Ok, time for some tech speak! Many ISPs are blocking the outbound SMTP port 25. It allows ISPs to block spam sent out through their networks, but it tends to “punish” those who innocently need to send stuff through e-mail servers, rather than those belonging to their ISP.

The port 25 is chosen by default

In a nutshell, here are some of the possible scenarios that you might encounter when using port 25:

1. Sending an email from your Outlook Express or Outlook (assuming you’ve configured the email client to use the default port 25 for your SMTP server)

2. Submitting a web form (assuming the back-end was done using a SMTP method)

3. Using Groupmail to deliver email newsletter (assuming the Groupmail is configured to use port 25)

In short, your emails will be blocked and the worst thing is, they’re usually dropped without any returned error messages or notices to the sender. To overcome this issue, we’ve setup an alternate port. You can use port 8025 or port 587 instead of port 25.

TM’s SMTP Nightmare!

Aiktern, network specialist from Waysoft

In a recent case, one of our customers informed us that they’ve been experiencing duplicate emails and timeout problems. Their connection to our mail server was also extremely slow. We took immediate action to set up a test and confirm that the problem cannot be solved off-site. Though we suspected that the problem was largely due to their network problems, saying “No” to a customer isn’t how we like to do things.

Within a day, we arranged to have Aiktern, a friend and network specialist, attend to our customer in Johor. The on-site investigation was performed and all aspects of the network were checked. A summary of findings was compiled and shared with the customer.

This is how we like to deal with our customer’s email problems, after all, that is our main business!

Muhamad Aizam, the cute and macho IT veteran

Allow us to introduce you to Aizam, who outsourced us to host and support email facilities for the company he works for. They’ve quite a huge number of users, and our set up for them in February went smoothly. Now, their email users are using our services without any problems.

Q: Aizam, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your work?

I’ve been working in IT for more than 11 years. I used to work for IBM Malaysia (AS400) and CSA Malaysia ( KTM Komuter Project ), but now I’m with Sime Darby Eng ( Senior System Analyst ).This is my 10th year with them. I’m responsible for preparing bids for new projects (local and international), designing and ensuring that new and existing systems are in working order, and last but not least, to analyse current systems for enhancement, in accordance to the company’s growth and expectations.

Q: How did you find us and what made you choose to work with us?

I found 1.com.my via the Internet, after I Googled for a top email hosting service in Malaysia. I decided to choose 1.com.my due to your minimum downtime for the whole year, and the support you offer to your customers.

Q: Why did you opt to outsource an email host, rather than hosting it in-house?

I chose to outsource due to my project-based requirements, plus the cost to implement an in-house email host is much higher in comparison to outsourcing the solution.

Q: If you were to describe our email hosting services in one word, what would it be?

GREAT – Good, Readiness, Easy, Archive, Total Solution

Q: Okay, last question, which would you choose – iPhone or BlackBerry?

Blackberry :)

“Thanks Aizam! The interview really helped us to know more about you. Your words really motivate us and it’s made our team extremely excited! Rest assured, continued enhancement of services and support is at the top of our list of priorities, and it can’t be done without feedback and support from people like you!” said Pin, founder of 1.com.my

Download Pin’s Guide to Email Hosting

By default, 14-day nightly backups of email messages are bundled with our email hosting services.  Daily snapshot backups are stored in a top tier cloud storage system where restorations from the past 14 days can be obtained directly from the control panel.

14-days nightly backup

Existing Problems

1) Backup does not cover messages which have been downloaded via email clients, in the event the email client does not leave a copy of messages in the server.

2) Messages sent through the email clients will not appear in the Webmail, thus will not be included in the backup.

3) Deleted messages in the Webmail will not be included in the backup in the event the users ‘Purge’ the Trash folder.

4) Backup covers only 14 days. It is not a complete archiving solution.

Available Email Archiving Options

1) Email Archiving

A full-fledge email archiving solution that comes with admin console. Securely store, search and retrieve archived messages in seconds.

Admin console’s dashboard

Retrieve archived messages via search

2) Bcc Archiving

A basic email backup solution that stores messages in a specific mailbox.

Archiving setting page

Archived messages are forwarded to a specific mailbox

Comparison Chart

*Between RM58.80 to RM99.00, depending on number of mailboxes selected

Estimated Cost

E-mailing has become the revolutionary step in how companies and organizations choose to keep their partners, friends and clients informed and up-to-date. Using e-mail solutions like GroupMail has certainly simplified the job and it is very user-friendly.

Here’s how the application can be configured, once installed on the user’s machine.

Step 1:
Open and run Group Mail from your installed machine. Go to Tools > Account Manager

Go to Tools > Account Manager

Step 2:
Click on the “New” button to start configuration. A window titled “Account Properties” as shown on the right region will appear.

Account Properties

Step 3:
Key in the information as shown below under the “User Information” tab.

Name for Account: Any Name
Name: Your Name (appear in recipient’s email)
Organization : -
Email Address : noreply@yourdomain.com (appear in the From Address)
Reply-to Address : noreply@yourdomain.com

User Information

Step 4:
Navigate the tab to “Delivery Options” and key in the information as shown below.

Delivery Options: Standard
SMTP Server: smtp.emailsrvr.com
Tick “Require Authentication”

Connections: 1
Pause every 1 message for 30 seconds

Delivery Options

Step 5:
Click on the “Setup” button for Authentication Settings

Tick: Use SMTP Authentication (outbound)
Type: AUTH-LOGIN (Default)
Username: noreply@yourdomain.com
Password: Your Password

Authentication Settings

Step 6:
Click on the “Advanced” button for Advanced Email Settings.

Key in the information as shown below:

SMTP Port: 587
POP3 Port: 110

Note: Do not tick “Server requires an SSL connection” | other settings remain default

SMTP & POP3 Advanced Email Settings

Step 7:
Click on the “OK” button on the Advanced Email Settings and start the email test by clicking “Test” button.

Specify a Test Message To: email address:

Testing Email Settings

Step 8:
Upon successful sending of the test email, the following screen will be visible stating the status as “Success!”

Email Testing Succesful

Having successfully configured the GroupMail and running email tests, we can now proceed to managing the groups. Like the name of the software, GROUP MAIL, it simply means that it sends out e-mails in groups or in bulk. There are 2 recommended methods:

Type 1: GroupMail Format (Default) – Recipients are stored internally
Type 2: External database – Recipient information is retrieved from an external Database System

Step 1:

At the top tabs, click on “Groups” then navigate to the left panel, select “New Group”, and will be prompted to choose the Group Type.

Creating New Group

Step 2: (GroupMail Format – Default)

Selections of Group Type

Step 3:
Give the field a name, type and its size.
[Type of text varies from Date, Text, Number, Currency, Boolean, Unicode)

Field Customization

Step 4:
Select the field name that represents the recipients’ email addresses. Usually, the check box below will not be ticked as duplicated email addresses will not be stored. It act as a validation feature for redundant e-mail detection.

Specify Email Field

Step 5:
Lastly, give the group created a name.

Name the Group

Step 1:
Choose the preferred group to be modified (Double-Click)

Selecting Database Group to be Modified

Step 2:
Specify the database connection and define group contents by advanced data selection and qualification (Using SQL Query)

Modify Database Group

Step 3:
Writing the SQL Query by selecting the preferred columns in the database table.

SQL Query

Read more to find out about setup the Database Connection Manager in GroupMail

We would suggest letting our team of professionals handle the housekeeping of your mailing list. What is housekeeping? Well, it is an action whereby outdated email addresses are cleaned out. You might have noticed it yourself when you receive a rejected notification from specific e-mail address. But first, let’s learn how to send a personalized e-mail using GroupMail.

Step 1:
Start composing email messages with easy-to-use function like this below. Inserting a merge fields for name will simply look like this !*NAME*! | This !*NAME*! will be replaced by respective names specified in the group when sending to the particular recipient.

Select Message tab > New > Start composing

Step 2:
Writing the email message. GroupMail supports HTML email too.

Composing the E-mail Message

That’s all!!!

Here’s a couple of question that might arise.

1. Now, when do we do housekeeping? Like it was said, when the information are not meaningful and out-of-date
2. How do we know when the email is not sent to the recipient(s)?  Here’s how a sample looks like:

Delivery Status Notification | Rejected caused by typo error in the mail domain. Should be "yahoo" instead of "yaho"

To rectify the problem from recurring, perform a clean up / update to the email address.

One-step Action:
Go into the preferred group storing the e-mail address; locate it and delete / update
Update : update details (user exist)
Delete : remove (user does not exist)

Modify Recipient's Details

Compliance overview

Our email archiving provides quick deployment of email archiving for all government agencies regardless of their email platform. With secure capture of all emails and full text indexing of emails/attachments, freedom of Information requests are fulfilled with limited expenditure of IT resources.

The archiving service indexes all message components: Header, Body, and Attachments. All of these components are easily searchable through a secure web based user interface and retrievable to standards-based formats like .pst, .pdf, text, mime, etc.