Can I use both Webmail and Thunderbird to get my mail?

Thunderbird

Now you may not know what Thunderbird is (it's an email program like Outlook only it's freely available as open source). But this is a question that comes up frequently these days in Kabissa's tech support mailbox so I think it's time for Mimi to address it.

Many Kabissa members still use cybercafes and webmail to access their email on Kabissa. After a while, however, they begin to look for more ways to get at their email as the organizations they work for become more sophisticated and get Internet connectivity in their offices. Or, and this would be gratifying to Mimi indeed, they are beginning to make more clever use of a USB Key as Mimi suggested last month to maintain a secure and reliable travelling 'office' in their pockets as they move from cybercafe to cybercafe.

If this describes you and you feel you are outgrowing your Webmail then do read on to learn about a feature called IMAP and how it will let you combine the power of Webmail and Thunderbird.

Getting running immediately with Webmail

Kabissa member organizations can get started right away with Webmail - once signed up as a member you can order a hosting account (a starter account is free and includes a unique address like YOU@YOURORG.kabissa.org) and then create mailboxes for your organization's staff. You can then access your mailboxes from any Internet connnected computer by going to the Kabissa homepage and clicking on the "Kabissa Webmail" link or by going directly to https://webmail.kabissa.org

What in the world is IMAP?

IMAP means Internet Mail Access Protocol and is a fairly common standard method for accessing email, second only to its popular older sibling POP3, meaning Post Office Protocol. Both IMAP and POP3 are supported by commonly used email programs and most email hosting providers - including Kabissa.

The power of Webmail is nothing new - you probably also have a Yahoo or Gmail webmail mailbox. But what you may not know is that with IMAP you can access the same mail you see in your Webmail folders using Thunderbird (or any other email program).

You will want to use POP3 when you only use the same computer and the same email program to always download your email and read it offline. This is very powerful and useful if you are in a situation where you are not online all the time and need to briefly connect your computer to the Internet from time to time to pick up messages and send messages. POP3 also helps if you have a very limiting disk space quota on your mailbox.

But you will want to use IMAP if you want to use both Webmail and Thunderbird - and always want to have access to all of your email whichever you are using. Thunderbird does download your folders for offline reading if you need to get offline to read messages, but you can be confident in knowing that if something happens to your laptop or USB key, your email and folders are safely stored on the server.

How do I Set up IMAP in Thunderbird

It doesn't have to be Thunderbird - there are other perfectly good email programs out there - but Mimi is particularly enthusiastic about Thunderbird because it is freely available open source software. It is produced by the same folks that produce the Firefox web browser and it happens to support both POP3 and IMAP very elegantly.

When you set up your mailbox in Thunderbird, which you can do through a fairly simple process, select IMAP as the incoming mail server type. Then when you next connect to the Internet to pick up your messages, you will see all your mail folders exactly as you do in Webmail.

Pitfalls to watch out for

Mimi laments: no matter how hard the techies work to develop great new tools for us - why are there always pitfalls?

In this case, please keep in mind the following very critical points:
  • Using POP3, you are in charge of ensuring that your email (on the computer YOU are using) is backed up in case something happens to your computer. Using IMAP, you have nice redundancy: email is saved both on your computer and on the server.
  • Because it keeps all copies on the server, IMAP may encourage you to go over on your disk space limits. On Kabissa, we are generous about this and do not start bouncing mail when you hit your limits - but you do need to take care to kee your mailbox disk usage at a reasonable level. Other hosting providers will just start bouncing your mail so be careful!
  • IMAP works best when you have a good Internet connection. If it is intermittent or slow, you may run intro trouble downloading lots of mail or keeping your folders "synchronized". Thunderbird offers features for managing this (by letting you select which folders to synchronize, for example) but be prepared to see some error messages when it is unable to synchronize.
  • Kabissa Webmail places your sent mail in a folder called sent-mail - you may need to verify that you are also saving your sent messages in the same folder, on the server, so that you are certain to be able to see your sent messages in Webmail as well as in Thunderbird.
  • IMAP does not handle addressbooks! You can access all mail and folders, but don't expect to automatically have your addressbooks appear in both places. Other settings will also be different, including spam filtering (which is quite powerful in Thunderbird by the way) and any rules you may have set up to automatically move messages to folders.