Mac users carrying laptops backwards and forwards from home to work or cafes or travelling overseas know only too well the frustration of finding an outgoing mailserver that works. Or just the hassle of fiddling around in their settings to get the right one for each place.

Three solutions to this problem can save time and headaches.

A. Using Gmail’s alias and SMTP server

Melvin Rivera has written a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots which solves this problem by using Gmail’s SMTP server and Gmail’s alias option.

He also shows you how to add the Gmail SMTP server to Mail.app’s settings.

This is a great solution if you only want to send email from one account (i.e. one alias) and the place you are in doesn’t block traffic on port 587.

B. Be your own mail server

Another way around this is to be your own SMTP server. You can easily do this on a Mac laptop by using the built-in postfix SMTP server. Dan Kogai offers instructions for doing this manually through the command line.

If the command line is not your thing, two utlities can take some of the pain out of the process.

RapidoSMTP (freeware) has just been updated. The new version (available here ) is more reliable and allows you to define the port number you want to use:

Postfix Enabler is shareware but offers many more options.

C. Quick switching between home and work servers

Unfortunately my life doesn’t involve sending emails while drinking lattés in endless cafes. I just shuttle between work and home. My work is too ferocious for Melvin’s work-around above, so I need two mail servers and I need to switch them for all my email accounts twice a day.

To do this, I use Andreas Amann’s “Change SMTP servers” script, part of his excellent Mail Scripts collection.

A Quicksilver trigger launches it and the switch is done almost before I notice it. It’s the quickest way I know to do this otherwise time-consuming task.email, roadwarrior, smtp servers, mail.app, apple mail, tips, applescript, gmail, postfix, productivity

Late last year, I posted about Richard Valk’s “ISP in a box” project, which offered instructions for setting up a mail, web and more server on a Mac mini (or any Mac) at home.

Richard has now released “ISP in a box” 2.0, a series of blog posts with instructions and links to binaries that allow you to be your own ISP:

If you follow these documented steps you’ll end up with a Mac which you can use to host your and your friends’ websites by using an Apache2-based webserver which uses PHP 5 and can talk to a MySQL 5 database. This means you can install most PHP/MySQL based applications like for instance blogs or forums like WordPress and phpbb. You are also able to provide mail services for them with unlimited mailboxes, domains and web-based email services using Roundcube.

The end result is a system running Apache 2.2.3, MySQL 5.0.24, PHP 5.1.4, Postfix 2.3.2, Courier-IMAP 4.1.1, Courier-Auth 0.58, Cyrus-Sasl 2.1.18, Postfix admin 2.1.0 and Roundcube webmail 0.1 beta2.

Sounds like your kind of thing? Check it out .email in general, web hosting, php, dot it yourself, DIY, mail server, MySQL, Postfix, roundcube

Postfix Enabler is a graphic front-end to built-in services in Mac OS X that helps you to set up your computer to be its own mail server, that is to run its own SMTP, POP3 and IMAP services, with or without SSL support.

It also provides SSL test certs so that you can test the SSL connection. Going the other way, it offers an option to turn on SMTP-AUTH on the server, so that you can authorise remote users who need to send mail through it.

Plus, mobile users can use it to set up a roving SMTP server so that they can send mail wherever they are, whenever they want, so long as they have an Internet connection.

Version 1.2 has just been released which packages the app as a universal binary.

PostFix Enabler costs USD 9.99 and is available from the developer’s website .mail server, postfix, SMTP, IMAP, ssl, pop, universal binary

Nick Gerakines has had a gutful of Mail.app.

“I’ve become sick and tired of Mail.app crashing and failing”, he writes.

So he is returning to an old favourite and he is liking what he sees after a few years away with other email clients:

I’ve used everything from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.app, Evolution, Thunderbird, Entourage and even Squirrelmail. None of them, however, compare to the simplicity and security that I have with mutt.

He outlines how he has set up mutt to run on his Mac, and how it co-operates with fetchmail, procmail and postfix to deliver just the email experience that he likes.

He promises to post more detailed howtos soon.mutt, procmail, fetchmail, postfix, mail.app, apple mail, even Squirrelmail, tips