Documentation

POP3 Checks

About POP3 Checks

POP stands for "Post Office Protocol," and refers to one of the two most popular methods of email retrieval, the other being IMAP. POP3 services are supported by nearly all email clients.

When to use POP3 Checks

POP monitoring is an important part of an overall email availability monitoring strategy. The checks can not only verify that your server is providing POP email retrieval properly but that user logins and your SSL/TLS certificates are also functioning properly.

Using POP3 Checks

To set up a POP check,

Select POP3 from the Check type drop down.
Give it a friendly label to identify this check in lists and notifications.
Enable Automated Diagnostics if you'd like detailed technical info about the failure that may help you troubleshoot a failure.
Set how often you want the check to run on the Check Frequency field. Generally every 5 minutes is sufficient but you can set this to as frequent as every minute.
Set the address or fully qualified name of the POP server and optionally the port number. POP servers commonly use port 110 for non-secure communications (the default if left blank) and port 995 for SSL or TLS.
If your server supports SSL or TLS secure transport, select 'Use SSL/TLS on SSL Port' from the Secure dropdown. SSL/TLS is typically run on port 995.
If you use SSL/TLS, you can optionally select 'Verify certificate' in the Verify SSL Certificate drop down. The check will fail if the certificate does not pass verification. You may also optionally receive a notification when the certificate is approaching its expiration date by entering the number of days before expiration you would like to be notified in the Days field.
To optionally verify that a particular email user is able to log in to your POP server, provide the username and password in the appropriate fields. Please keep our Terms of Service in mind and limit the access provided by the credentials you use.
Set the Sensitivity. High is usually appropriate.
Set the notifications for this check. More information about notifications.

Common usage:

To only check that an POP server is up and responding, just set the server name or ip address and port and leave the other fields blank.
To verify a particular user can access email, enter the username and password in the appropriate fields along with your server name and port number.
To verify the SSL certificate on your POP server, select 'Use SSL/TLS on SSL Port' from the Secure dropdown and 'Verify certificate' on the Verify SSL Certificate drop down and set Port to 995.
To receive a warning 60 days before your SSL certificate expires, enter 60 in the Days field along with selecting 'Use SSL/TLS on SSL Port' from the Secure dropdown.

Other considerations

SSLv3/TLS1.0 are not supported.