Subdomains, Aliases and + addressing

[hypezone]

Hi all,
I'm a long time Fastmail user, having had a free account for a few years now. However, since I'm starting a business, I'm setting up business-worthy email.
To this end, I registered my domain, and purchased an Enhanced Fastmail account (in addition to the free one.), intending to host email for my domain at FM. I decided to go with Fastmail after coming to this forum, and affirming that Fastmail was superior to Runbox. This was where I learned about aliases, plus addressing and subdomain addressing.
I would like to be able categorize emails depending on the sender. I know it is possible, but don't know what to do. I would like to give an addresses to each supplier at suppliers.mydomain.com, which would lead to my fastmail account., and be put in a folder for that supplier. Ditto for places like Amazon, mailing lists, etc. My guess is that this would give me ultimate flexibility in spam control. It's just that I don't know how to implement, whether through aliases, plus addressing or subdomains, and judging from the FAQ and some forum posts I've read, they overlap. So far, I've changed the MX records for my domain to point to FM's email servers, and created a info AT mydomain. com address, which works. I then created a *.mydomain.com at namecheap (my registrar), and then created suppliers.mydomain.com in the Virtual Domain screen. A bit later, I got notification from FM that it was now active. I created an alias for it, but email to it from Yahoo get rejected with this message:
Sorry, I couldn't find any host named suppliers.mydomain.com.
(#5.1.2)
Am I one the right track? Instinct tells me that it's a DNS problem, but I don't know where I missed a step. Additionally, I'd like to know the following:
1.) I know how to create folders from Webmail, but can I do this using Outlook 2003 via IMAP?
2.) How do subdomains and aliases and personalities work in Outlook?
3.) I would like all mails to my free account to be redirected to the Enhanced account, as I'm pushing the limits both in storage and bandwidth. Is this possible?

Thanks.

Mod: I have fixed the "live" email address to avoid spambots.

[Sherry]

Hi hypezone,

You said you sent a message from Yahoo to suppliers.mydomain.com but that's not an email address. Did you mean to send it to suppliers AT mydomain .com? (putting in the @ instead of the .)

1. You can make folders in Outlook but you would need to be careful not to make them subfolders of the Inbox. I use Outlook Express and find it much better to make the folders on the web then sync them in OE (making sure they are not subfolders). You can have subfolders of other folders you make as long as they are not in the Inbox)

2. I'll let someone who uses Outlook say how to make personalities to send "from". In OE I make "dummy" accounts for each Alias and SubDomains I use regularly telling the accounts "not" to check for mail. For SubDomain addressing for sites that I usually don't need to reply to except to confirm my email address I use the web for that.

3. You can not forward email from a Guest account however there is a "Dirty Trick" that will do it. (FM knows we do this )

Clink on Options (at the top) then "Define Rules". Then use the code in the FM Wiki.

Redirect-using-Advanced

Welcome to the EMD Forums

Sherry

Edit: Forgot to give the following link for you.
How do I use FastMail.FM's subdomain addresses and "plus-addresses"?

[hypezone]

Thanks Sherry,
I sent it to an alias I created at suppliers.mydomain.com, eg suppliername@suppliers.mydomain.com.

I'm creating a few more aliases, including a catch-all to test.

[zhak]

Subdomains at Fastmail are actually aliases. Instead of creating a subdomain suppliers.mydomain.com with an alias of suppliername @ suppliers.mydomain.tld for each supplier, you actually want to create an alias of suppliers @ mydomain.tld

Then you can use that alias as the subdomain, anything @ suppliers.mydomain.tld without having to create the alias 'anything'.

For example, an email sent to suppliername @ ... , Fastmail will report (in the x-delivered-to header) that the email was sent to
suppliername @ suppliers.mydomain.tld which you can filter on, such as:

header :contains ["x-delivered-to"] ["suppliername@"]
fileinto folder Suppliername

Creating a rule for each supplier.

Also, you might want to consider moving your DNS hosting to Fastmail to get full use the of the Virtual Domains screen. That's easy to do at Namecheap, just goto 'Domain name server setup', enter

ns1.messagingengine.com
ns2.messagingengine.com

as shown in the above FAQ link, then you can control everything from the Fastmail 'Virtual Domains' screen and 'Custom DNS' screen.

Your specific questions:

1) Yes.
2) The 'to' address suppliername @ suppliers.mydomain.tld will appear as expected.
3) Sherry gave you the best answer. But you can also consolidate the free account into your enhanced account, where all mail will be moved to the enhanced account, and an alias created that was your free username @ fmdomain.tld address. If you want to go that route, in your enhanced account, goto Options and near the bottom, find the 'Rename / Consolidate' link.

-Jim

[hypezone]

Thanks zhak. I'm finally grasping it One question: Does this work on the principle of aliases, or of subdomains? Or are they very closely related, since as you said, a subdomain is really an alias, since it is directed to your FM account?
Also, why doesn't my original setup work?

[zhak]

Originally Posted by hypezone

One question: Does this work on the principle of aliases, or of subdomains? Or are they very closely related, since as you said, a subdomain is really an alias, since it is directed to your FM account?

They are the same, if on the left side of the @, they are called aliases, when the alias is used as a subdomain, the FAQ refers to it as a subdomain, even though you can setup specific actual subdomains, as you did. See this very detailed explanation and this.

Originally Posted by hypezone

Also, why doesn't my original setup work?

Good question. If you created a pair of *.mydomain.tld. entries in the Namecheap MX records (in addition to the pair of domain entries, with just @ as the host name), and the subdomain entry in the virtual domain screen, it should work, according to this.

-Jim

[zhak]

Originally Posted by zhak

Subdomains at Fastmail are actually aliases. Instead of creating a subdomain suppliers.mydomain.com with an alias of suppliername @ suppliers.mydomain.tld for each supplier, you actually want to create an alias of suppliers @ mydomain.tld

There are two main reasons for doing it this way. First, enhanced accounts have a limit of 30 aliases, and 200 is the limit for virtual domain aliases. This way only uses one alias, and you can have an unlimited number of suppliers (the left side of the @).

Second, you can create a supplier address 'on-the-fly'. Say you are on the phone with a new supplier, you can tell them to use suppliername @ suppliers.mydomain.tld and mail from them will arrive (in the inbox) without having to setup anything else in Fastmail. You can also create a catchall folder, so if you have rules sorting supplier mail into specific folders, after those rules, you can have a rule sending any previously unmatched supplier mail into a 'New Supplier' folder.

Added: also since you are using this for business email, you may want to see this post, and then search the forum for 'redundancy'.

-Jim

[hypezone]

Thanks for all the help so far, Jim. But it's not working:
I created an alias, suppliers@mydomain.com. I sent a message from yahoo to test@suppliers.mydomain.com. I cc'd it to my free fastmail account. It was delivered to the free one, but not to the enhanced. However, I still have the suppliers.mydomain.com subdomain active, with its associated aliases. Maybe I should remove them?

I'll do my redundancy research...Thanks!

[zhak]

Originally Posted by hypezone

However, I still have the suppliers.mydomain.com subdomain active, with its associated aliases. Maybe I should remove them?

Yes, delete those. And just have the primary and secondary Fastmail entries in your Namecheap MX server details, with no subdomain MX entries.

[hypezone]

Originally Posted by zhak

Yes, delete those. And just have the primary and secondary Fastmail entries in your Namecheap MX server details, with no subdomain MX entries.

Should I delete *.mydomain.com from namecheap too?

[zhak]

Not from the host records, you can have subdomains on your website, but delete the subdomain records in the MX records section. For example, at Namecheap, you just need two MX records with 'host name' of '@' and the two Fastmail MX server names shown here (for email only).

[hypezone]

Sorry for not replying sooner... Cable & Wireless DSL is hell...
OK, email to alias@mydomain.com is fine, but email to anything@alias.mydomain.com is not working. I just deleted the *.mydomain.com MX records from Namecheap.

[zhak]

Ok, you may need to wait awhile for the MX changes to take effect.

See Rob's complete post here. I'll quote just the options on subdomains:

The choice is really up to you, depending on what you want.
1. A domain, and no sub-domains at all
a) Add the domain, and set the "Handle subdomains" option to "No reject"
2. A domain, and a couple of specific sub-domains
a) Add the domain, and set the "Handle subdomains" option to "No reject"
b) Add each sub-domain as an explicit domain, and set "Handle subdomain" to "No reject"
3. A domain and handle all sub-domains
a) Add the domain, and set the "Handle subdomains" option to "Yes, ...", either option depending on what you want
4. A domain and handle all sub-domains except some explicit ones
a) Add the domain, and set the "Handle subdomains" option to "Yes, ...", either option depending on what you want
b) Add the explicit sub-domains you don't want to handle.with the "Active" option set to "None"

What you initially had setup was like #2 above. My suggestion was #3, with 'Yes, swap b+a@dom'.

On the Fastmail Virtual Domains screen, at the bottom, you should have:

Domain: mydomain.com
Active: Email & Web (even if you have email only)
Subdomain? a @ b.dom as: Yes, swap b+a@dom

This last setting allows your domain aliases to function just like FM aliases -- as subdomains.

-Jim

[hypezone]

Yeah, that's how it is on the Virtual Domains Screen. But still nothing...

Should I just move the nameservers from namecheap to Fastmail? How would that impact redundancy?

[zhak]

Ok, let's get into your settings. So I don't have to do a lot of 'if this, then that', what is your setup?

1) Namecheap has DNS, web A records to somewhere else, and MX only to Fastmail.

2) Namecheap has DNS, web A records and MX to Fastmail.

3) Namecheap points to Fastmail DNS servers, so DNS, web, and email all are at Fastmail.

Also, try creating another alias on the Virtual Domain screen, such as 'test', then send a message to anything @ test.mydomain.com. That will tell us if it is related to the previously created subdomain or not.

-Jim