How would you test e-mail functions (mta, smtp, imap, pop) from command line?

Hello,

At my work I have a large percentage of support for e-mail services. So I often run manual telnet checks against a user account for smtp, imap, or pop. But the problem is the issue is usually intermittent (aren't they all?) and don't want to keep entering the information manually, but I also don't have access to install a GUI mail client either.

The problem I have is to order to test the functions, I use a jump box from another location and don't have access to any GUI client where I could set up the user account.

If you had just console access to a box, is there a type of "toolkit" for testing these services from command line quickly? If not, I'm going to create something from Perl or Python but I'm sure this question has been asked before.

Thanks!