Looking for a guide to collect all e-mail from the ISP mail server

[Mihai Badici]

Why don't you configure all stuff internally and ask your provider to 
relay the e-mails from and to you via "smart relay"?  You will 
communicate only via smtp and only with your provider, and you can use a 
nice open-source bundle ( dovecot is mandatory because you wrote on that 
list :) ) in your LAN.
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> 	  Original Message  	
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> From: rdiezmail-2006 at yahoo.de
> Sent: October 25, 2020 10:57 AM
> To: dovecot at dovecot.org
> Subject: Looking for a guide to collect all e-mail from the ISP mail server
>
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> Hi all:
>
> I am evaluating mail server solutions for a small business. The trouble is, I am only a part-time admin and a newbie to mail servers.
>
> Most guides I have seen are rather unrealistic: they encourage you to expose your e-mail server to the Internet, and hope that you have the resources
> to keep it patched up.
>
> I would rather have an internal mail server that collects e-mails from a standard ISP mail server.  It is like the old "POP3 Connector" that came with
> Microsoft Exchange.  Sometimes, there is a mailbox per user on the ISP, and a corresponding one on the local server.  Other times, there is a single
> "catch all" or "multidrop" mailbox on the ISP.
>
> Users can still access their internal mailboxes from outside through an OpenVPN connection.  The goal is that only VPN, and perhaps SSH, are
> accessible from the outside.  We do not need to arrange any special SMTP configuration with the ISP either.
>
> This kind of mail server setup is rather different to the standard configuration. You do not normally need you own antivirus and spam filter, and you
> do not need to configure SSL certificates, MX or SPF DNS records. Most ISP handle that correctly and economically.  Internal e-mail does not leave
> your LAN, and your internal SMTP server is just a relay for the external ISP SMTP server.
>
> Furthermore, most guides do not explain how to setup an autoresponder ("I am on holiday until xxx") so that users can enable theirs with the mouse.
> Editing configuration files over SSH is not really an option for normal users. This detail is important because it could be the only thing I need
> above standard e-mail. Further groupware features can be seen as nice but ultimately unnecessary luxury, and a basic shared calendar can be
> accomplished with a separate server like https://radicale.org/ and a calendar client like one built into Thunderbird. Hopefully, that is all I would
> need for a small business.
>
> Can anyone point me to the kind of guide I need? Failing that, I would need information or examples about using fetchmail, getmail or similar software
> with Dovecot.  Good or bad experiences from you guys would also help.
>
> Each of those tools has a detailed man page, but there are many options and ways with different advantages and disadvantages.  I would need a simpler
> guide to get started.
>
> I am aware that there are pre-packaged mail server solutions that would perhaps bring an easy-to-use autoresponder, but I haven't seen one yet that
> where you could tick a box like "this server is only internal and collects mail from the ISP server" during installation. Nor have I seen instructions
> about reconfiguring the mail server for my ISP mail scenario.
>
> I am prepared to learn more and write my own Perl scripts and/or installation guide, but it would be stupid to waste time if something easy already
> exists.  After all, the setup I am describing (external ISP mail server + internal mail server) is not so weird.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>     rdiez