I have set up a small network for a small company. Most of the internet related items (website, FTP, email) are handled on a commercial hosting service. To resolve some issues with people wanting to keep info such as email and calendars synchronized on different computers, I have set up an SBS2003 server running Exchange Server 2003. I have set up a second server as a test-server. So far everything seems to check out. Although I have a valid IP address for the server, I don't want to actually have emails come to that server directly. I like the idea that the hosting site can work as a "backup" in case something goes wrong with my server. I also don't think I have the necessary bandwidth to deal with the emails directly. So, the emails end up in an account at the host that supports both POP3 and IMAP. I have been poking around the internet for connectors that would allow me to collect the emails from the host site and bring them into the Exchange server for further distribution to the users. My questions: A) Does SBS2003/ES2003 have an internal connector that would allow me to do this? I saw some hints that SBS2003 might, but I have not been able to find good information. B) Is there any freeware/shareware out there that would allow me to do what I want? C) Is there a consensus as to the best software to provides this service? Thanks.

Sorry, I am actually running Windows Server 2003, not SBS2003.

You should host your mail and calendars on the same system or else your users are going to have a painful and confusing experience. POP connectors exist--there are many--but it's a great big kludge and a source of endless problems. A major reason for this is that POP3 is a single mailbox retrieval protocol, not a mail transport protocol. SMTP is the mail transport protocol. The best advice I can give you is to have all your e-mail sent to your Exchange server via SMTP, the way the Internet was designed to work. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "vistauser111" wrote in message news:7f11a2cc-6404-4e45-ac04-948cedf99640... I have set up a small network for a small company. Most of the internet related items (website, FTP, email) are handled on a commercial hosting service. To resolve some issues with people wanting to keep info such as email and calendars synchronized on different computers, I have set up an SBS2003 server running Exchange Server 2003. I have set up a second server as a test-server. So far everything seems to check out. Although I have a valid IP address for the server, I don't want to actually have emails come to that server directly. I like the idea that the hosting site can work as a "backup" in case something goes wrong with my server. I also don't think I have the necessary bandwidth to deal with the emails directly. So, the emails end up in an account at the host that supports both POP3 and IMAP. I have been poking around the internet for connectors that would allow me to collect the emails from the host site and bring them into the Exchange server for further distribution to the users. My questions: A) Does SBS2003/ES2003 have an internal connector that would allow me to do this? I saw some hints that SBS2003 might, but I have not been able to find good information. B) Is there any freeware/shareware out there that would allow me to do what I want? C) Is there a consensus as to the best software to provides this service? Thanks. Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems."

You should host your mail and calendars on the same system or else your users are going to have a painful and confusing experience. POP connectors exist--there are many--but it's a great big kludge and a source of endless problems. A major reason for this is that POP3 is a single mailbox retrieval protocol, not a mail transport protocol. SMTP is the mail transport protocol. The best advice I can give you is to have all your e-mail sent to your Exchange server via SMTP, the way the Internet was designed to work. -- Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." . "vistauser111" wrote in message news:7f11a2cc-6404-4e45-ac04-948cedf99640 ... I have set up a small network for a small company. Most of the internet related items (website, FTP, email) are handled on a commercial hosting service. To resolve some issues with people wanting to keep info such as email and calendars synchronized on different computers, I have set up an SBS2003 server running Exchange Server 2003. I have set up a second server as a test-server. So far everything seems to check out. Although I have a valid IP address for the server, I don't want to actually have emails come to that server directly. I like the idea that the hosting site can work as a "backup" in case something goes wrong with my server. I also don't think I have the necessary bandwidth to deal with the emails directly. So, the emails end up in an account at the host that supports both POP3 and IMAP. I have been poking around the internet for connectors that would allow me to collect the emails from the host site and bring them into the Exchange server for further distribution to the users. My questions: A) Does SBS2003/ES2003 have an internal connector that would allow me to do this? I saw some hints that SBS2003 might, but I have not been able to find good information. B) Is there any freeware/shareware out there that would allow me to do what I want? C) Is there a consensus as to the best software to provides this service? Thanks. Ed Crowley MVP "There are seldom good technological solutions to behavioral problems." Yeah, in a world where everybody has multiple, redundant servers, a multi-MBit network connection with close to 100% uptime and IT staff on hand, that might indeed be the best solution. Alas, not all of us are that lucky. There some who have to rely on 3rd party vendors... I don't really understand the SMTP vs. POP3 issue. My outlook right now connects to the hosting site and uses IMAP to deal with the email, and it works fine. All I want to do is to use Exchange Server to do the exact same thing, and then simply use Outlook to get the data from Exchange Server. Why should that be any more complicated that using Outlook directly? I am not trying to reinvent the wheel here. All I want is to shift the email collection to Exchange Server so I can add a couple more services (calendar, tasks). In order to do that I now have to pretty much set up an IT department? Ok, I understand that this is the best advice you can give me. Thank you. Are there others out there who might have other information? Especially regarding the 3 questions I had?

A) If you are not using SBS then there is no built-in connector B) POPcon (http://www.servolutions.com/popcon.htm) is a great connector that has been around for 10 years. C) Everybody has their favorite...

Hi Vista User, I have read your complete post and I would like to suggest you that Claus is also right that you can use POPcon but I will recommend you GFI which is the top most connector for exchange (any version). Regards. Shafaquat Ali.M.C.I.T.P Exchange 2007 M.C.I.T.P Windows Server 2008 M.C.T.S OCS Server 2007 R2

I have set up a small network for a small company. Most of the internet related items (website, FTP, email) are handled on a commercial hosting service. To resolve some issues with people wanting to keep info such as email and calendars synchronized on different computers, I have set up an SBS2003 server running Exchange Server 2003. I have set up a second server as a test-server. So far everything seems to check out. Although I have a valid IP address for the server, I don't want to actually have emails come to that server directly. I like the idea that the hosting site can work as a "backup" in case something goes wrong with my server. I also don't think I have the necessary bandwidth to deal with the emails directly. So, the emails end up in an account at the host that supports both POP3 and IMAP. I have been poking around the internet for connectors that would allow me to collect the emails from the host site and bring them into the Exchange server for further distribution to the users. My questions: A) Does SBS2003/ES2003 have an internal connector that would allow me to do this? I saw some hints that SBS2003 might, but I have not been able to find good information. B) Is there any freeware/shareware out there that would allow me to do what I want? C) Is there a consensus as to the best software to provides this service? Thanks. Hi Vistauser111, I can give you a best idea and much better than pop3 . Let suppose your domain name is "abc.com" and it is hosted outside for mailing and suppose your mx name is "mx1.abc.com". Now Setup your server and make same domain internally as well that is "abc.com" and install exchange successfully. Now create new domain policy at exchange and keep smtp address "mymail.abc.com" and keep your mx record name mx2.abc.com. Now every user will have 2 email address 1) user@abc.com and user@mymail.abc.com but normal user doesn't know it.going ahead you have to configure copy policy at ISP end for every user and I am 100 % sure every ISP has this feature. So open your user account at isp end and make cc to his second email address that is user@mymail.abc.com. now what will happen if someone from outside send mail to your user@abc.com, he will get mail at isp end as well as user@mymail.abc.com. After doing so every user can send and receive mail from external and interal with the same email address and your ISP and internal server will work perfectly. After doing so you can get lots of benefit like spam,slow mail processing.etc. Let me know if you have any query. Thanks Amit Rawat

Any update on it. Thanks Amit Rawat