Entourage-friendly email hosts?

S

Steve Blum

I'd appreciate any suggestions from people on the newsgroup for an
Entourage-friendly IMAP host. I'm looking to replace my pop3 service with
imap. Cheap is always good, but reliability and fast webmail access (on
dial-up when necessary) is more important.

Also, any thoughts on hosted Exchange services would be appreciated. I'm
thinking .Mac will let me keep my calendar and address book synced across
two or three machines, so as a solo user (no need for groupware type
functions) would I gain any advantage from going with hosted Exchange
service?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Steve Blum
[email protected]
 
J

Jeff Zienowicz

Also, any thoughts on hosted Exchange services would be appreciated. I'm
thinking .Mac will let me keep my calendar and address book synced across
two or three machines, so as a solo user (no need for groupware type
functions) would I gain any advantage from going with hosted Exchange
service?
Click to expand...

I tried to connect a small office of Entourage users in a hosted Exchange
environment and learned the hard way that it doesn't work. The details are
a little fuzzy right now, but I have posted to this newsgroup on the topic,
so maybe you can find my old posts. I recall that the main problem was that
delegation didn't work with the hosted solution. That wouldn't be an issue
for you as a solo user, but if you don't need the collaboration features,
you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
provider.

Jeff
 
S

Steve Blum

Jeff said:
if you don't need the collaboration features,
you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
provider.
Click to expand...

Thanks! That certainly makes sense. I know that the posts on this newsgroup
would naturally tend to revolve around negative issues, rather than the many
positive aspects of Entourage, but even so I've gotten the distinct
impression that the Entourage/Exchange relationship isn't particularly
smooth.

Any suggestions on a good IMAP provider? Is there anything in particular to
look for when trying to figure out if a provider is a good fit with
Entourage?

I appreciate the help.

Cheers,

Steve Blum
 
M

Michel Bintener

Bluebottle offers free accounts with optional IMAP access,
<http://www.bluebottle.com/>. I have never used that service before, so I
can't say how well it works or if there are any downsides to it.
Nevertheless, it is free, and as I am sure you have found out by now, this
is quite rare as most free email providers tend to offer POP3 access only.


Thanks! That certainly makes sense. I know that the posts on this newsgroup
would naturally tend to revolve around negative issues, rather than the many
positive aspects of Entourage, but even so I've gotten the distinct
impression that the Entourage/Exchange relationship isn't particularly
smooth.

Any suggestions on a good IMAP provider? Is there anything in particular to
look for when trying to figure out if a provider is a good fit with
Entourage?

I appreciate the help.

Cheers,

Steve Blum
Click to expand...

--
Michel Bintener
Microsoft MVP
Office:Mac (Word & Entourage)

***Always reply to the newsgroup.***
 
C

cwachs

Take a look at: http://www.remotesports.com They are marketed towards
television freelance workers but the pricing plans are pretty good and
you can bring your own domain name. Unlimited mail storage, IMAP and
other nice features.
 
J

Jeff Zienowicz

Thanks! That certainly makes sense. I know that the posts on this newsgroup
would naturally tend to revolve around negative issues, rather than the many
positive aspects of Entourage, but even so I've gotten the distinct
impression that the Entourage/Exchange relationship isn't particularly
smooth.
Click to expand...

I've finally gotten it to work reasonably well for a small office, using
Kerio MailServer, which is an Exchange clone, on a LAN with https access
from outside for remote users. The main problem is that some attributes are
stored only locally rather than on the Exchange server (categories,
projects, links) and are lost if the cache needs to be recreated, as after a
database rebuild. And again, hosted solutions don't work with Entourage
right now.
Any suggestions on a good IMAP provider? Is there anything in particular to
look for when trying to figure out if a provider is a good fit with
Entourage?
Click to expand...

IMAP is a YMMV situation with Entourage, in my experience. One thing to
look for is support for "UIDPLUS" on the server. Without this server
feature, you lose the "Show Reply" link at the top of messages to which
you've replied (you'll still see a link to the reply in the Links dropdown
though).

Aside from that, some servers throw occasional "mailbox lock" errors when
Entourage checks mail or refreshes the message list. These can be sometimes
mitigated by unchecking the preference to Send Simultaneous Commands in the
account setup, but with at least one of my mail accounts, I haven't been
able to make the problem go away altogether.

Jeff
 
J

Jeff Zienowicz

What did you end up finally doing to connect your users (with
delegation, public folders, etc)? It looks like your last post here
http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.mac.office.entourage/browse_th
read/thread/08fdde8cd7923eae?hl=en
is the "Kerio MailServer" product. Did that do the trick for you?
Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes, Kerio MailServer was a very good solution for that particular client.
It's very easy to administer, less expensive than Exchange, and runs on
multiple platforms other than Server 2003 -- OS X, Linux, and Windows XP
Pro. Particularly given that you don't need Server 2003, the cost to deploy
is far more reasonable for a small office.

HTTPS access works for remote users; delegation works correctly; public
folders and shared calendars/folders work as well. It includes a very good
web client too.

Jeff
 
M

Mickey Stevens

Unfortunately, Bluebottle's free accounts no longer offer IMAP access.
However, it is available with either of the paid plans.
 
J

Jeremy Reichman

I tried to connect a small office of Entourage users in a hosted Exchange
environment and learned the hard way that it doesn't work. The details are
a little fuzzy right now, but I have posted to this newsgroup on the topic,
so maybe you can find my old posts. I recall that the main problem was that
delegation didn't work with the hosted solution. That wouldn't be an issue
for you as a solo user, but if you don't need the collaboration features,
you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
provider.
Click to expand...

Delegation in Entourage 2004 SP2 requires access to a back end Exchange
server, and cannot use SSL. This level of access may not be provided by a
hosted solution -- or in most organization's own solutions -- since back end
servers are often protected by more restrictive firewalls (although you may
find VPN access to the back end servers offered). Sharing of
inbox/calendar/contacts should work, however.
 
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