SmarterMail setup
SmarterMail is a very well made application. It is highly functional and very user friendly.
Its setup is quite easy even if it is used to host emails of multiple domains. The way it works is the following:
- It captures all emails sent to port 25 that is the port of Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).
- It distributes the emails to different mail boxes based on the recipient address. Administrators only need to point the MX record of DNS settings to the server hosting SmarterMail without worrying about host name binding.
- Its web user interface uses IIS. One can bind one host name to the web site (e.g. mail.mailgeneral.com) for emails of all domains (e.g. domain1.com, doamain2.com, domain1.net ...). One can also add domain bindings to have multiple mail URL's (e.g. mail.domain1.com, mail.domain2.com, mail.domain1.net ...). Keep in mine, all URL's point to the same website. In other words, on can use http://mail.domain1.com to access the email box for myname@domain2.com.
When setting up SmarterMail server, the email address/password sent by SmarterTools are used only once for the initial login. The newly created administrator "user name/password" should be used to manage SmarterMail. It is important to note that is administrator "user name/password", not "email address/password" even though the web user interface asks for email address/password. Email address/password will lead to an email box, not the management user interface.
To prevent spammer using the mail server to send out spam emails, "Nobody" should be selected for Settings > Protocol Settings > SMTP in > Allow Relay
Comcast suddenly blocks port 25 Some ISPs block port 25 (the default port for SMTP server to receive outgoing emails from client applications such as Outlook, thunderbird). In this case, SmarterMail needs to be configured to add an alternate SMTP port. It is important to keep the existing port 25 for SMTP because most email servers use port 25, and each email server needs to communicate with others. Email clients also need to be configured to use this alternate port.
When adding a new email address to a mail client application (e.g. Outllook), the user name should be "username@mydomain.com", not just "username".
After upgrading to a new version, license activation may need to be needed.
If localhost:9998 does not work, check SmarterMail Web Server Config first.
Reports may be accessed via localhost:9998 only (i.e. it may not be accessible via mail.mydomain.com.
If error "No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it 127.0.0.1:17001" occurs, SmarterMail services may not be running. Starting them will solve this problem. One can also try another suggested solution.