Client Recommendations and Connecting To Them
For Linux/Windows desktop email clients, we recommend Thunderbird with Enigmail or aerc. They're both open source but fit different situations; if you want a GUI and/or security is your main concern, use Thunderbird and encrypt all of your emails with your GPG key. If you're looking for a console client and encryption isn't as important but you do a lot of work with Git, aerc might be the better option.
For mobile clients on Android, the only one we can really recommend is K-9 Mail. It's open source, has a number of nice privacy features, and is available in F-Droid as well as Google Play. If possible, we recommend using the latest beta build from F-Droid.
We don't know much about iOS or macOS but we've heard that Apple Mail is really the best choice.
Connecting to NixNet Mail¶
Regardless which email client you use, you'll need to know the following information.
- Incoming
- Username:
user@example.com - Hostname:
imap.nixnet.email - Protocol: IMAP
- Port:
143 - Encryption: STARTTLS
- Authentication: Normal password
- Username:
- Outgoing
- Username:
user@example.com - Hostname:
smtp.nixnet.email - Protocol: SMTP
- Port:
587 - Encryption: STARTTLS
- Authentication: Normal password
- Username:
Solution to handshake issues
If you're getting an error related to an "unsuccessful handshake", try
switching to implicit TLS in the incoming section; change the port
to 993 and encryption to either SSL or TLS. Technically, SSL
is no longer in use and has been superseded by TLS but many
applications still call it SSL.
Alternatively, if you would like to download your emails and delete them from the server, you can also use the POP3 protocol:
- Username:
user@example.com - Hostname:
pop.nixnet.email - Protocol: POP
- Port:
995 - Encryption: STARTTLS
- Authentication: Normal password