Using Spambrella together with POP or IMAP
Situation – The Spambrella service is cloud-based (no on-premise hardware) and acts as a bridge between the internet and your mail server. You also use POP or IMAP and want to know if they impact one another and what those services specifically do.
Solution – Normally when a customer’s domain is set up for using Spambrella, the MX records point to Spambrella as SMTP Destinations… and the same applies to customers using POP/IMAP.
Using Spambrella Together With POP Or IMAP
Spambrella filters email for viruses and spam, along with some admin/user defined rules. The service is cloud based (no on premise hardware) and acts as a bridge between the internet and your mail server. This is accomplished by modifying the mail exchange (MX) record on a domain at the hosting level. Once the mail passes through the Spambrella network, it then passes back to your mail server via server destination settings in our management interface. As the messages are passed to your server, POP and IMAP functionality will continue to work as normal. No major changes to your mail server change. Normally when a customer’s domain is set up for using Spambrella, the MX records point to Spambrella as SMTP Destinations. The same applies to customers using POP/IMAP.
NOTE: We recommend confirming that the ISP will not disable the POP/IMAP accounts because the MX records have moved. It does happen, unfortunately.
Hosted email providers generally will not lock down their firewall as per our recommendations, and spammers will still be able to deliver email directly to the ISP server bypassing Spambrella. There are ways around this, please refer to the knowledgebase article on firewall lock down.
Terminology
SMTP: The protocol by which email is sent from one server to another over the internet.
POP: An older protocol for accessing hosted email, most frequently used to download emails to a local mailbox before managing the emails locally.
IMAP: A newer protocol for accessing and managing hosted email, most frequently used to keep and manage emails on a remote server.
