Question for my #email nerd friends.

[jsbilsbrough@mastodon.me.uk]

Question for my #email nerd friends.

I'm writing an update to a guide on mail rules and forwarding. Is it generally true that for true automated rules they need to be setup server side?

Do modern email clients (e.g. Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple mail) sync their rules back to the mail server, or are they just local and so require the mail app to be open?

I'm suspecting it's better to do server side, so through the web interface for the provider.

Boosts appreciated, all comments valid.

[jasaz@mindly.social]

@jsbilsbrough This is a big question with a lot of caveats. I'll say "it depends" on the client software and the server software. In the olden days, email rules would on the client but only if the client was running. So if you shut the machine off, no forwarding would happen. When it did forward, the forwarding would look like the user clicked the forward button and the header (hidden nkrmally) would reflect this.

The server should never be off (or at least, balanced with other servers to handle mail as quickly as possible) so on-server forwarding is the quickest with the fewest moving parts.

MANY email clients now will add their rules to an always online version of themselves, AKA "cloud," so the on-client limitations have become a thing of the past. Think about an automatic out-of-office response. If this functions while your laptop is off, then the rule is running on the server side. It's very likely that email rules will also function in server side.

But there are so many caveats, I don't want to over simplify. My suggestion is that if something has to work every time, configure it as an SMTP forward by a server admin.

For what it's worth, this is getting more complicated if you plan to forward outside of your domain.

Long-winded but there are so many variables. Hopefully this helps.