Email gateway (SMTP) or lack of one.

[Roderick]

I'm considering switching from Plusnet to Three home broadband but it seems to assume everybody uses web based email like Gmail on a smart phone. I use traditional email which is collected from a pop3 server which of course will work whatever the internet provider. The problem come with sending emails which have to go via an SMTP gateway. All the normal (ADSL) internet providers have an internet gateway eg. in the case of Plusnet its relay.plus.net. After spending some time talking to three technical support it seems nobody there knows much about how the internet works and nobody there has even heard of SMTP. Googling using email on three with a mail client like outlook express takes you to a Three support page but if you click on any of the links on that page (https://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBISAPI.DLL/,/?New,Kb=Mobile,Ts=Mobile,T=Device,varset_pid... you get a message saying "bad data". Has anybody else encountered this problem and even better found a solution?

I would love to swap to Three home broadband but it's no good if I can't use my existing email addresses.

[JonathanB]

Hi Roderick,

Welcome to the Three Community.

That's a great question, and it doesn't crop up a lot these days due to the prevalence of IMAP and email apps. When setting up a connection to your email on a Three device and network connection, you would continue to use the host email provider's SMTP address in your settings.

So if using a Plusnet email address, you'd continue to use relay.plus.net in the field for SMTP server. You'll also need to set the outgoing port number to 587, 465, or 485.

Hope this helps.

JonathanB

[Roderick]

The plusnet SMTP server is only available to Plusnet customers (the mail client authenticates using my username and password), if I leave plusnet for Three then my username and password will obviously be cancelled. I have been using the same email addresses (with all their archives on my computer) for 20 years - this will not migrate to an IMAP system easily! For several years I used my own SMTP server (Pegasus) but then big companies like Google started rejecting my emails as spam because they weren't routed via well known (big company) SMTP source so I was forced to use my internet provider's SMTP. Most people used a mail client like outlook express - some still do and they still need a gateway to send mail out through so for example BT provides mail.btinternet.com for their customers.  I take it from your response that it's 3's policy to assume everybody uses web mail so they don't and won't provide an SMTP service? A long time ago I used a web based email provider which suddenly shut down without notice and lost all my emails, address books and contact list and I don't want to risk being in that position again.  The port info will be useful if I do move to you and then find an external smtp which is acceptable to the likes of google.

[Steve-b · Accepted solution]

If you can't continue to use Plusnet's SMTP after you leave them, there are people who offer a SMTP service for a small fee or free for light to moderate useage - certainly enough for individual provate use. Have a look at smtp2go.com - I have used them for years and had no server reputation problems at all. There are others offering a similar service.

If you do decide to go with an independent SMTP provider, it's worthwhile amending your Plusnet MX record to include the SMTP server details - it reduces the chances of your emails being seen as spam.