Immediately after installing BusinessMail it reports that it cannot open the TCP port required for the internal SMTP server.

This is very easy to correct. It is almost certainly due to the fact that your Pc is already running the Microsoft IIS SMTP server (if running a Windows Server or even XP).  You have two choices, but the most obvious one is to disable the almost certainly unwanted and unused SMTP server that is running and therefore taking up the standard TCP port 25.  Unless you are actually using IIS, We suggest you open the Windows Services control applet, identify the entry for Internet Information Services (IIS), and stop the service, and finally change its setting to manual so it does not restart again every time you restart the machine.

If you do not want to disable IIS, you can equally easily change the TCP port that BusinessMail uses for the SMTP server to 26 or any other free port.  This is done by selecting Configure, and then Advanced tools and utilities, and finally selecting the Servers tab.

Please don't forget that if you do this, then all of the client's PC email packages will also need changing to use the same port you have chosen if they are to be able to send their emails to the BusinessMail server.

When we try to send out emails and BusinessMail  cannot connect to the remote SMTP server, the system just hangs totally.

We have discovered the bug that caused this problem, and it has now been fixed (July 2006 v4.66.1). 

We want to use SMTP authentication in BusinessMail, but have found that our Outlook Express clients cannot then connect to send mail to it, as they get "535 - Authentication required" error message.

This is caused by a bug that was discovered in earlier releases of the BusinessMail SMTP mail server.  It has now been fixed (May 2005), and a new SMTP server can be downloaded by visiting our Downloads Page, or simply by CLICKING HERE.

Just replace the original server file in your businessmail installation folder and the smtp authentication will now work correctly with outlook.

The BusinessMail  SMTP server reports that it cannot run as another application is using port 25 ?

This is usually seen on Windows 2000 systems, and is due to the fact that for some reason, Microsoft install and run an SMTP server when this operating system is installed.

You are highly unlikely to require the Microsoft SMTP server, so all you need to do is go to Services, and disable it permanently by switching it to manual load only.

Alternatively, you CAN change the port used by the BusinessMail SMTP server to any other unused port, but must then remember to change the port used to send mail messages to BusinessMail in all of your email clients as well.

Using either of the above solutions will allow the  BusinessMail SMTP server to  load correctly.

Why does BusinessMail have to be installed on  NT based systems (NT4/2000/XP) with system administrator rights ?

This is due to the security system built in to NT based versions of Windows by Microsoft.  Once you have installed BusinessMail mail server, you can still run it when logged in as a user without administrator rights, but you are not allowed to access the configuration or close the server down.

This is standard for NT based applications.

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BusinessMail seems to make the processor go to 100% ?

This is totally standard for the Windows processor management, after all you wouldn't really want your computer processor used to only half it's capacity or similar, that would be illogical and very wasteful.

However, because a server like BusinessMail often performs some fairly intensive processing, we have provided two methods for you to adjust how aggressively it will use the system resources of the machine it is running on.

1 - Go to Configure - utilities and advanced settings, and select the Performance tab.  Check the option "Run BusinessMail as a background process"

2 - Go to Configure - utilities and advanced settings, and select the Processing  tab.  Then click the Advanced button and set all thread priorities to "LOWEST"

These only make BusinessMail process a little slower, but also allows other running processes more processor cycles.

BusinessMail seems to use the processor every few seconds - why is that and can we stop it ?

This is because the BusinessMail mail server is a fully multi threaded application, and performs a series of background maintenance tasks on a scheduled basis every few seconds. That period is use configurable from the Configure - Utilities & advanced settings - Processing tab.

The most processor intensive operation other than when it is processing messages of course, is when BusinessMail is checking and updating the main status panel as it has to actually count the contents of all the mailboxes each time it performs this task.

To reduce this activity significantly, all you need to do is have only the activity log visible until you want to see the status information.  This automatically stops BusinessMail from performing this process until you choose to re-display the status panel.

We are sending mail out to multiple recipients using our ISP's SMTP relay server, but they get sometimes get refused by them. What do we need to do to get them delivered ?

Firstly - this is not a bug in the BusinessMail mail server.

This is caused due to the improper/incorrect configuration of your ISP's relay server.  By definition, they operate what is called a relay server because it accepts mail form you and others, and then "relays" it on the end recipients for you.  However, due to spam and other issues on the Internet to day, many try to do what is called a forward lookup on the domains the messages are addressed to, to check if they are valid.  If this check fails, they cannot relay the message.

However, a relay server IS SUPPOSED to ALWAYS accept your message in it's entirety, assuming your a valid sender, and then perform these checks after doing so if they want to, and finally, deliver those they can deliver, and send you back a bounce message from themselves telling you who it could NOT be delivered to.

There is nothing BusinessMail or any other mail server or client for that matter can do about these servers, as we can only report back with the error they provide, if any, which BusinessMail does.

The solution is to contact your ISP and get them to correct their server configuration, or to use the MX sending feature of BusinessMail to send the mail directly to the recipients yourself, if you are able to do so through your ISP's system  NB many do not allow this.

Why is it that sometimes we receive multiple copies of the same message ?

Firstly - this is not a bug in the BusinessMail mail server.

Most people see this problem because they are using Microsoft Outlook, which for some totally unfathomable reason, does not remove emails with duplicate message ID's as is the case with virtually all other (decent) email clients.

It is quite often due to the fact that you collect your mail from more than one "standard" POP3 mailbox, as  when a message is received by your ISP addressed to multiple recipients in the TO, CC or even BCC lines, the ISP will have to generate copies of the message and place one copy of it in each of the recipients mailboxes they provide.  ISP's  "SHOULD" also add an "Envelope-to" line of some form to identify that they have done this, but unfortunately many do not do so.

It can also occur if you receive mailing lists that are poorly organized and include multiple recipients in the main RFC header block

Therefore, what happens is that the BusinessMail mail server actually receives (by downloading from several POP3 mailboxes) multiple copies of what is of course, actually the same message, and which (again correctly) still contains ALL of the original recipients email addresses in its RFC header block. 

BusinessMail  then, totally correctly, processes each of these messages, and equally correctly, delivers one copy of the message to each recipient found in the header.  When there are multiple identical messages, each listed recipient will therefore get multiple copies of that message.

This is totally correct processing by BusinessMail, or by any other mail server, and all mail servers do it the same way !

However, because this is a recognized issue for people who do not have a proper business forwarding email account, and their mail clients (Outlook etc) do NOT handle duplicate messages correctly (which should be able to ignore duplicates as do most well known mail clients such as Eudora, Pocomail etc), BusinessMail provides a feature that can handle this easily by using the "Envelope-to" line that **should** have been added by your ISP.  

NB - Some ISP's do not add these as they should...

You need to first of all go to the Configure Menu, select "External connections and options", then select the "Mail options" tab and ensure you have the "Use Envelope-to to deliver" option checked.  

This tells BusinessMail to initially always check the RFC header block of each message for a line that matches any one of the envelope to lines it has in its own list of envelope-to lines.  (You can add to or remove these to these by clicking the Advanced button next to the option).

By default, the Internet email RFC standards quote ENVELOPE-TO and X-ENVELOPE-TO as what should be used as the identifier for these special header lines, but strangely we have identified that some ISP's choose to use different ones, which means you may need to add your own ISP's version of this identifier line to the special BusinessMail list.

You can usually identify the line required pretty easily by looking at the RFC header of one of these messages, and seeing if anything similar to the examples shown above exists in there.  It will always be the first thing on a header line, and usually has a format similar to :-

X-Envelope-to: this_recipient@mydomain.com
Envelope-to: another_recipient@mydomain.com

or something similar...

Once you have identified this line, and if it is not in the BusinessMail list already (the two shown above ARE by default in the list on installation of BusinessMail), all you need to do is click the advanced button and add it EXACTLY as it is shown in the message header line, (WITHOUT the colon or email address after it)

Thereafter BusinessMail will check for all specified Envelope-to lines, and if one is found, it will then only deliver the message to the single email address that follows this identifier. (There are NEVER more than one email address after these identifiers) ;-))

The entire Envelope-TO handling in BusinessMail is covered in detail in the printable manual that is provided with BusinessMail, and this can be accessed from the Help menu.

The second line of defence provided by BusinessMail is to use the special routing option that can be set for each POP mailbox you collect mail from. 

If you go to Configure -> Collections from POP3 mailboxes menu option, you will see that for each POP mailbox you collect mail from that says “Always route messages collected from this POP mailbox to this email address”.

What this means is that no matter who the recipient(s) in the message header may be, the message will only be delivered once - to the mailbox you have specified. 

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Breaking News

The current  release of our BusinessMail multi-threaded e-mail server is v4.66 shipped April 2006