Entourage-friendly email hosts?

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
steveblum@tellusventure.com

Jeff
Mon May 08 22:19:46 CDT 2006

On 5/8/06 3:56 PM, in article C0851A95.17A4E%steveblum@tellusventure.com,
"Steve Blum" <steveblum@tellusventure.com> wrote:

> 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?

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

Steve
Mon May 08 22:59:14 CDT 2006

Jeff Zienowicz wrote:

> if you don't need the collaboration features,
> you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
> provider.

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

Michel
Tue May 09 02:44:18 CDT 2006

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.


On 09.05.06 4:59, in article C08561A2.17A80%steveblum@tellusventure.com,
"Steve Blum" <steveblum@tellusventure.com> wrote:

> Jeff Zienowicz wrote:
>
>> if you don't need the collaboration features,
>> you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
>> provider.
>
> 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
>

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

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

Marc
Tue May 09 08:17:01 CDT 2006

Jeff,

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_thread/thread/08fdde8cd7923eae?hl=en
is the "Kerio MailServer" product. Did that do the trick for you?
Thanks!

Marc

cwachs
Tue May 09 11:44:25 CDT 2006

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.

Jeff
Tue May 09 12:14:46 CDT 2006

On 5/8/06 8:59 PM, in article C08561A2.17A80%steveblum@tellusventure.com,
"Steve Blum" <steveblum@tellusventure.com> wrote:

> 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.

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?

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

Jeff
Tue May 09 12:27:28 CDT 2006

On 5/9/06 6:17 AM, in article
1147180621.756933.325570@j33g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, "Marc B"
<mbaizman@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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!

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

Mickey
Sun May 14 14:14:30 CDT 2006

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

On 5/9/06 2:44 AM, in article C08606E2.176E3%m.bintener@mvps.org, "Michel
Bintener" <m.bintener@mvps.org> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
> On 09.05.06 4:59, in article C08561A2.17A80%steveblum@tellusventure.com,
> "Steve Blum" <steveblum@tellusventure.com> wrote:
>
>> Jeff Zienowicz wrote:
>>
>>> if you don't need the collaboration features,
>>> you'll be far better off with a decent IMAP provider than an Exchange
>>> provider.
>>
>> 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
>>

--
Mickey Stevens (Microsoft MVP for Office:mac)
PowerPoint FAQ featuring PowerPoint:mac: <http://www.pptfaq.com/>
Entourage Help Page: <http://www.entourage.mvps.org/>

Jeremy
Wed May 17 13:16:27 CDT 2006

On 5/8/06 11:19 PM, in article C0855862.1004%jeff@jeffz.net, "Jeff
Zienowicz" <jeff@jeffz.net> wrote:

> 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.

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.

--
Jeremy