Saving Sent Messages via SMTP

Introduction
Default Approach
Alternative Solution
Generic Instructions
Specific Instructions
Testing
Notes

This article relates to the use of IMAP when accessing a mailbox.

The default settings of all email programs use unnecessary bandwidth and are slower than necessary, when sending email.

This article will help you use a feature of our email platform to noticeably reduce your bandwidth consumption and speed up the sending of messages.

Whether you pay for every byte of bandwidth (data), connect to your mailbox over a slow Internet connection, or even use a fast Internet connection, you will notice an improvement.

Why the duplication?

By default, all email programs do two things when you send a message

• Send the message via SMTP to the recipient.
• Send the same message via IMAP to your Sent folder.

A 3rd step may, or may not occur:

• Possibly synchronise the message in the Sent folder back to your device, depending on how your email program is designed.

The problems with the first 2 steps are:

• 2 copies of the message are sent, using up twice the bandwidth of the message itself.
• 2 separate connections are used, when sending a single message. This is slow and occasionally error-prone. If you send the message, but there's an error in saving the 2nd copy, there's a "paper-trail" error.

Introducing +sent

What if you could send a single message and be done with these shortcomings?

We have built a solution into our platform by making it possible to remove the 2nd connection and 2nd uploading step from the equation.

Instead of your email program copying the sent message to your Sent folder, the SMTP server will do that for you.

For the impatient, technically astute.

To make use of this feature, reconfigure your email program as follows, in this order, to avoid any loss of sent mail.

For popular email programs

Outlook 2016
Thunderbird
Mac Mail
iOS Mail
Android Mail

Always test, to ensure the changes work!

Once the above settings are complete, send yourself a test message.

You will receive the message as the recipient in your Inbox and as the sender in your Sent folder.

This feature allows you to use it if and when you wish, without affecting the configuration on other devices which you may not wish to configure these changes on.

The built-in Mail apps on Apple devices, for example, do not permit you to disable the copying of Sent messages (2nd step above). Instead, choose the option to Save to your iPhone/iPad, but be sure to change your username to include the +sent string in your outgoing (SMTP) settings. This will still ensure that you save on bandwidth, are able to send more quickly and that your other devices receive copies of your sent messages.