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#209492 - 2014-10-04 08:45 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	Last time I looked, Thunderbird still did not work with exchange. Maybe thats changed, but as I have not done anything with Exchange for years I am a bit out of touch on that one. I was considering open source, and I use open source for my firewall, proxying and filtering services. My custom built filtering solution is better than anything on the market in my opinion. But I have not seen anything open source that has the functionality of exchange or this Mdaemon Messaging server.
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#209493 - 2014-10-04 11:01 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Robdutoit]
Lonkero Lonkero KiX Master Guru Registered: 2001-06-05 Posts: 22346 Loc: OK	Well. I have been looking for filtering appliances and have not seen anything that comes to even close to what I bought. Open source solutions being the worst of the punch. Messaging on the other hand. Postfix and send mail still are rock solid ones. If you need web interface, just add it on. If you need pop3/imap, just add it on. What are the actual features you are looking at since for mail only, you have unlimited choices. _________________________ ! download KiXnet
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#209494 - 2014-10-05 01:43 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Glenn Barnas Glenn Barnas KiX Supporter Registered: 2003-01-28 Posts: 4401 Loc: New Jersey	We run Exchange 2013 here in-house, but do not use Exchange for MTA. In my perimeter network, I have hMailServer. This free, open source system runs on Windows, has AD integration, and extensive AV and AntiSPAM capabilities. In fact, it's our email content-filter gateway for Exchange back-end. We also host several small business clients directly on this server with POP and IMAP access. Easy to install and manage. It also interfaces nicely with SquirrelMail for a web-based interface. I also publish the admin console so my clients can add/change/remove user accounts directly. It's designed for ISP use and has been tested with tens of thousands of user accounts across multiple domains. Highly recommended! Glenn _________________________ Actually I am a Rocket Scientist! $\:D$
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#209495 - 2014-10-05 02:58 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Glenn Barnas]
Lonkero Lonkero KiX Master Guru Registered: 2001-06-05 Posts: 22346 Loc: OK	Never heard of it. What it's based on? Edit. Since the website listed it as closed source, I might have not even glanced at it. Might need to take it for a test drive.... Edited by Lonkero (2014-10-05 03:02 AM) _________________________ ! download KiXnet
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#209496 - 2014-10-05 03:44 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Allen Allen KiX Supporter Registered: 2003-04-19 Posts: 4562 Loc: USA	I also use Hmailserver for backup smtp and relaying. For free this thing is awesome.
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#209497 - 2014-10-05 06:19 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Glenn Barnas]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	This HmailServer looks interesting Glenn. I will have to look at it in more detail to see if it does all the things that I want.
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#209498 - 2014-10-05 06:27 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	Well maybe I am looking in the wrong places as I have never heard of the one that Glenn mentioned and the ones that I have looked at were sparse in detail - Glenn's one might actually be what I am looking for, although I do like what I see with Mdaemon. These are the issues that I want to address. I asked these questions on spiceworks with regards to Mdaemon. Same questions would apply to the Mail server that Glenn mentioned. I believe that the one that Glenn was talking about provides the possibility of hosting the actual mail server - I am not looking for this feature. I want to use the current hosting provider for reliability reasons. Our internet could go down - they will have redundancies. 1. High cost of mail storage on the Internet Mail server for staff who only use webmail or their iphones to access email. Thus an internal mail server seems like the way to go. 2. I want to update several email distribution address lists such as staff, support staff and all staff. At the moment I am updating the email distribution lists on each outlook client. 3. Access email from any computer within the building. The problem with webmail is that we can only see emails going back five days as outlook is configured to delete emails on pop mail server after five days. We have had to do this to reduce online storage costs. Another problem is that we cannot view sent emails unless we go to the specific computer with outlook installed on it. We would like to be able to view sent emails even if we cannot access the machine with outlook installed where the email was sent from. 4. Outlook is currently not being backed up on each computer that outlook is installed. All other data is saved on server, so would like to have email and addresses also saved on server using IMAP to ensure that the data is backed up. Will it be possible to use a Server backup program to backup the mail server in case the hard drives die? 5. Clients currently use Outlook, but I was considering Thunderbird as transferring Thunderbird between computers is as simple as copying the directory, whereas we always lose something when we migrate Outlook. Also Thunderbird has far fewer settings and is actually easier to support than Outlook in my opinion. Would Thunderbird work with this mail server. 6. Email encryption. Thunderbird for example supports openpgp encryption. Would something like that cause issues with this Mail server program? 7. I am still not clear on exactly what the outlook connector does as I don't really know anything about workplace collaboration or whatever its called. All we want is email client installed on about 5 machines at each client as only about 5 people need a client based email. The rest of the staff will access the internal webmail. We would need to share the following: email distribution lists, public calendar and several group calendars. Only a few select people would actually need to add entries to the calendar. Most staff would be read only on phones or via webmail. Do we actually need outlook connector if we use Outlook to accomplish this.
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#209499 - 2014-10-05 06:34 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	Interesting. I went with a Slackware install for the OS and originally Dansguardian - now moved onto E2Guardian for internet content filtering and plain old IP tables for firewall services. I find that I can do far more tweaking with E2Guardian than a proprietary product, it doesn't cost me anything to buy and its far more secure in the sense that Slackware is not a popular platform and is old style Linux - more closely related to Freebsd I believe so is not as vulnerable as more mainstream products where the hackers know all the flaws of whatever. Not that it can't be hacked, but because its not a popular platform its less likely to be hacked than say redhat. Maybe your requirements are different from mine, but what I have for content filtering ticks all my boxes. Anyway I don't want to go offtopic with filtering. The point of my original post yesterday was to point doc in the direction of the program that I had found as I know that he was looking for something like this. I did not expect anyone else to be interested in the topic lol So Doc you now have Mdaemon and hmailserver to compare! Edited by Robdutoit (2014-10-05 06:39 PM)
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#209500 - 2014-10-06 04:48 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Robdutoit]
Lonkero Lonkero KiX Master Guru Registered: 2001-06-05 Posts: 22346 Loc: OK	Heard of shellshock? $;\)$ _________________________ ! download KiXnet
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#209501 - 2014-10-06 04:50 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
Lonkero Lonkero KiX Master Guru Registered: 2001-06-05 Posts: 22346 Loc: OK	Oh, just for email, you might want to check into http://arstechnica.com/information-techn...-domain-part-1/ Easy to follow and such... _________________________ ! download KiXnet
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#209503 - 2014-10-06 10:19 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Lonkero]
NTDOC NTDOC Administrator Registered: 2000-07-28 Posts: 11628 Loc: CA	Sorry Allen - I'm anti Cloud myself but you are probably correct in that for a small office and small budget aside from the junk a host provider like GoDaddy will give you there probably isn't much else better. Cloud transfers the cost and responsibility outside your organization it doesn't do away with either. Cloud is always a target, in house you can be a target but less likely unless maybe you're a billion dollar corporation with a big name. You do not have anywhere near the control on Office365 as you do with an Exchange Server sitting in your server room that you have 100% full control over. For smaller companies again probably is the best option as running everything in house just may not be financially possible for them. @Robdutoit I'm no longer in the market for another mail product as our own company was recently merged into a larger multi billion dollar organization and they have Enterprise everything with Microsoft so not my financial issue anymore. Hopefully once the dust has settled I still have job - you know how mergers go sometimes they bring in their own people to do your job and push you out the door.
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#209504 - 2014-10-07 11:08 AM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: NTDOC]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	Oh I hate company mergers. Very stressful time for staff who sit around waiting to find out if they are going to be working there next month! Hope it pans out for you.
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#209505 - 2014-10-07 05:39 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Robdutoit]
Glenn Barnas Glenn Barnas KiX Supporter Registered: 2003-01-28 Posts: 4401 Loc: New Jersey	Rob, hMail is a full SMTP mail server. It support POP and IMAP access. When I used this as my primary mail server with IMAP, I was able to access all email from the web interface, our Blackberry and Android smartphones, and any mail client that supports IMAP. With IMAP, all mail is stored on the server (like Exchange), not the local client, so there are no access limitations. Backup is simple - the facility is built-in and scriptable. I do nightly backups to a remote file and then send that to tape weekly. The system supports multiple domains, and you can expose the web management console to everyone with User, Domain, or Server administration. Lots of anti-spam is built in, and it interfaces cleanly with SmapAssassin. Every email and attachment can be scanned with ClamAV for a Free solution and most commercial AV products that support a command-line method to scan a specific file. Extensive rule capabilities exist, as do the ability to create DLs per domain. Note that as this is a MAIL server, there is no calendaring capability built in, although iCal can be used with pretty much any shared / web folder outside of the mail server, and there are specific calendar hosting services that support iCal. Installation takes just a few minutes - your best bet is to set up a test and try it out, even if it's just internal mail. Glenn _________________________ Actually I am a Rocket Scientist! $\:D$
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#209506 - 2014-10-07 09:20 PM Re: Exchange Alternative [Re: Glenn Barnas]
Robdutoit Robdutoit Hey THIS is FUN Registered: 2012-03-27 Posts: 363 Loc: London, England	My chief problem at the moment is time - or rather lack of. If I can find the time I will have a look at Hmail, if I cannot find the time, I will probably go with Mdaemon as its a windows click, set and configure type thing. I agree that Hmail is probably more what I am looking for, but time is my issue atm. Regards Rob
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