Introduction

Cerb5 and Gmail make a great combination:

• Gmail utilizes industry-leading tools for spam-filtering and virus-scanning. This filters out a lot of junk before it pollutes your Cerb5 environment.
• Gmail also provides a live backup of your incoming mail.
• Google is all about search, and searching your Gmail for an obscure piece of text may be quicker than searching in Cerb5. However, Cerb5 provides much more comprehensive search functionality.
• If you have server or network trouble on the machine hosting your Cerb5 instance, you'll still be able to access your incoming mail using Gmail.
• Cerb5 provides enterprise collaboration functionality with powerful tools that don't exist in Gmail.

Setup

• Server: pop.gmail.com
• Port: 995
• Protocol: POP3-SSL
• User: you@gmail.com
• Pass: (your gmail password)

Make sure POP3 is enabled for your Gmail account (Settings->Forwarding & POP3). If you want to import your entire Gmail history, use the 'Enable POP for all mail (even mail that's already been downloaded)' option. Otherwise to just download new email use the 'Enable POP only for mail that arrives from now on' option.

You can set up Cerb5 POP3 accounts in Setup->Mail->POP3 Accounts.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Cerb5 delete messages from my Gmail after mail downloads?

No. Gmail's settings override the POP3 DELETE command. We recommend that you configure Gmail to automatically archive mail that has been downloaded by Cerb5.

Should I use Gmail as my SMTP?

If your server has low latency to Gmail, and you don't have a local SMTP server, then there's no reason not to use Gmail for outgoing mail as well. You may need to authorize your other outgoing addresses through Gmail's settings.

Can I write back to mail using Gmail and Cerb5 interchangeably?

It's possible, but we recommend only using Cerb5 to respond to mail. Gmail's POP3 will also download your sent messages, and it requires special configuration for Cerb5 to properly treat these as worker replies.

Is there a performance penalty for using Gmail rather than a local POP3 mailbox?

The performance penalty of Gmail is very network-dependent. Undoubtedly there will be more latency than with a local mailbox, but at the same time you're outsourcing cycles that would be otherwise be causing a load on your own mail servers. We've observed a few Gmail mailboxes on our On-Demand network that have a latency of 500-1000ms per downloaded message. For a busy environment that can add a significant delay to Cerb5's mail delivery.

We have a Gmail account collecting WebGroup Media's official Cerb5 mail, and we haven't found the delay to be prohibitive.

Do I need to monitor Gmail's anti-spam decisions?

It's a good idea to audit the spam that has been quarantined by Gmail. It's uncommon, but not impossible, that a false-positive will quarantine legitimate mail. Gmail automatically deletes the contents of your spam folder after 30 days.

Potential Problems

We have noticed a couple issues with Google Apps that aren't bugs, per se, but they'll look like it.

• Gmail won't let you send email through their SMTP server as a From: address that isn't authorized to your account. To add more addresses, go to your account settings.
• If your POP3 mailbox is delivered to by a Google Apps mailing list, Autoreplies from Cerb5 will not be sent out. (Per RFC recommendations, we do not sent automated emails in response to things that are labeled as being from a mailing list.)