topic Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby in Email

Plusnet email moving to Greenby

pwberry — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:04:51 GMT

Just had an email from PN advising that they're offloading their email to Greenby, with an indicated date of "from 19th May".

A paid service, £15pa - not sure if that's just me and my ilk (metronet accounts), but I'm more than happy to pay this is for the security of a well-managed and supported service - I've lost a lot of hair of late over PN's very wobbly setup.

I'm sincerely hoping this is a good thing? Anyone able to confirm (or dash) my optimism?

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

jab1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:10:47 GMT

Not had mine yet, although I appreciate it may take a while to tell everyone,

@pwberry Are you a PN broadband customer, or, like me an 'email only' account?

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

pwberry — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:19:52 GMT

Email only. I did have Metronet as an ISP once, back in the days of 56k modems etc.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

jab1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:25:55 GMT

Cheers. I'm ex-PN, but guessing they are doing this in stages, so not too bothered - yet.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Baldrick1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 15:39:21 GMT

https://www.plus.net/help/email-account-changes/

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

MisterW — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:08:00 GMT

@pwberry

Anyone able to confirm (or dash) my optimism?

Greenby is part of the Enix group https://enixltd.com/ they are email and hosting specialists

I've used one of their brands, Ecohosting, in the past and their service and support was excellent.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

jab1 — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:18:19 GMT

A little concern - clicking the 'Greenby' link in the enixltd.com home page produces an 'invalid certificate' notice - in Firefox, anyway.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

bmc — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 16:21:31 GMT

@Baldrick1

Thanks for the link.

At least they are not closing down PN email addresses so I'm happy for now.

All current PN broadband users get two years free of charge. Any of the older email accounts apepar to be chargeable immediately.

Brian

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 22:52:38 GMT

This will be phased across the email brands, so there’s no panic if you’ve not received personal advice “yet” of your opportunity to migrate.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 23:35:38 GMT

A bigly 'opportunity'.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

BruceArden — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:04:49 GMT

I use a metronet email address. I'm hoping that this means I can use STARTTLS (not very happy transmitting my password in cleartext). But there is nothing in the FAQs.

Is this anything to do with the recent change to handling email by "enmail.co"?

BTW has anyone else experienced a sudden increase in junk mail recently.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:07:24 GMT

Yes that is preparation for migration the addition of a proxy server for managing connections to the mail servers.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

BruceArden — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 09:52:55 GMT

@jab1 Yes I noticed that too, www.greenby.com has a self-signed certificate. And when I did accept the risk, it didn't work anyway. greenby.com does appear to work tho.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

tobiz — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:14:58 GMT

With the moving of the Plusnet email service to Greenby does that:

Include metronet email addresses and mail boxes (the notification is not clear on this point but suggests it to be so) ;
Mean the setup for email clients sending and receiving remains the same;
Mean I can retain my metronet email address but not have to use Plusnet as my ISP (which is contrary to the current conditions);
As a long standing Plusnet user user how long will I get a free email service with Greenby, 30 days or 2 years (the notification says 30 days but elsewhere it suggests 2 years)

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 15:21:41 GMT

It means all brands in phases - some brands are missing - I have escalated that
Yes there should be zero make to make changes ... other than for some brands to switch to using the email address as the userID (which works for all brands)
AFTER migration current Plusnet customers can move their broadband service to another supplier leaving their email service intact
Mail users who are CURRENT Plusnet broadband customers at the time of migration will receive the service for free for 2 years; those who are not broadband customers (legacy free email service users) will get 30 days free

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

dave — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:18:52 GMT

@BruceArden short answer - yes, I think there is now a way of using STARTTLS for a Metronet email address. I've just tested this on my test account in Thunderbird and IMAP and it worked. @Townman is working on some testing tools and I've just borrowed his commands:

curl -v imaps://mail.free-online.net -u 'username@metronet.co.uk:password'

And the output confirms it works OK:

<snip>

< A002 OK LOGIN Ok.
> A003 LIST "" *
< * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Sent Messages"
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Sent Messages"
< * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Spam"
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Spam"
< * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Drafts"
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Drafts"
< * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Trash"
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Trash"
< * LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Sent"
* LIST (\HasNoChildren) "." "INBOX.Sent"
< * LIST (\Marked \HasChildren) "." "INBOX"
* LIST (\Marked \HasChildren) "." "INBOX"
< A003 OK LIST completed

curl -v pop3s://mail.free-online.net -u 'username@metronet.co.uk:password' works on POP3 too.

Longer answer - you will need to change some settings in your mail client to make it work. The Metronet mail server addresses don't have an SSL certificate and aren't configured for STARTTLS so they won't work, however the Free-Online addresses are set up and they point at the exact same platform, the full email address though is crucial in the settings otherwise it will think you're a Free-Online customer.

This is what I set up in Thunderbird:

IMAP/POP3 - IMAP

Incoming mail server: mail.free-online.net

Port: 993

Username: full Metronet email address e.g. username@metronet.co.uk

Password: normal password

Connection security: STARTTLS

Authentication method: Normal password

Outgoing mail server: relay.free-online.net

Port: 587

Username: full Metronet email address e.g. username@metronet.co.uk

Password: normal password

Connection security: STARTTLS

Authentication method: Normal password

I've not tested that this still works once the mail has been migrated across to Greenby as reading your post it only just dawned on me it might work (I've added it to the test plan) so if you try it please please note that if it stops working you might need to switch the settings back over to what they are today (probably worth taking a screenshot before you change or just try it out on a different client).

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 16:37:24 GMT

Warning - the single quotes break the functionality if run in a DOS prompt. Next version will drop the quotes.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Apr 2025 23:14:12 GMT

What if the customer has a current broadband product *and* a legacy free email service?

(This scenario is not an impossibility. I have been in that scenario.)

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:03:45 GMT

@dave wrote:

This is what I set up in Thunderbird:

IMAP/POP3 - IMAP

Incoming mail server: mail.free-online.net

Port: 993

Username: full Metronet email address e.g. username@metronet.co.uk

Password: normal password

Connection security: STARTTLS

Authentication method: Normal password

@dave

For the avoidance of doubt should that be TLS/SSL on an inbound server or will STARTTLS indeed work?

Also in a Windows environment, it needs to be...

curl.exe -v pop3s://mail.free-online.net -u 'username@metronet.co.uk:password'

Full soup to nuts on this should be available by the weekend.

Re: Plusnet email moving to Greenby

Townman — Thu, 17 Apr 2025 00:05:46 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

4.

What if the customer has a current broadband product *and* a legacy free email service?

(This scenario is not an impossibility. I have been in that scenario.)

Has a current [Plusnet] broadband product = Is a Plusnet customer...