PushMail

PushMail is an application that sends notifications to iPhones and iPod Touches when you receive emails. The application lets you register a username for the dopushmail.com domain. Upon successful registration, all email sent to yourusername@dopushmail.com will trigger the push of a notification to your device with the sender, the subject and a snippet of the body of the email.

You do not need to give away your email account password to get this to work. And, by setting up simple rules, you can choose which emails you want to receive a notification for. And you can do that from as many accounts as you want. And it will work "forever": PushMail is a one off payment, no recurring fees.

PushMail does not store emails in any way, so make sure that you only forward a copy of your email. Also note that Apple Push Notifications have no delivery guarantee: do not rely on PushMail service for critical and timely information.

Once you have installed the application on your device, you just need to choose a username and a password, and register. After that, you have to redirect the emails for which you want to be notified to your @dopushmail.com address (see instructions below). Note that your dopushmail.com address is only used for notification purposes: your contacts will never see it and you will reply from your usual mail account.

Screenshots

Redirection Configuration

It depends on your email provider:

GMail: First of all, make sure that History is enabled in PushMail. Then go to the Gmail web site in Settings > Forwarding and POP/IMAP. Select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to", then expand the first drop-down list and choose "Add new email address...". A pop-up will prompt you for the address: put your dopushmail.com address in the box, then click Next. A confirmation email will be sent and you will be able to read it in PushMail's History. Either copy the confirmation code in the appropriate box or simply click on the provided link directly in PushMail. After you have done that, you just need to go back to the Forward settings page on Gmail and check the Forward checkbox which you have just enabled. Be sure to choose "keep Gmail's copy in the Inbox" as we do not store emails. You can also create filters to do the forwarding and thus receive notifications for specific emails only. In particular, you might want to consider the filter in:inbox which will match only those emails that reach your main inbox (you can ignore the warning Gmail pops up when you do so). You can also use "plus addresses" (e.g. yourname+push@gmail.com) and communicate these addresses to selected contacts so that only them get their emails pushed.
MobileMe: Click on the Cog Wheel, then go to Preferences > Others > Forwarding. Put your dopushmail.com address in the "Forward my email to another email account" field and be sure to check "Keep a copy of forwarded messages with MobileMe".
Unix-based systems: create a .forward file in your home directory and a line like this localusername,pushmailusername@dopushmail.com. The localusername part is to make sure that your email is still delivered locally. You can also set a procmail recipe to forward only specific emails.
Most email systems allow one to setup redirections, ask your local mail administrator to have this done for you.
Notable exceptions:
- Yahoo! Mail: at the moment, it does not seem possible to keep a copy of forwarded email in Yahoo! mailbox. This is not compatible with PushMail as you would not be able to retrieve the email after it has been pushed. Workaround: forward your Yahoo! mail first to a mail provider that is compatible with PushMail (e.g. Gmail).
- AOL Mail: at the moment, it does not seem possible to enable mail redirection with AOL Mail. Workaround: use Gmail "mail fetcher" (or equivalent) to pull your AOL mail to a PushMail compatible provider.
- Hotmail, Live: even if some users have managed to automatically forward a copy of Hotmail/Live mails to PushMail, it does not seem to be the case for every one. Check your forwarding options in Options > More options before purchasing PushMail.
- Microsoft Outlook Web Access (OWA) Light does NOT allow one to setup automatic email redirection, only the Premium version does it.

Troubleshooting

First of all, make sure that you have authorized Push Notifications on your device. Then check your network connection: you will need good cellular network connectivity on iPhones and WiFi on iPod Touches. If the status of the Push notifications is stuck on pending you need to make sure that no firewall is blocking the connection between your device and Apple Push Notification servers (see also the note on hacktivated phones below). If all this looks good, you might want to reset the connection with Apple Push Notification servers by turning the Airplane mode on, then back off and try re-registering with PushMail again. If you have a 3G phone you might also try with and without 3G. Ultimately you can try to power cycle your device.

If none of this worked, then contact me so that I could check the server logs for your account (see the note about troubleshooting emails in the contact section below).

Also note that Gmail seems to shortcut rule evaluation when you send yourself an email from your own account. You might want to test the notifications from a separate account or by sending a mail directly to your dopushmail.com address.

Even though jaibroken devices seem to work just fine, hacktivation might cause issues with the registration with Apple Push Notification servers. The symptom is that the "Push notifications" status hangs on "pending..." forever. In this case, you will need to search for a fix, there appears to be some out there. My advice would be that you make sure that you can receive push notifications with a free app (like NotifyMe Free) before buying any non-free push based applications (like PushMail).

Upcoming Features

Please go to PushMail's UserVoice site to suggest new features for upcoming releases or votes for the ones you would like to see implemented first.

Contact

Feel free to drop me an email at support@dopushmail.com or contact me at @email on Twitter for any questions you might have using PushMail, you should receive a reply within 24 hours. For troubleshooting emails, be sure to include the result of the Notification Test (find it in the Help tab) as well as your PushMail username.