I’m trying eM client latest version (10.1.4417) for macOS (15.0.1) since I’ve been using Postbox for many years and they are bought by eM and will discontinue their soft soon, and they promote eM client.
I use a gmail account but not with a gmail address, IMAP is working fine and I get the mails, so I simply need to configure SMTP on my external service, however on the macOS version, there is no way to define a user and password, there are only a few SSL/TLS options that always fail (I tried them all). I’m never asked for any user/password and I cannot setup any, and I know it’s needed for my SMTP provider.
I’ve seen screenshots in other topics of this forum of the windows version parameters and it seems to be possible to setup user/password, but the mac version window is different with less options.
The SMTP service I need to use is working fine and my current setup work with Postbox (for years), I just tried the same setup with thunderbird and it also works.
I’ve been exchanging emails with someone at eM support but he cannot solve the issue, he can only say “this will work automatically” when I’m proving the SMTP setup is not working.
Unfortunately you can’t have a different SMTP server with Gmail accounts. It uses a single oAuth token for both IMAP and SMTP, so single login for both. It needs to connect to the Google SMTP server.
OK thanks for the answer… then sadly bye bye eM, I’ve been using my emails for many years this way, I don’t intend to change (I need people to write me to pobox and answer them as pobox).
I guess I’ll have to use Thunderbird : I could setup that smtp correctly in 2mn. Look&feel is very “windows freeware” and I don’t like it too much and also it doesn’t seem to be able to manage the gmail labels completely, it can read the gmail labels like a folder structure correctly, but I found no way to assign a new mail to a label, when eM is doing this fine. But this is another story.
That’s exactly how it works in eM Client. Setup the pobox account in eM Client and it will connect to that server mailbox to receive messages sent to it. Then reply to them and they go from that same address.
But you can’t setup a Gmail account to receive messages, and have the replies go through the pobox server. You can with some other servers, but not with a Gmail or other account using oAuth.
I don’t have a mail account at pobox, I use it only as it was historically intended as a mail filtering / security / antispam / rules / forwarding service, so I don’t have webmail at pobox. Mails sent to my pobox account(s - I have all my family there) are validated / sometimes bounced or held (in case of spam certaincy or suspicion) and only when OK are forwarded to my gmail (not known to the general public).
Later they created a pobox wemail service (so you could use it directly in pobox without external mail account) but I never subscribed to it : it was an extra cost and I was happy with my gmail IMAP setup + pobox SMTP. Plus I didn’t (and I still don’t) have the courage at the moment to see how to migrate all the mail history from gmail (my account but also the family’s accounts) to “anywhere else”.
The pobox company were bought by fastmail long ago but they keep the service running, recently we got a mail about a migration but they claim it will continue to work the same way.
