Designed to allow webmasters who do not have any dedicated server or using shared web-hosting services to provide web based email service.

SocketMail Lite support multi-domain 'alias', that enable you to provide service like Mail.com. From one single web site, users can signup for domain name of their choice and later login to the domain that they have signed up for.

As of version 2.2.8, SocketMail Lite comes with POP3/SMTP server. You may offer accounts to send and receive emails via their favourite email client such as Outlook. The POP3/SMTP server can be turned on/off from the admin page (unless your php is on safe-mode, then you need to do it manually). Do not require any root access. Simple and easy to run.

Fetchmail Mechanism

Fetchmail mechanism here refer to the mechanics and method how SocketMail receives incoming mails.

SocketMail Lite in general, have three (3) types of 'fetchmail' mechanism i.e. the method how mails are received by SocketMail Lite and distributed to SocketMail Lite user mailboxes.

• Normal mechanism :
  This is the default method. Using this method require you to establish a catch-all email account for your domain/website. Normally the default e-mail account is the catch-all account, please refer to your webhosting for clarification. Using this method, SocketMail Lite will only scan the catch-all mailbox (via POP3) and distribute the mail to the user mailbox when the user logs in or active in the webmail (SocketMail Lite).
   
• Crontab/Cron-job based mechanism :
  Firstly, to use this method, you will need to be able to run cron-job or schedule job on your webhosting account. Please check with your webhosting provider for clarification. Using this method require you to establish a catch-all email account for your domain/website. Normally the default e-mail account is the catch-all account, please refer to your webhosting for clarification. Using this method, at a pre-defined interval time, SocketMail Lite will scan all mails in the catch-all mailbox (via POP3) and distribute the mails to relevant user mailboxes in SocketMail.
   
• Pipe mechanism :
  With this mechanism, all mails received by your catch-all mail account will be piped to SocketMail script for processing i.e. all incoming mails will be distributed to the user mailboxes as and when it received by the SMTP server. Therefore, its almost in real-time. To be able to establish this mechanism, your webhosting control panel should be able to allow the mail to be 'pipe' to SocketMail script. We have instruction on how this can be done using cPanel 9.x.
   

Storage

You may decide to store e-mails for user mailboxes either in MySQL database or in filesystem (i.e. each e-mail messages will be stored in a special folder. This is useful when your MySQL database are not configured to receive large chunk of data (like 2MB) and you can't change the MySQL configuration as you are on a shared hosting server, therefore you may want to opt to storing mail messages in filesystem rather than MySQL database (default).

Outgoing Mail

In SocketMail Lite, for each domain, you may define the way mail will be sent out from the webmail. The available methods are :

• Direct sockets connection :
  This is the default method. Whenever user send email, the script will try to connect to each recipient mail server and send them directly to the recipient's SMTP server. This require your PHP to support sockets function.
   
• PHP Mail() function :
  Using this method, mails will be sent out from the webmail using the internal mail() function within PHP. The mail() function will use the default MTA (mail transfer agent) in your webhosting server to send the mail out. This may be your choice if somehow, the PHP setup in your server do not support sockets function.
   
• SMTP server :
  With this method, for each outgoing mail will be send through a pre-defined SMTP server. That SMTP server will act as a relay and send the mail out to the relevant recipient mail server.
   

Multi-domain Aliasing

With multi-domain aliasing, you can offer unlimited domains to your user to sign-up and login. The URL that they need to go to read their mail is where you have installed SocketMail Lite.

On the login page, if more than one (1) domain defined, there will be a drop-down list of domains for user to select which their login ID belongs to. During sign-up, if more than one domain defined, user will be presented with a drop-down list of domains to select to match the desirable login ID.

For each domain defined in SocketMail Lite, you need to the define the catch-all account information. Each domain must have a valid catch-all account (and POP3 server so that SocketMail Lite can retrieve). Therefore, you can't use a parked domain name unless it has a valid catch-all account or all the parked domain mails can be redirected to a valid catch-all mailbox.

User login ID within each domain are unique. What this mean is that, you can have user1@domainX.tld and user1@domainY.tld. Both are two unique and separate account. So, if a user has registered user1@domainX.tld, someone else can register as user1@domainY.tld.

Licensing

Based on per-installation instance. One (1) installation instance per license. One installation may run multiple domains. Shall you need to install Socketmail Lite on more than one installed folder, you need to get additional licenses.

Click here to read the License Agreement.

Copyright Removal License also available as an additional license after you have bought the base license. This license will grant you the right to remove or change the copyright notices within the codes and template.