I had to solve a problem last month for an old UK client of mine. In 2005 I installed MS Small Business Server 2003 with Exchange Server & set up the MS provided POP3 Connector for retrieving mail from several accounts.
Until last month this functioned perfectly and so I was surprised by the call and from the conversation initially suspected that the exchange server database was corrupted (this had happened before).
When I investigated further I found that this was not the case so a bit perplexed. After several conversations with their person nearest to being their on-site IT support I received a forwarded email from BT Broadband stating that they had upgraded all their business accounts onto a new platform and that they should be contacted if there were any problems. I asked for further details of the upgrade and finally as an aside to the other info about new server address, ports, etc. was informed that retrieval was now through Secure Socket Layer (SSL). Drat! A quick search of Google proved that the MS POP3 Connector was insufficient to the task.
Several hours of Goggling (not a spelling mistake) my eyes were going square after looking through review after review of alternative exchange server add-ins able to accomplish the task.
Eventually I found that:
1. A paid for product was the only ‘safe’ way to go.
2. One which would allow for a trial run ought to be used.
3. It had to tick at least all the same boxes of the now defunct connector with the addition of SSL capability.
4. The price shouldn’t break the bank or be an on-going cost.
In the end POPBeamer was the only performer which I felt confident would be up to the task.
It allowed a 30day trial with no restrictions, the cost is one-off approx £175.
Installation was relatively easy (except for some slight confusion as usual with acronyms – why the hell can’t people spell things out these days?).
So in conclusion it’s worth trying POPBeamer if a similar situation arises with your Exchange Server.
An addition to this post is now due as my client started experiencing random problems both sending and retrieving mail from BT around 6th January 2013. Things have now come to a head as of Saturday 9th March 2013. As of that date they are unable to send any mail through BT connect mail server as it appears that they have now fully migrated their system to the office 365 platform run by Microsoft and in researching the problem eventually stumbled upon this document [Microsoft_Office_365_Service_Description.pdf] which appears to say that it will not work with Windows 2003 server. Good old BT! They gave no warning that they were blocking port 25 on their server and exchange server won’t connect to smtp.outlook.com, well it does but it won’t authenticate correctly so the mail gets bounced back. Trying gmail + aliases. Get your act together BT and stop alienating your clients!