What are these 'POP3 Account Usage' email alerts I am receiving?

09 Sep 2010

Support Center » Knowledgebase » What are these 'POP3 Account Usage' email alerts I am receiving?

	What are these 'POP3 Account Usage' email alerts I am receiving?

Solution At Elite we do not set hard limits on your POP3 accounts like other providers. If we did you would lose email that arrived at the POP3 server should you be over that quota. Instead we monitor your usage and send you alerts should your account reach certain thresholds.

These are:

POP3 account spool size reaches 100MB
POP3 account reaches 250MB
POP3 account has not been checked for over 60 days

What is a 'spool'?

When emails are received at the POP3 server they are appended to something similar to a giant text file. This is stored on the server and is what we refer to as the 'spool' or 'spool file'.

Why do you warn me if I reach 100MB?

The reason we do this is because most email clients will struggle to check a spool file of this size. This is further exasperated should there be any client end Anti-Virus/Anti-Spam mechanisms in place. It can lead to server timeouts and could potentially mean you lose mail.

Why do you warn me if I reach 250MB?

This is the size we deem as acceptable for spool usage. In our experience POP3 spools rarely reach this limit, and if they do there is a problem.

Why do you warn me if the account has not been checked for 60 days?

If an account has not been checked for 60 days it is our opinion that the account is probably not being used. Mail will accumulate and be stored on the server and will result in a waste of server resources.

If it is simply the case that you or your client has not been around for 2 months and still need the account then to reset the alert you simply need to log into the webmail system (http://webmail.[yourdomain.co.uk]) and then log out. The system will then see the login and reset the counter.

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23 Jun 2008 10:18 AM