Changes to Email Services

Atlas' Hosted Email services are changing. We are long overdue an upgrade and have been working hard to build a new and modern email service for our customers. That time is finally here!

Anonymous SMTP Relay

Like many other email providers, changes in cybersecurity mean that we can no longer offer anonymous SMTP relay services (outbound email with no authentication). This means that anyone wishing to send email through our mail servers will require a domain name hosted with us, with email accounts that can be used to authenticate outbound email.

For customers that have been availing of this server but do not host a domain name with us, you are recommended to change to using your email providers outbound email services.

Send As Other

Another change we have to make relating to cybersecurity is that the account you authenticate as will be the only account you can send email from. Previously if you logged in as john.doe@example.org, you would also be able to send emails as if from sales@example.org. From now on, john.doe@example.org will only be able to send as john.doe@example.org.

Webmail

Webmail will continue to be offered at the existing address (webmail.atlasisp.net), but will no longer have a contact directory. Customers that have been using this function at the old servers should download their important contacts before the shut off date.

Encryption

The new servers are fully enabled for SSL/TLS encryption. This means that all communication between your computer or phone and our servers will have the choice to be fully secure and protected, and where possible that encryption will be retained when delivering your emails to their destination.

If your email client is using a server address other than mail.atlasisp.net or mail.ispmail.uk, you may receive an SSL certificate error. Please update the server address in your email client to avoid this.

Authenticating your emails

If you're sending emails to customers, the last thing you want is for your own emails to get sent to their spam folder. From now on, when you send email through Atlas' servers we will apply SPF, DKIM and DMARC.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC are newer anti-spam technologies that attempt to prevent spammers from faking your email address as a sender. Once enabled, these technologies allow recipients to verify that emails are being received from a legitimate source.

For customers that are managed and hosted with us, we will automatically set up the necessary DNS records. For customers that manage and or host their own DNS records, some new records will need to be added to your domain (see the section on Self Managed DNS below).

Microsoft has announced that from the 5th of May onwards, domains that do not have SPF, DKIM and DMARC enabled will be rejected.

Settings and Addresses to know

Below is a list of settings and important addresses relevant to use of Atlas Hosted Email services that you may need. Note that authentication of a valid email address is required for all services.

Please note that for email services that use SSL/TLS, you will need to ensure that your client software supports TLS 1.2 or higher. The following programs are known to support TLS 1.2:

• Microsoft Outlook 2016 (if all Windows and Office updates are applied)
• Microsoft Outlook 2019 onwards
• Mozilla Thunderbird 52.0 onwards
• Android 5.0 onwards
• Apple MacOS Sierra 10.12.6 onwards
• Apple iOS 9 onwards

Self-managed DNS

For customers that manage their own DNS records:

SPF

For SPF, if you have an existing record please add "include:spf.atlasisp.net" to your existing record, or if not create a new record as below.

example.org    TXT    "v=spf1 include:spf.atlasisp.net ~all"

DKIM

For DKIM, add the following CNAME record to your domain. If your domain was 'example.org', you would add:

atlasisp1._domainkey.example.org    CNAME    atlasisp1._domainkey.atlasisp.net