Suggestions for Runbox

[ezfig]

As it appears the Runbox staff are not soliciting suggestions, I'll start a thread for that.

I am relatively new to Runbox, but have used Fastmail for years. My first suggestion would be to spend some time there, because it's well thought out and organized.

Specific things I'd like on Runbox:

1) ability to edit return addresses on individual emails. For example, I use Sneakemail to create unique email addresses when I don't want to reveal my primary one. In order to use a unique return address, I have to reply to a message received through Sneakemail or compose the message at Fastmail. (Any of my hundreds of email aliases through Sneakemail forwards to my primary account.)

2) themes for webmail - for example, color-coded or icon buttons instead of all the same color. Text-only buttons is very old school design. See Fastmail.

3) get help pages organized - 'General Info' brings up the same sidebar as 'Service Status' and 'Overview' and 'Documentation' and 'Webmail Help' and 'FAQ' and 'Quotas,' yet 'General Info' does not appear on the sidebar menu. Again, refer to Fastmail.

BTW, in answer to the question 'why don't I just use Fastmail?' - I want my email only on servers outside the USA.

[petergh]

Not to suggest you move away from Runbox, but have you considered Polarismail? Their servers are in Canada, which is closer if you are in the U.S.

[lane]

Originally Posted by petergh

Not to suggest you move away from Runbox, but have you considered Polarismail? Their servers are in Canada, which is closer if you are in the U.S.

Actually, although they are owned and operated out of Montreal, Canada, I believe, their servers are in New York City according to their IP addresses. Probably a data centre there.

[ezfig]

Originally Posted by lane

Actually, although they are owned and operated out of Montreal, Canada, I believe, their servers are in New York City according to their IP addresses. Probably a data centre there.

This is why I steer clear of Fastmail as well - though based in AUS, I understand they have servers in NYC. Proximity is not such an issue, since I'm in southern South America.

[kservik]

Originally Posted by ezfig

1) ability to edit return addresses on individual emails. For example, I use Sneakemail to create unique email addresses when I don't want to reveal my primary one. In order to use a unique return address, I have to reply to a message received through Sneakemail or compose the message at Fastmail. (Any of my hundreds of email aliases through Sneakemail forwards to my primary account.)

You can change the from address in each individual folder. So if you employ a filter to move messages with a certain profile to a special folder, then that would work. If this setup is very random, then it probably would not be worth your time.

Originally Posted by ezfig

2) themes for webmail - for example, color-coded or icon buttons instead of all the same color. Text-only buttons is very old school design. See Fastmail.

Totally agreed. We will start working on usabillity when we have launched RMM6 (the next version of the webmail).

Originally Posted by ezfig

3) get help pages organized - 'General Info' brings up the same sidebar as 'Service Status' and 'Overview' and 'Documentation' and 'Webmail Help' and 'FAQ' and 'Quotas,' yet 'General Info' does not appear on the sidebar menu. Again, refer to Fastmail.

Again, I totally agree. We have been planning a project like this for some time. We might employ Dave a bit more to help with that project.

Kim

[ezfig]

Originally Posted by kservik

You can change the from address in each individual folder.

Kim, thanks for your responses. However, I find nothing in the documentation to indicate how this might be accomplished. Can you elaborate?

[petergh]

Originally Posted by lane

Actually, although they are owned and operated out of Montreal, Canada, I believe, their servers are in New York City according to their IP addresses. Probably a data centre there.

Polarismail seems to be under the impression that their data centre is in Montreal.

PolarisMail servers are colocated with Peer1 Networks in a high-rise building, located downtown Montreal and fitted with 3 levels of security, including a 24/7 security guard.

Source: http://www.polarismail.com/Technology/

[lane]

Well, they certainly ought to know!

(Probably something I'm doing wrong. "imap.emailarray.com" (their IMAP server) resolves to four IP's: 65.39.216.9, 65.39.216.15, 65.39.216.19, 69.28.212.200. According to http://www.infosniper.net/, the first three are in New York and the fourth in Philadelphia. But again, perhaps I just misunderstand.)

[tomhab]

These IP based location lookups aren't always accurate, but I'd reckon their website is probably less up to date than the lookup.

As for ezfig's question, click on the folder, and then select preferences (above the folder list), then uncheck 'Use same preferences as Inbox'. I don't know if it's documented correctly...

[George_B]

Sorry to bump in the thread of another provider, but I wanted to clear that issue out... our servers ARE in Montreal. In all honesty, we definitely pay a premium for this since colocation in Canada is more expensive than in the US, but we prefer it this way because of two reasons:

- I need physical access for myself and my employees to our servers. There is no way I will trust a remote tech to look out after our equipment.

- US privacy laws were always 'iffy' for us and some of our clients so we prefer a more neutral place.

Montreal is very close to all major North American hubs and to Europe so latency was never an issue.

Now, to clear that IP issue... simply do a traceroute. I'm not sure why some registrars show that the IPs belong in New York.

Here's a sample traceroute from RackSpace.

traceroute imap.emailarray.com
traceroute to imap.emailarray.com (65.39.216.19), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 184.106.155.2 (184.106.155.2) 0.963 ms 0.815 ms 0.720 ms
2 core1-aggr301a-5.ord1.rackspace.net (173.203.0.184) 1.506 ms 1.127 ms 1.317 ms
3 corea.ord1.rackspace.net (184.106.126.124) 1.093 ms corea.ord1.rackspace.net (184.106.126.128) 1.171 ms 0.999 ms
4 bbr1.ord1.rackspace.net (184.106.126.145) 1.850 ms 1.809 ms 1.774 ms
5 peer1-gw.peer1.net (206.223.119.30) 2.357 ms 2.662 ms 2.305 ms
6 10ge.xe-0-2-0.tor-1yg-cor-1.peer1.net (216.187.114.142) 12.491 ms 12.778 ms 12.388 ms
7 10ge.xe-0-0-0.tor-151f-cor-1.peer1.net (216.187.114.134) 12.348 ms 12.513 ms 12.506 ms
8 10ge-xe-1-1-0.mtl-bvh-dis-2.peer1.net (216.187.114.198) 20.033 ms 19.829 ms 19.935 ms
9 mtl-bvh-ge3-1b.ne.peer1.net (216.187.115.108) 21.176 ms 20.496 ms 20.184 ms
10 mtl-bvh-fe3-1a.ne.peer1.net (216.187.115.99) 22.125 ms 22.096 ms 21.058 ms
11 * * *

[lane]

Thanks, George. I'm actually glad to have this verified for the reasons you mentioned, plus that fact that I live in Canada and rather like to buy Canadian when I can.

[tomhab]

OK, I was a little lazy, and didn't even look at infosniper. It appears to use a whois lookup which is nearly useless for these kinds of things.

I tried another service (http://www.iplocation.net) and it comes up with Montreal

[dbowdley]

Going back to the original questions...

ezfig - you can create alternative email addresses as follows (and bear with me I know this is going to sound long winded).

1. Create a new folder and give it a name that relates to the email address you want to use just so you can remember which one it is.
2. Change that folder preferences so the From email address is the one you want to use.
3. You will be asked to verify that email address.
4. Once this is done, you can use that address for any email regardless of the folder it was in.

The reason for creating a folder goes back to an early design feature of Runbox where you could use a folder as an "identity", a kind of alternative inbox for email from a different address (you would use a filter to move incoming email from this different address to the relevant folder). This works very well with the less talked about "POP from folder" feature where you can set-up a POP client to download email from a particular folder in your account rather from the main inbox.

Yes, I feel it needs looking at and we should make this feature simpler, but for the time being the procedure above does work.

Folder Preference: http://doc.runbox.com/twiki/bin/view...lp/Preferences

POP from folder: http://doc.runbox.com/twiki/bin/view/RunboxHelp/POP

I hope that helps.

Dave

[ezfig]

Originally Posted by tomhab

As for ezfig's question, click on the folder, and then select preferences (above the folder list), then uncheck 'Use same preferences as Inbox'. I don't know if it's documented correctly...

Got it; thanks.