Setup Use a Moodle instance that is capable of both sending and receiving emails. You can set up a public instance with proper smtp/imap handling or you can use postfix with local configuration + evolution (This thread can help you if you are not familiar with postfix https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostfixBasicSetupHowto [set it up for Maildir-style Mailboxes] . Also make sure you configure evolution for outgoing messages via smtp and incoming messages via imap or whatever client you decided to use.) Alternatively, setup exim as a satellite pointing at the MoodleHQ SMTP ISP (dpkg-reconfigure exim-daemon-light) For inbound, you can use a gmail account (Andrew has a special account for testing so you can ping him) Feel free to ping me if you run into issues during the setup. Test Turn on full debugging Go to Site administration / ►Server / ►Incoming mail configuration / ►Message handlers and enable "Reply to forum posts". You might want to uncheck "Validate sender address" in its settings page, just for simplicity. Enter your server details in Home / ► Site administration / ► Server / ► Incoming mail configuration / ► Mail settings Make sure you have a valid email id that you can use in your profile Set Email format to "Pretty html format" in your profile Set Email digest type to single email per forum post in your profile. Go to a course with a forum Create a new discussion and subscribe to it by setting "Description status" while adding the discussion Make multiple posts to the forum for multiple user accounts. Wait 30 mins or set $CFG->maxeditingtime to 0 in config.php Run php admin/tool/task/cli/schedule_task.php --execute=\\mod_forum\\task cron_task Check your mail using evolution and make sure you have an email and it contains the text at bottom "If you reply to this via email, don't include a quoted copy of this post.". Also make sure there is no message like "- If replying directly to this via email, please do not include a quoted copy of the post you are responding to -" at the top. Reply to the email and make sure your response gets posted in the appropriate forum after running the task php admin/tool/task/cli/schedule_task.php --execute=\\tool_messageinbound\\task pickup_task Configure your email client to show only text versions (For evolution you can do it from Edit>preferences>mail preferences>html messages) View the email from above again, and make sure the you see a text version of email now and it is in the same format as specified in step 12