Step 2: Create on “Create New” to create a new bounce server.
Step 3: Fill the details in the “Create new bounce server section”
- Hostname: The hostname of your IMAP/POP3 server.
- Username: The username of your IMAP/POP3 server, usually something like [email protected].
- Password: The password of your IMAP/POP3 server, used in combination with your username to authenticate your request.
- Email: Only if your login username to this server is not an email address. If left empty, the username will be used.
- Service: The type of your server. (IMAP or POP3)
- Port: The port of your IMAP/POP3 server, usually for IMAP this is 143 and for POP3 it is 110. If you are using SSL, then the port for IMAP is 993 and for POP3 it is 995.
- Protocol: The security protocol used to access this server. If unsure, select NOTLS.
- Validate SSL: When using SSL/TLS, whether to validate the certificate or not.
- Search Charset: Search charset, defaults to UTF-8 but might require to leave empty for some servers or explicitly use US-ASCII.
- Disable Authenticator: If in order to establish the connection you need to disable an authenticator, you can type it here. I.E: GSSAPI.
- Delete all Messages: By default, only messages related to the application are deleted. If this is enabled, all messages from the box will be deleted.
Step 4: Save your changes.
Note: The server settings will be checked when you save the server and the save process will be denied if there are any connection errors.
Also, this is a good chance to see how long it takes from the moment you hit the save button till the moment the changes are saved because this is the same amount of time it will take the script to connect to the server and retrieve the bounced emails.
Some of the servers, like gmail for example, are very slow if you use a hostname(i.e: imap.gmail.com). If that’s the case, then simply instead of the hostname, use the IP address.
You can use a service like hcidata.info to find out the IP address of any hostname.
When adding a bounce server make sure the email address is used only for automated sending and/or reading bounce email but nothing more.
This is important since the script that checks the bounced emails needs to read all the emails from the account you specify and will delete them all after processing.
Important note: some SMTP servers will not allow you to use a different bounce address than the one you use to authenticate. In this case, make sure you use the same account for sending and for bouncing.
