Login to IMAP with just username (w/o domain)?

Can Hestia be configured to make Dovecot allow users to login to IMAP/SMTP with just their username without the domain name part? I only have a few people who use my server with different domain names, and I know that they will not be creating email users with the same name as any other under different domains. I searched for messages in the forum dealing with the Dovecot “auth_username_format” config variable, but I couldn’t find any discussion about this topic.
Thanks!
—Dan

First things firtst.
IMAP/SMTP means for email accounts login & domain name is essential to identify.
However, email clients can be configured to type the user name only (means, the domain name variable is took from somewhere - automatically).

Actually where you gonna login with IMAP/SMTP ?

Basicly: no, this is not possible.

Infact you gonna use multiple domains, you need to distance them over the domain selector - also Hestia isnt build to support user name based logins without this selector. I mean, you’ve a running system, why do you want to change it? If you use mail clients like smartphones, outlook or thunderbird, you anyway save this username once and you probaly never have to insert it again.

Thanks for the replies. To answer your questions:

“where you gonna login with IMAP/SMTP”
In any email client (Thunderbird, Mail.app, Outlook, etc.) Call it “authentication” for IMAP and SMTP.

“you’ve a running system, why do you want to change it?”
That’s the thing, I don’t have a running Hestia system in production yet. I have two servers—with two different clients—that I’d like to move to something new, and I like a lot about Hestia, so I’m hoping to migrate to it.

The first is a Zimbra server. On that server there is only one domain that all of the users are using. In both the web client and in regular email clients, Zimbra doesn’t require you to specify the domain name. For IMAP and SMTP, for example, you can just supply the username (without @example.com), and because you’ve specified the IMAP domain name as “mail.example.com”, it assumes the @example.com part. So all the users on this Zimbra server already have their email clients configured to authenticate with just the username, not the full email address.

The other server I’m considering migrating to Hestia is one currently running ISPConfig. This one does have multiple domain names configured on it. But ISPConfig has an option for “Custom Login Names”. When this option is on, the form for creating a new email account has a field to enter a unique username to allow the user to authenticate with instead of their full email address. So this system too has a lot of users whose email clients are already configured to authenticate with just the username rather than the full email address.

Thanks for the detailed answer @fluidmindorg, unlucky part is that the state of hestia is still the same: Authentification needs a full e-mail address, also currently there is no plan to modify or expand this way.

Okay. Thanks for the reply. I’ll check to see if it will be okay to ask all the users to go in and modify their mail client settings on the switch. Hopefully I can convince them. There is so much I like about Hestia over ISPConfig. I particularly like how unobtrusive it is to the rest of the operating system. I feel like I can safely have other things running on the server without messing up Hestia (that’s sure as hell not the case with Zimbra). And I love that it just creates a standard system account for each user (as opposed to usernames like “web1”, “web2”, etc. that ISPConfig creates). I’m really impressed with what you all have done with this.

3 Likes

Former ISPConfig user here, using Hestia now. While it’s all for personal use, I haven’t regretted moving to Hestia at all since migrating.

4 Likes

Thanks a lot, @mredig. Good to hear. Aside from the two clients I mentioned, I too have a personal server running ISPConfig that I just use for myself and a few friends and family members, and I’m considering switching it to Hestia. I like a lot of things about ISPConfig, but along with the way it makes clients and users (as I mentioned above), it’s a bit too cumbersome for a small setup with only a few main users (which is understandable, since it was designed to run a large, shared-hosting ISP. I’ve installed and tried 5 or 6 other alternatives, and Hestia seems to me to be the most cleanly and rationally designed and organized—the most like the way I would write my own if I had the time :grin:. I’m looking forward to trying it.

  1. If you login via browser using web email interface (Eg: Roundcube), this is possible. In roundcub’s config file, You need to add the new attribute ($rcmail_config[‘username_domain’] = ‘%n’;). Ref: https://vvcares.com/blog/post/how-to-change-roundcube-webmail-title-logo

  2. If you using email clients like TB/Outlook etc, is not possible. Must need full email address.