Mailkeep Help Desk

Table of Contents

Opening An Account
Directing My Mail To Mailkeep
Collecting From Mailkeep
Mailtraq Users

Opening An Account

Opening an account with Mailkeep is free. When you sign up for your free account you will have 30 days of complete service.

1. Simply click on Signup and fill out the short form.  You will be emailed your password (to confirm your email address) and you will then be able to use your new account.

2. You will need to add a new domain, allowing Mailkeep to manage incoming mail addressed to it.

3. Now you can now instruct your Domain Name Server to point to Mailkeep as the MX host for your domain.

   If you do not know how to do this, contact the organization that hosts your domain name.

Once your Domain Name Server has been updated (this will often take around 24 hours) mail going to your domain will go to Mailkeep.

Directing My Mail To Mailkeep

After you have a Mailkeep account you will need to update your DNS settings so that everybody will know where to send their e-mail.  You can use Mailkeep as your primary mail server or as a backup server.

Simply instruct your DNS host to change the MX records appropriately.  Your domain can have any number of MX records and mail is sent first to the lowest numbered record.  The address to put in your MX record is smtp.mailkeep.net.

Collecting From Mailkeep

After your mail is being directed to Mailkeep you will want to collect it on your computer.

X provides a number of collection options, and your choice will depend on what software you have and what you want to do with your email.  If you expect to receive mail for multiple users you will either want each user to collect their mail separately, or you will want all the mail to be sent to your company's email server.

Having each user collect their own mail from Mailkeep

Each user should configure their mail clients as follows :-

Collect From POP3 Server: pop3.mailkeep.net
Username: [email@address]
Password: [your Mailkeep password]

[email@address] must be at one of the domains hosted in your account.

This option is simplest, but it has a number of disadvantages: each user can only collect mail for a single email address, and it is not possible to have mailing lists or role accounts (such as sales@yourcompany.com).

The ideal solution is to have your mail forwarded to your own mail server, giving you complete control.

Forwarding to your Mail Server

Mailkeep supports delivery by ETRN, ODMR and direct SMTP delivery. Direct SMTP delivery is ideal as mail is sent to you as soon as we receive it, so you don't have to regularly check for new mail. However, you will still need to use ETRN or ODMR to authenticate so these will be explained below :-

ETRN is a method for triggering delivery of mail waiting in your account.  Check your mail server's documentation for how to configure ETRN.  What is very important is that when you send the ETRN command, you add a parameter in the form account;password (where account is your Mailkeep account number).  Note the single semicolon separating them.  If mail is waiting it will be sent to the machine that sent the ETRN signal.

The ETRN signal should be sent to smtp.mailkeep.net.

ODMR (On Demand Mail Relay) is a much better solution (if your mail server supports it) as it will not be trapped by any firewalls and is more secure.  Simply configure your ODMR client to send your Mailkeep account number and password to smtp.mailkeep.net.

The two methods above should be used frequently to poll for mail.  If you wish to enable the Direct SMTP method, then you should still use them but only when your IP address changes, or when you connect to the Internet.  As a fail safe you could use them once a day to ensure our record of your IP address is kept up to date.

Note: if you choose the Direct SMTP delivery method, you must specify a keyword.  A keyword is a piece of text that must be displayed by your mail server in its welcome banner.  Typically this keyword is your mail server's primary domain name.  If Mailkeep cannot see this when beginning mail delivery, it will abort.  This might happen when your IP address is re-assigned to another user (we wouldn't want to send your mail to somebody else).

Once you have chosen the collection methods you wish to use, you can click on the Configure Access Methods option in your account management center and check the appropriate options. 

Mailtraq Users

If you are using Mailtraq then collecting mail is very simple.  Just follow these steps :-

1. Go to Options | Reverse SMTP

2. Click on Add and select ODMR

3. In Server, enter smtp.mailkeep.net

4. in Account, enter your Mailkeep account number

5. In Password, enter your account password

Check the Initiate every X minutes checkbox (10 is suitable if you aren't using Direct SMTP)

If you wish to use Direct SMTP delivery then change the Initiate every X minutes to 60.  You must also go to Configure Access Methods in Mailkeep and set your Keyword to your Domain Name (the one specified in Mailtraq in Options | Server...).