question 1b) what happens? Does the account need to be deleted and recreated?

[Sam]

Originally Posted by alan22

Thanks slapshotw.

So, if someone forgets their email password (question 1b) what happens? Does the account need to be deleted and recreated?

If someone forgets their email pass then you can change it in (X3 Skin):

cPanel -> Mail -> Email Accounts

Scroll down to the email addtess and at the right hand side there should be an option to 'Change Password'

[slapshotw]

And as far as 1c goes--on a dedicated, yes. On shared/reseller, no.

[alan22]

Sam, thats great. I see that in the cPanel demo. I didn't notice the different skins option before you mentioned it.

I was just playing around with the horde webmail demo and there's an option to import/export the address book also. So it looks like I only need to create that once, export it, then import on the other accounts. That will save alot of time.

So, as it stands right now:
1a - No, can't force user to change password
1b - Yes, can change email password if forgotten
1c - No, can't access email if password is not known (except if dedicated)
2 - No, can't disable POP3 access
3 - Yes, can transfer address book
4 - No, can't have notification message appear (but, I can create a webpage with the message and have a link to webmail on it)
5 - Yes, can set quotas, but still unsure if a notification will be sent to an administrator email account.

[GvilleRick]

In my opinion if email is really that important to you then you should consider a dedicated server rather than a shared account. We were running our church's website and email on a shared account and had several problems with emails not arriving, the server being on a blacklist, etc. (This was not an account on an HG server but all shared hosting accounts are prone to similar problems.)

We moved the account to an unmanaged dedicated server and had ConfigServer.com install the MailScanner package. Now it is very simple to check on email problems through the MailScanner logs and the mail logs on the server. It is also possible to easily create new accounts, change passwords, and, if necessary, view email that is on the server directly.

It always is interesting to me that companies are willing to spend $50 to $100 or more for phone service and yet only want to spend $10 or so a month on email.

Rather than use a shared account for email only I would suggest looking into using Googleapps instead.

[slapshotw]

On number 2-- you can disable pop3 access on a dedicated, but you can't disable IMAP without breaking the webmail programs (unless you change the firewall to only allow IMAP access from localhost, which is where all the webmail programs will run from).

[alan22]

GvilleRick - good suggestion with GoogleApps, but I ruled that out some time ago. Because of issues I've been having with my own gmail accounts I find it very difficult to recommend it. Plus, there are some other things going on, such as domain blocking. In these retail stores we do not allow websurfing. Access is allowed to just a handful of domains and google isn't one of them. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to access websites other than those that we allow access to.

Also, email isn't very important. I never said it was and I'm sorry if I indicated that is was. It's more having control over the email that's more important. Email is used to send memos, info on new hires, new products and things happening around the company. Maybe 2 emails will be sent to each account per day and sometimes maybe just 2-3 per week. Previously, before I came into the picture, the info was sent by fax.

We've been using email from the ISP successfully for the past 2 years, but occasionally things pop up, hence the questions in my original post.

The biggest issue was changing email passwords. Sometimes people would change passwords on their own, which is fine, but sometimes they'll forget what it was changed to or leave the comapny without letting us know what the password was. That involves going through hoops calling the ISP, verifying the account and having them change the password, or deleting & recreating the account.

Concerning the initial password it's more a matter of ease for me. Instead of coming up with 50 unique passwords I'd rather have them change it the first time they logon. If they can't, no biggie.

The reason for wanting to disable POP3 is because I'm dealing with some people who can't seem to grasp the concept that if they check email at home with Outlook, Outlook Express, etc., and "leave mail on server" is not checked that the email will not be there when they get to the store. Neither will sent emails. Deal with that a couple hundred times and you'll want to disable POP3 too

Everything else would be nice to have, but no big deal if it isn't.

[alan22]

I'm answering one of my own questions concerning email quotas: Can a notification be sent to an administrator (myself) if an account is nearing its quota?

The answer is Yes. I'm going through the cpanel wizard (x3 skin) and there's a setting to "send notifications to your contact email address when one of your email accounts approaches or is over quota".

Hope this helps someone with the same question.

So, the answers to my questions currently are as follows:
1a - No, can't force user to change password
1b - Yes, can change email password if forgotten
1c - No, can't access email if password is not known (except if dedicated)....but, passwords can be changed and email accessed.
2 - No, can't disable POP3 access (except if dedicated)
3 - Yes, can transfer address book
4 - No, can't have notification message appear (but, I can create a webpage with the message and have a link to webmail on it)
5 - Yes, can set quotas, but still unsure if a notification will be sent to an administrator email account.

[alan22]

Edit 5 to read:
Yes, can set quotas, and can have a notification sent to your contact email address when one of your email accounts approaches or is over quota".

[Alejandro]

I'm new to Gator, but regarding 1c you can actually do it with not much of a problem...
I have similar problems with some users and trying to work around the subscription to the spam folder that requires the use of IMAP accounts instead of POP3 I figured out that you can just copy (or move) anything from one mailbox to another in jailshell. All you need to do is copy/move
/home/USER/mail/YOURDOMIANNAME.COM/USERACCOUNTNAME to /home/USER/mail/YOURDOMIANNAME.COM/YOURACCOUNTNAME

So YES to 1c as long as you have jailshell (ssh) access to your account.

Also, you can technically get a copy of all email received for any account by forwarding a copy of the incoming mails to you account as well, so you would have "access" to their emails...

We definitely have to much power over our users!

[howcome]

OK, will just basically make a comment regarding answers to 1c, even though this is a somewhat aged thread. Thought I'd go ahead and say something and then shut up.

Email really has some legal and privacy issues and you had better KNOW (not just think you know) the laws that regulate it at least if your in the United States before even going to into this. Believe me, I've spent a great deal of time on the legals. But the answer is yes you can without the password or changing the password would be the answer (and no copying to get to it)

I'm not going to say how though, I just don't think it appropriate, and that's a choice that I'm entitled to make for myself. But I think if you contact sales or support and tell them you have a legitimate reason or have a legal right to access those emails, they may tell you how.

Now back in my corner to hide for fear of what may come.

[gwyneth]

Originally Posted by howcome

Now back in my corner to hide for fear of what may come.

You don't need to cringe, and I'm sorry if anything here gave you that idea.