eM Client with Imageway

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eM Client has recently partnered up with an email hosting provider Imageway. You can read more about this cooperation on our blog:

There is a number of special features we support for Imageway, including automatic setup of all services (email, contacts, calendars, tasks, and notes), synchronization of tags, Snooze and Watch for reply status, Automatic replies and Mail forwarder, together with all standard features of other IMAP, CalDAV and CardDAV accounts.

We’d appreciate hearing any feedback or reports here if you encounter any specific issues with Imageway accounts so either our or Imageway’s technicians could make sure to resolve them :slight_smile:

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If anyone has any questions about the Imageway e-mail hosting service I would be happy to provide additional information about this service offering.

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miércoles 18 enero 2023 :: 1229hrs (UTC 0000)

Hey @lancealot

Not a question more an observation about Imageway
There is very little detail information given about in particular email hosting and
their service appears to be expensive
The site is slow and suffers from a common Wordpress problem of difficult legibility
Domain Lookup link does not work
Best feature is the eMC introduction & Video

plus an offer of 1 year subscription included for up to 3 seats with any package

No doubt the Imageway package could be of interest to some

¡Buena suerte!

¡Saludos desde Puerto de la Cruz la soleada en Tenerife!

skybat

[email protected]

Hablo español, luego portugués e inglés, con conocimiento de varios otros idiomas.

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Hi @skybat

Email hosting information is provided at: https://www.imageway.com/?p=4321
Are their specific details that are missing from this webpage you would like to see added? Additionally, you always have the option of asking in this forum post about specific detailed information you want to know about or you can use the Imageway contact page to ask.

The cost of the service is based on the fact Imageway is offering a higher-end business class level email hosting solution. This includes a large feature set, some of which are not available at other places such as 2FA for IMAP/POP, or some which usually cost extra such as email archiving. When it comes to reliability Imageway offers geographic redundancy, which again most low cost email hosting will not offer, redundancy is usually limited to a single data center. Lastly, the prices are not based on a per user (email account) basis, you can create as many email accounts you want. Most high end hosting companies have started charging on a per account basis, which adds up in cost as you start adding more email accounts. Plus Imageway provides support which are knowledgeable and accessible, which tends to be lacking at the ultra low cost email hosting providers. All of those things add up to justify the price, Imageway is not trying to be a super low cost web hosting email hosting provider which usually lacks in many of the areas mentioned above to allow for the cheap costs. To see some additional standout Imageway features, look at the “Features” drop-down navigation on the Imageway website.

When I load the website it seems to load fairly fast. so I don’t see where it is excessively slow. I am sure if there is any slowdown (doesn’t load instantly) it is most likely due to distance (network latency), the chat widget, or the WAF which scans 5000+ rules for security.

The domain lookup link works fine for me. If you click some of the website functions and instead it takes you to the contact page, it most likely is due to the fact that function is not available from your country for security/abuse reasons. If you are interested in that website function I would use the contact form to ask to make that functionality available for your country since your interested in using it.

Yes the eM Client introduction video is great, along with eM Client itself. That is why Imageway is excited to partner with eM Client. Imageway worked with eM Client for several years to ensure that eM Client worked in the most reliable way with the Imageway email hosting services before making the partnership official. This means that Imageway support has a better ability to avoid and diagnose connection related issues should they come up with eM Client.

The 1-year subscription license for 3 seats with any package is one of the many special features listed under the “Features” section of the website.

I am sure some are more interested in the ultra cheap, unlimited everything email hosting that might lack in features, reliability, and support. Others will prefer a high-end proprietary Exchange solution that charges on a per user basis, which means higher costs if you have a decent amount of email accounts. Imageway tries to fit in the middle where it supports just about every email open standard (ex: IMAP/POP/SMTP/CALDAV/CARDDAV), doesn’t charge based on a per user basis, has a great feature set included at a decent price, and tries to provide the best knowable support possible.

Thanks for sharing your observations.

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Yes it’s definitely more aimed at the business user for those prices.

eg: The min is currently $11.95 p/m with only 2GB shared storage for unlimited email accounts, which wouldn’t last very long at all from my own experience with business acct customers.

Most businesses peeps in my opinion would go straight away for the $16.95 with 30GB of shared storage which would then be usable.

Ps If I owned imageway have eg: 10GB shared storage for the minimum plan so it’s usable.

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Hi @cyberzork

Yes, the aim was more for a higher-end quality of service, thus the current prices. A higher quality service comes at a cost to operate. The cost of storage goes beyond just the physical hard disk cost, it also involves the additional costs to process the larger data set, replicate it real-time to a secondary data center, and to back it all up daily.

The starter plan as you said is only 2GB, and is for people who might have minimal email needs or for someone that uses POP3 and will store most of their email locally on their computer. Most storage usage is caused by attachments, so if you had eM Client move (or archive) emails with attachments locally then the 2GB will go a long way. Otherwise you could save the attachment file to your computer and delete the email afterwards if that was preferred.

Yes, the hope was eventually when customers have outgrown the use of the starter package then they would upgrade to the standard package for the additional storage. That is why they are named the way they are, starter and standard. Of course additional storage can be purchased for any of the packages at anytime.

I will bring up the suggestion about upgrading the starter package to 10GB, but as I said prior it is very usable if you store all your email locally using POP3 or IMAP, or at least store the emails with large attachments locally. That is something eM Client would allow you to do.

Imageway’s main goal was to create a high quality email hosting service that didn’t charge by user, was not Exchanged based, and supported all the open email standards to the maximum. If you wanted to see some unique features to Imageway you get as part of this level of hosting I would suggest checking out these pages:

IMAP/POP 2FA support: https://www.imageway.com/two-factor-authentication
Encryption with any email client: https://www.imageway.com/encrypted-email
Included email archiving: https://www.imageway.com/email-legal-archiving
Large attachment support and stripping: https://www.imageway.com/large-file-attachments

along with a really nice feature that stores emails you delete via IMAP/POP into a folder structure that is read-only for 30 days, so you can copy those emails from that structure back into your main email structure should anything happen to cause a unwanted email deletion.

Thanks for your feedback.

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Tried to contact Imageway via their sign-up form several days ago two times and got no response at all. Not sure if they are not interested in my starter email hosting quota request or the form doesn’t work.

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jueves 26 enero 2023 :: 1041hrs (UTC +0100)

I will be very interested to know about the reply if, and when there is one, particularly if it is not posted on this Forum.

¡Buena suerte!

¡Saludos desde Valencia la soleada en España!

skybat

[email protected]

Hablo español, luego portugués e inglés, con conocimiento de varios otros idiomas.

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Your contact form request must have gotten caught up in a filter, or just has not been processed as of yet. I will expedite the concern you brought up, and have them look into this and respond accordingly. Thanks.

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I try this also and same as you say maybe is waste of time if not in USA and I see no big client on list.
I check this for multinational company where I work as part of my job so will report back negative.

Guten Nachmittag

Torsten

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No contact message was received from you Torsten (@tmax). The person you are responding to in your message did successfully complete the contact form and was sent a response. I will message you directly to find out exactly what you did when you said you tried also.

The company is located in the USA.

Imageway has been in business since 2000, so it has worked with a lot of different companies of various sizes. I am not sure what you consider a big client, but there is a client page on the Imageway website listing companies they have worked with. In addition, the home page has some customer testimonials. Not all companies will be listed due to privacy.

I am not sure why there is the negativity? All messages received are being responded to accordingly. Imageway’s goal is to offer a high quality email hosting service, including having a responsive customer support.

By offering email and web hosting services, Imageway is trying to keep alive the last two Internet open standard protocols (SMTP and HTTP), while the large monopolistic companies continue to create proprietary closed environments. I see this only as a positive thing that should be supported, and not torn down.

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Hi,

I transferred my email to Imageway to take advantage of this relationship and integration; however, I ran into a snag.

Background and causes of the issue:

  • I used my (domain) email address some years ago to open a Microsoft 365 business account.
  • This (inadvertently) created a link between my email address and Microsoft.
  • The Microsoft account is not in use, and I have finally deleted the last tenant. (A nightmare in its own right!)
  • However, there is a 90-day period before the account fully dissolves and the problem resolves without further intervention. (Maybe)

Issue Specifics:

  • When using eM Client’s auto-discover feature, eM Client discovers the link to the Microsoft Account. I am automatically taken to an Oauth prompt to sign in to the non-existent Microsoft Account.
  • I have been able to set up the email manually using IMAP, and the tags, etc, synchronise correctly.
  • However, I have not gotten the Contacts and Calendar modules to perform equally well.

Notes:

  • I found workarounds with security warnings (incorrect certificate) in Outlook and Thunderbird but encountered the same issue with Essential PIM’s email app. (which offers no manual setup feature.)
  • Also of interest: when I set eM Client up using IMAP, it worked on port 143 but not port 993. Thunderbird set it up on port 993
    • I read that as long as I use SSL/TLS, it does not matter, but I welcome more guidance on the subject.

Summary:

  • I would love to take advantage of the full automatic setup.
  • I would be happy with a manual workaround that provides results similar to those I obtained with Thunderbird and Outlook.
    • Note: I allowed the process to complete in Thunderbird and checked that the calendar synchronised correctly, but I did not complete the process with Outlook for well-known reasons)
  • I would be okay with any other solution that makes everything work.

Thank you!

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Since the issue is with eM Client remembering (caching) an old OAuth login which interferes with the setup of other non-OAuth accounts (Imageway doesn’t use OAuth), I would suggest putting in a support ticket with eM Client about the issue, or completely un-install and re-install eM Client (make sure to make a backup prior to be safe) to remove that old cached information that won’t go away, even after the Microsoft account is deleted from eM Client.

When it comes to IMAP and using port 993, you need to make sure when setting the port to 993 you choose “Use SSL/TLS on special port (Legacy)” as the security policy.

Imageway does support auto-discover, where you will be asked for the account and password without a OAuth window presenting itself and will setup all the required settings (including contacts and calendar). eM Client should not be presenting you with an Microsoft OAuth window when setting up a non-OAuth account, such as is the case with Imageway.

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eM Client itself doesn’t have any Autodiscover cache at all, not locally and not remotely. Microsoft 365, however, does have a cache on their endpoint and it gets priority over some other Autodiscover mechanisms. The recommended setup is the add _autodiscover._tcp.<your domain> DNS record and point it to the correct server of your provider (ImageWay in this case). Judging by ImageWay’s own records, this should be the correct value:

_autodiscover._tcp.imageway.com	service = 10 10 443 sync.imageway.com.
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@Filip_Navara Imageway uses the DNS entry “_autodiscover._tcp” for ActiveSync setup, and eM Client doesn’t support ActiveSync. Imageway uses IMAP/POP and SMTP for email. CalDAV, and CardDAV are used for calendar and contact sync. CalDAV and CardDAV have their own DNS settings (_caldavs._tcp, _carddavs._tcp) for auto discovery of the server.

So the issue might be that eM Client is improperly giving priority to the “_autodiscover._tcp” setting over IMAP/SMTP discovery. If true, it also looks like eM Client is assuming when “_autodiscover._tcp” is set that it must be using Microsoft OAuth, otherwise it wouldn’t be giving a Microsoft login for the OAuth login, but instead trying to use the server specified by the “_autodiscover._tcp” entry you outlined.

If this is indeed the issue, then a work around would be to remove the autodiscover DNS entries, which would then force eM Client to do the IMAP/SMTP/CALDAV/CARDDAV discovery correctly. Of course removing those would break ActiveSync auto discovery.

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The Autodiscover specification uses the same endpoint for the ActiveSync setup and the Outlook setup, which is also used by eM Client. In both cases the discovery of the endpoint is identical and the difference is only in the HTTP request and response on the Autodiscover endpoint.

The _caldavs._tcp, _carddavs._tcp mechanism is an alternative mechanism using SRV records that is NOT supported by eM Client and never was.

If true, it also looks like eM Client is assuming when “_autodiscover._tcp” is set that it must be using Microsoft OAuth, otherwise it wouldn’t be giving a Microsoft login for the OAuth login, but instead trying to use the server specified by the “_autodiscover._tcp” entry you outlined.

There’s no correlation between the Autodiscover records and Microsoft OAuth whatsoever. We first check the SRV records for _autodiscover._tcp and query that endpoint if it exists. Next, we check https://outlook.office365.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.json/v1.0/<email address>?Protocol=EWS on the Microsoft servers. If the Microsoft servers respond we assume it’s a hosted Microsoft 365 account and use Microsoft OAuth and Microsoft 365 server. That seems to be OP’s case. Lastly, we proceed with other Autodiscover endpoints (eg. https://autodiscover.<domain>/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml, https://<domain>/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml) and if everything fails we start questing IMAP/POP3/SMTP by trying common names based on the email address domain.

If this is indeed the issue, then a work around would be to remove the autodiscover DNS entries, which would then force eM Client to do the IMAP/SMTP/CALDAV/CARDDAV discovery correctly. Of course removing those would break ActiveSync auto discovery.

Quite to the contrary, you need the _autodiscover._tcp record for things to work correctly and for the discovery to proceed as fast as possible.

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Btw, I checked that our provider settings (included as providers.xml) have a copy of the settings that are used for emails with @imageway.com domain. If there are additional domains that we should include, or better yet, MX servers that are used for 3rd-party domains, we can update the provider database. That gets a preference over any of the other Autodiscover mechanisms.

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I checked the https://sync.imageway.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml endpoint and it’s running ZPush that indeed doesn’t support the Outlook-style Autodiscover requests:

<Autodiscover xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/outlook/requestschema/2006"><Request><EMailAddress>[email protected]</EMailAddress><AcceptableResponseSchema>http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/autodiscover/outlook/responseschema/2006a</AcceptableResponseSchema></Request></Autodiscover>

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@Filip_Navara When Imageway worked with eM Client directly in the past, eM Client did extensive testing against the Imageway mail setup, including the auto-discovery which passed according to the report eM Client provided. Imageway was told there was an internal database eM Client uses (providers.xml as you say) where Imageway information was added so the auto-discover (IMAP, SMTP, CALDAV, and CARDDAV) would work flawless with eM Client. It looks like eM Client only added the “imageway.com” domain name as confirmed by you, which is an issue since Imageway customers use their own custom domain names with the Imageway email hosting service. It would need to use the MX server for it to work correctly with all Imageway customers. Imageway assumed this was how it was done originally, but as you confirmed, it was only done for the “imageway.com” domain name which is not how Imageway expected it to work based on past conversations with eM Client. It was expected it would work with any domain using the Imageway MX server.

So the question is if you add the MX server (as you say is possible), do you add the MX server domain name or IP address? If you put the domain name, does it lookup the IP address of that MX server domain name, and compare it with the IP address of the domain entered during auto-discovery? The reason is because some customers use their own domain name for the MX server (example: mail.their-domain.com), which actually points to the Imageway MX server IP address.

So for it to completely work for all customers using custom domain names pointing to the Imageway MX server, the Imageway MX server would need to be added to the providers.xml. When a user enters their custom domain email account which matches the IP address of the Imageway MX server, then eM Client would put all the information (IMAP, SMTP, CALDAV, and CARDDAV) in the same way it is currently doing for the “imageway.com” domain name. Is this possible?