Email submission
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Understanding submission services
The mail submission service lets you send mail from your mail client ("MUA", mail user agent). It is commonly used in conjunction with POP/IMAP, services that allow you to retrieve or view mail from a server-side mailbox.
When adding POP3/IMAP mailboxes in a mail client, you are often asked by the software what server to use for the outgoing email (the submission server). Contrary to popular belief, the mail submission service that you have to use typically isn't provided by the provider of the POP3/IMAP service. Instead, the POP3/IMAP server to use depends on the computer network that you are connected to. The primary reason for this is to prevent spamming.
Some examples: if you are a Chello customer, and want to send a mail while you are connected to the internet from a Chello-connected system, you have to use the Chello submission server (mail.chello.nl). If you are on the TU/e university network (or use TU/e VPN), you should use mailhost.tue.nl, the TU/e submission server, or mailhost.stack.nl, the Stack submission server.
Authenticated submission services
However, this can be very inconvenient for portable systems such as laptops. To avoid the nuisance of having to reconfigure your mail client to use a different service depending on your location, there are also mail submission services that do not provide or deny access based on the network that you are connected to, but use password based authentication instead. Stack too provides such a service for its members, connected associations, and virtual POP account users (see popservice for more information on the POP/IMAP services).
Stack authenticated mail submission service
To use the Stack authenticated mail submission service, select mailhost.stack.nl and use port 2525 instead of the normal port (25). Then provide the same login username and password that you use for the POP/IMAP services. It is highly recommended that you encrypt this session with TLS so that your password is not sent in plain text over the line. Unencrypted service is not recommended but still provided, since some clients (especially PDA/telephone clients) cannot use encryption. Also, instead of port 2525, it is possible to use the default port, but this is not recommended because many internet service providers (ISPs) block outgoing connections to this port number.
Note that you can use the Stack authenticated mail submission service for any connection. There does not need to be a relation to Stack mailboxes or email addresses for this to work.
Further help
For further help configuring your mail software, or questions about the services provided, please contact the Stack helpdesk.
