I used to use beeb.net but they are stopping their email service in June so I am moving to Gmail and I have tried setting up their smtp server in Avast but no joy yet.
The solution is to pass e-mail in and out un-encrypted from your client (Outlook Express, Thunderbird, …) to a proxy program (Stunnel) that does the actual ssl or tls encryption/decryption of the pop3/smtp e-mail and communicates directly with the ISP server on the appropriate ports. Download here: http://www.stunnel.org/download/binaries.html
If you were using MS Outlook it would be able to do that as there is a plug-in, which effectively has the avast email scanner inside Outlook. I believe the same is true for ‘The Bat’ email client.
I am moving to Gmail and I have tried setting up their smtp server in Avast but no joy yet.
If you do this it will not work and it will definitely prevent the connection.
avast cannot scan any secure connections (and GMail insists on secure connections). Secure connections are secure to prevent them being scanned (just like your online banking transactions).
It you want GMail scanned then, at present, you have to use STunnel as Tech has advided. This manages the secure connections to the mail server and then passes the email to/from your mail client (entirely and safely inside your own system) in a way that avast can scan it.
All SMTP servers on port 25, no problems with smtp servers on other ports.
Also i made sure the smtp server was working and it wan’t my line or ISP, by testing from my laptop, which never had any problems (also running sp1 vista)