Hi,

 

I access my personal emails on several devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone, watch etc) and I want the email to by synchronised across them all.

 

My current email provider has only a small email space I can use, so unless I regularly use a web browser to access the mailbox and clear out, the mailbox fills up and I can’t get new emails. I have my email set up so that it stays on the server as that’s the only way I’ve found for the email to stay aligned across multiple devices.

 

I think the only way I can get around the size limitation and keep them synchronised is to set up my own email server, and then point all the devices at that. What’s the best or cheapest way of doing that? Is there an Apple device that does this out of the box? Like the Airport for example?

 

I don’t really want all my emails to be on one single local device though as if that fails I’ve lost them all.

 

I know my way around PCs and to a lesser extent, Macs but I’ve never set up an email server before. Is it easy?

 

thanks,

 

Martin

Are you ok to use a third party email provider or do you wish to establish your own mail host with your own domain?

 

If the former Google's gmail is very good at multiple-device email and doesn't dump much advertising into your mail - especially of you use as ad blocker to strip out most or all of it.  Gmail is also free

 

If you want to run your own host/mailserver you again have choices; remote host on t'internet or your own local machine?

 

Thanks Mike. i don’t want my own domain name. Ideally I’d keep my current email address, but basically transfer the storage of the emails from the ISP to somewhere with more space. I don’t at present have a device I could use as a server.

 

So I can get my email from myisp.net to be accessed via gmail?

There are two elements in the internet mail chain that are relevent here; firstly, the internet post office box or mail server that handles all mail coming in and going out.  It's a bit like your local telephone exchange and it site between you and the wider internet.  The other element is your mail tool, or mail reader, which is the element with which you engage directly to receive, read and send emails.  These two are functionally separate but are often bundled togther in one wrapper to provide you with an email service.  You just don't get to see the inner workings.

 

The domain for an email address - the @somewhere.xxx part - is attached to the mail server, so if you want to keep your existing email you will need to keep the current mail server.

 

Your mail tool (or mail client) can be configured to point to your mailbox on the mail server so that from your point of view it's situation normal (no, not the SNAFU version).  Your mail tool needs to be set up to read mail from your server and to send mail similarly.  The part where things become a little blurred is where you want to access email from multiple points and from different platforms.  To achieve this you need firstly a mailtool that is available across all of those platforms and secondly one which will handle multiple access to your mailbox.  Gmail does this by collecting your incoming mail into a gmail mailbox, deleting the email from your mail server's mailbox and you reading your email on gmail.  This way the multiple access isn't a problem as gmail manages it for you.  Your email history will now be on gmail and not on your mail server's mailbox, and you can have gmail drain your collected emails from your mailserver onto gmail so everything is together in one place.

 

Outgoing email is created in gmail but sent via your mail server (config item in gmail).

 

It sounds worse than it is in reality as gmail is pretty good at guiding you through setup, and your email will live on in gmail for as long as you wish it - and you can always export it if you want it outside gmail.

 

I run several domains for family history purposes and handle all email the way I've described.  I've tried a number of other products over the years but never found one that beats gmail.

 

11 hours ago, 2SkodaFamily said:

I don’t really want all my emails to be on one single local device though as if that fails I’ve lost them all.

The obvious answer to this is to set up, use, and check a multi-generation backup and archive system.

Not really

On 10/11/2021 at 22:01, MikeTheThinker said:

There are two elements in the internet mail chain that are relevent here; firstly, the internet post office box or mail server that handles all mail coming in and going out.  It's a bit like your local telephone exchange and it site between you and the wider internet.  The other element is your mail tool, or mail reader, which is the element with which you engage directly to receive, read and send emails.  These two are functionally separate but are often bundled togther in one wrapper to provide you with an email service.  You just don't get to see the inner workings.

 

The domain for an email address - the @somewhere.xxx part - is attached to the mail server, so if you want to keep your existing email you will need to keep the current mail server.

 

Your mail tool (or mail client) can be configured to point to your mailbox on the mail server so that from your point of view it's situation normal (no, not the SNAFU version).  Your mail tool needs to be set up to read mail from your server and to send mail similarly.  The part where things become a little blurred is where you want to access email from multiple points and from different platforms.  To achieve this you need firstly a mailtool that is available across all of those platforms and secondly one which will handle multiple access to your mailbox.  Gmail does this by collecting your incoming mail into a gmail mailbox, deleting the email from your mail server's mailbox and you reading your email on gmail.  This way the multiple access isn't a problem as gmail manages it for you.  Your email history will now be on gmail and not on your mail server's mailbox, and you can have gmail drain your collected emails from your mailserver onto gmail so everything is together in one place.

 

Outgoing email is created in gmail but sent via your mail server (config item in gmail).

 

It sounds worse than it is in reality as gmail is pretty good at guiding you through setup, and your email will live on in gmail for as long as you wish it - and you can always export it if you want it outside gmail.

 

I run several domains for family history purposes and handle all email the way I've described.  I've tried a number of other products over the years but never found one that beats gmail.

 

Thanks for this, but I loathe all of Google’s user interfaces! 
 

as for Ken’s suggestion, I’ve never set up an email server and don’t know how!

10 hours ago, 2SkodaFamily said:

as for Ken’s suggestion, I’ve never set up an email server and don’t know how!

That's Ok; my suggestion was to set up a backup system, not a mail server. See Backup for further information.