Why isn't there an imap aws service?

S

3

6

I'm just looking into Amazons Web Services and I've used Elastic Beanstalk to set up a Ruby web app. It all works great but with one big exception. I cannot have user email accounts for the domain and cannot have incoming emails.

Is there a technical reason why this is the case (no incoming mail service), or am I missing something? I'm reading a lot about using Gmail or installing postfix manually, are these the only options, and if so why?

Spickandspan answered 13/12, 2013 at 18:55 Comment(3)

You want to send emails? Or you mean you want all your users to have that domain? – Exclamation 13/12, 2013 at 18:58

I want to set up a web app: www.example.com and I would like the users of that domain to have email accounts on a mail server i.e [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] ... and so on. These users would need to send and receive email. I see that the SES service allows me to set up SMTP but no IMAP. Is there a reason why this is the case, or am I being an idiot?! – Spickandspan 13/12, 2013 at 19:32

As far as I have been able to figure this out, SES is a transactional email service, so I guess you may not be able to use this for "regular" email. – Tarim 3/3, 2015 at 4:22

A

3

You can have user emails on the domain in one of two ways. If you want to keep it at aws, spinup an ec2 instance and run the mail server of your choice, or else just use a third party mail host/provider (like gmail, or rackspace email which I use) and just point your mx records to those external mail servers.

I also wish that AWS offered mail hosting (and domain registrations), but its not hard to just parcel out the small pieces of your solution.

Axel answered 13/12, 2013 at 19:32 Comment(6)

Ok thanks, how permanent is a given ES2 instance? If I do install my own mail server on an EC2 instance and wish to scale the application (up and more importantly, down), will that have an affect. Or is it just safer to use a third party and point my MX records as you suggest? – Spickandspan 13/12, 2013 at 19:47

Rackspace email is rock-solid, and you just sign-up/set it up and forget about it. If you want to run your own email server you can, but my feeling is that its hard to be good at everything, so pick where you want to spend your time. An EC2 instance for all intents-and-purposes is 'permanent' as long as you keep paying for it. But just like a piece of your own hardware, you need to have a backup and disaster recovery procedures in place because things can go wrong. If you'd rather not worry about that, just outsource it all and pay someone else to worry about it. – Axel 13/12, 2013 at 20:1

Thank you for clearing that up for me, I think I'll go with Google or Rackspace. Seems odd that amazon don't offer this since aws seems pretty fully featured in all other areas. – Spickandspan 13/12, 2013 at 20:11

I asked Google if I could just point my MX record to imap.gmail.com and they said, no, I had to redirect ALL my server traffic to them, which included our Web app. That was a show-stopper for us. – Conjunctivitis 4/5, 2015 at 13:39

@FractalBob: Surely you can pay for Gmail for Work and get it working without redirecting web traffic to them? – Mister 10/2, 2016 at 16:19

They also offer Domain registration and hosting via Route53 aws.amazon.com/route53 – Sapp 23/6, 2016 at 21:45

S

4

Amazon offers this service now, it's called WorkMail: https://aws.amazon.com/workmail/

Sapp answered 23/6, 2016 at 21:45 Comment(3)

WorkMail has no IMAP support though (as of July 2016), so you are limited to e-mail clients that support the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocol. Since the OP is after IMAP support (like me, so I can use my IMAP-only Linux mail client), WorkMail is unfortunately not an option. It would otherwise be perfect though. – Laise 3/7, 2016 at 1:1

FWIW: It is supported as of December 2016. See official announcement – Sapp 27/12, 2017 at 21:27

It supports IMAP now. – Saloma 2/4, 2018 at 12:9

A

3

You can have user emails on the domain in one of two ways. If you want to keep it at aws, spinup an ec2 instance and run the mail server of your choice, or else just use a third party mail host/provider (like gmail, or rackspace email which I use) and just point your mx records to those external mail servers.

I also wish that AWS offered mail hosting (and domain registrations), but its not hard to just parcel out the small pieces of your solution.

Axel answered 13/12, 2013 at 19:32 Comment(6)

Ok thanks, how permanent is a given ES2 instance? If I do install my own mail server on an EC2 instance and wish to scale the application (up and more importantly, down), will that have an affect. Or is it just safer to use a third party and point my MX records as you suggest? – Spickandspan 13/12, 2013 at 19:47

Rackspace email is rock-solid, and you just sign-up/set it up and forget about it. If you want to run your own email server you can, but my feeling is that its hard to be good at everything, so pick where you want to spend your time. An EC2 instance for all intents-and-purposes is 'permanent' as long as you keep paying for it. But just like a piece of your own hardware, you need to have a backup and disaster recovery procedures in place because things can go wrong. If you'd rather not worry about that, just outsource it all and pay someone else to worry about it. – Axel 13/12, 2013 at 20:1

Thank you for clearing that up for me, I think I'll go with Google or Rackspace. Seems odd that amazon don't offer this since aws seems pretty fully featured in all other areas. – Spickandspan 13/12, 2013 at 20:11

I asked Google if I could just point my MX record to imap.gmail.com and they said, no, I had to redirect ALL my server traffic to them, which included our Web app. That was a show-stopper for us. – Conjunctivitis 4/5, 2015 at 13:39

@FractalBob: Surely you can pay for Gmail for Work and get it working without redirecting web traffic to them? – Mister 10/2, 2016 at 16:19

They also offer Domain registration and hosting via Route53 aws.amazon.com/route53 – Sapp 23/6, 2016 at 21:45

C

0

You can use ses nowadays for inbound programmatic email, and read it from a sqs queue, this is advisable for higher then normal mailbox usage profiles.

Else soon you can use WorkMail's new imap service which was announced beta preview at 2016 re:invent.

Charleencharlemagne answered 11/12, 2016 at 11:3 Comment(1)

You can also send inbound email to S3 and then poke it into an IMAP client's maildir albeit in batch. It could also go through SNS. The S3 store is as good as .eml. Longhand you would download then and import to an IMAP inbox in Evolution say. – Mvd 10/12, 2021 at 9:3

Recommended topics

Hot tags