Email on your iPhone, iPad – be rid of your ISP’s terrible service

iPhone Email Woes (or iPad)

Update June 5, 2014: While Eastlink has since resolved these issues by supported authenticated SMTP and SSL, BellAliant has only added the former. You still cannot connect to a BellAliant email server with a fully secured connection, meaning 3rd parties can still intercept your passwords. But at least they’ve fixed iPhone email and iPad email access.

Just about every day I get a question that should have a nice and simple answer: “Can you set up my email address on my iPad?” It should be a simple, “Yes! Of course I can.” In actual fact, things are considerably more complex than that. Since most people still only use one device for email access – their desktop or laptop at home – their iPad or iPhone becomes the first device they have ever tried to access their email on outside of their primary computer. What changes so dramatically when using an iPhone or iPad (or any other smartphone or tablet for that matter) that makes email access more difficult? Location.

Location Messes with ISP Email Services

If you’ve got a Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or pretty much any other webmail service, then this doesn’t apply to you, simply because these guys all recognized the need to support iPad and iPhone devices and acted on it long ago. But a large number of people buying these devices are still using email addresses like @eastlink.ca or @accesswave.com or @ns.sympatico.ca or @aliant.net (and the list goes on). Although you can receive email from anywhere while using one of these addresses, these ISPs assume you will be accessing your email from home while connected to their internet service. As a result of this assumption, they all use SMTP (or outgoing/sending email) servers that do not require authentication and, sadly, they only work while you’re connected to their internet service.

If you head out to Starbucks, or try to connect while at the Airport or pretty much while travelling anywhere, you’re out of luck! You can no longer send emails. Not only that, but because they only offer POP email service for incoming email, if you read an email on your computer at home, then continue your email tasks while on the go on your iPad, there is no synchronization – your iPhone email will still appear as unread on your tablet or smartphone! That lack of synchronization is flat-out frustrating and can be enough to make you not want to use email on your phone or tablet, despite it being the perfect platform for email.

Why your hosted email with Websavers is not affected by this

Let’s first tackle the synchronization issue. Although we allow POP connections to our mail servers, we also have full synchronization support with the aid of the IMAP protocol. You get access to all the same email you have at home and in webmail on your iPhone, iPad or other tablet or smartphone! When you read an email on one device, it’s read on another. When you delete the email on one, it’s gone from the other. So far so good.

And guess what? You can send email from anywhere too! We make use of an alternative configuration for sending email (Port 587 with SSL) such that not only is your smartphone or tablet capable of sending email from anywhere, it also has the ability to do so completely securely by wrapping the entire connection in a TLS encryption layer.

Forget about using your Eastlink, BellAliant, or other ISP for iPhone email, simply set up your email accounts in our Plesk control panel and you’re ready to go. If you don’t already have an account with us, all of our hosting accounts come with full support for iPad, iPhone and other tablets and smartphones. Check out our shared hosting plans to get started or our Canadian virtual servers for top-notch email security.

Once your hosting is all set up and your email accounts created in Plesk, simply follow one of our many guides to get your new Websavers email hosting set up on all of your devices. Ready for iPhone email or iPad email that works?

Questions? Comments? Leave ’em below!