currently I have only seen products from smartertools for email servers that run on windows boxes.
what are you guys running? Is there any other options?
It gets expensive when you have multiple servers requiring their software.
Imail Server works well for small organizations.
http://www.imailserver.com/
We use Kerio Email Server. It works well for us.
hMailServer. Free and open source.
http://www.hmailserver.com
I have been running SmarterMail for a long time and have been very happy with its performance and function.
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Is it possible?
I know the answer may depend on what kind of work the server will be doing - game server, host server, mail server etc.
Does it always have to stay online, because it is by definition has become a server?
Yes you can, it's not that hard and as far as i know it has to be online all the time!
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Microsoft Live Custom Domains are now shutting down. I have been using this service for e-mail hosting for all my Microsoft Azure Websites, but now it is gone and no viable replacement is in sight. Do you have some idea what alternative approach exist for hosting multiple mailboxes for multiple websites hosted on Azure?
Your cheapest option is to have one (single) google apps account which will cost you around $5 per month. Make it something very general like mail#yourdomain.com. Then in the google apps dashboard make it a catch all address. This will make the single inbox catch all email for accounts such as Sales#, support# bob# or whatever at your domain.
Then you can set Gmail filters to sort (label) each incomming message based on who it was sent to. For example you can have messages sent to frank# automatically labeled as frank.
Next you want to create regular old gmail accounts for all of your individual users. I am going to follow the example of creating a box for frank#company.com for this instance.
Create Google Apps primary account (catch all) as mail#company.com
Create Gmail account for frank.company#gmail.com (regular gmail account)
Create filter rule on Google Apps account for all messages sent to frank#company.com to be forwarded to frank.company#gmail.com. You can further mark them as read or delete them upon forward.
In the frank.company#gmail.com create a sending alias as frank#company.com. Google will give you a 4 digit code, and now when logging in as frank.company#gmail.com i can both send as frank#company.com and recieve all email since its forwarded to this account.
Also make sure to set default reply:to addresses in case you send from the frank.company#gmail.com address.
Using the technique above you can get all the benefits of having a pro google apps account (dkim, spf, 25gb inbox) and with a little bit of configuration you can setup multiple gmail accounts which run off the single account. We use the technique above and it works flawlessly. The only thing that doesn't work is mailbox delegation, which is not that great.
If you wanted to save the $5 you could get away with using something like GoDaddy free email forwarding, but then you would be limited to godaddys 250 message limit per day.
The approach above just works.
I feel your pain. Had to have some tough talks with many of my customers when the free Google Apps option was discontinued.
I found two routes:
Find a hosted Exchange type solution. This has the advantages of any hosted solution. It is managed for you. You can get started with around 50 USD / user / year and services are provided by the likes of Microsoft, Google and Rackspace, like stated in the other answers.
(Which is the route I chose) Host your own Exchange server on AWS EC2 or Azure. Thanks to Microsoft License Mobility, you can install an Exchange license on a cloud server and provide email addresses for your customers` domains yourself. This will allow you to share the cost of the Exchange license between all your customers and if you reach the critical mass, this can save a lot compared to the pay-per-user-per-month models for most hosted solutions.
I am stil looking for a free alternative, but have yet to find one that can match the features that were available in the free version of Google Apps.
EDIT: I was thinking about this again last night and came up with another idea. I am not a Linux guy, so I would not be happy to do this for production mail server. For someone who is "bilingual" (i.e. ok with both MS and Linux solutions) or of a more adventurous nature than me, could take route 2 with a linux server and an open source mail server solution. I am sure this will lower the cost even more significantly, since you will not need to pay for the mail server licence and also per-hour instance costs for Linux servers are lower. This might even create a whole new revenue stream.
Zoho provides a Google Apps like deal for 5 users for free:
https://www.zoho.com/mail/zohomail-pricing.html
Up to five users
5GB/User
25MB attachment limit
Web access only
Email hosting for single domain
I just finished installing a mail server in Azure in a Linux virtual machine. So far seems ok.
The total cost of operation is about 10€ a month since neither Ubuntu (the OS) nor iredMail (the mail server) nor Postgres (the database) have any licensing fees.
Regarding the block on Azure IPs I do believe that most users saying that did not correctly configured their servers. And by that I mean that they didn't configured the PTR reverse DNS on Azure, which allows other mail servers to check if that IP is allowed to send and receive mail from that domain.
Also make sure you add the SPF DNS entry for your mail server. You can't blame a mail server to blacklist you if you don't minimize the risks of SPAM.
Hope this helped you.
Useful links:
IredMail Server - http://www.iredmail.org/
Reverse DNS in Azure - http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2014/07/21/announcing-reverse-dns-for-azure-cloud-services/
First of all you need to identify how much and what all services do you need?
If it is just an IMAP/POP3 Email Box, then best option is a Virtual Server or Virtual Machine with cpanel, once installed with daily backup runs good for years, you get unlimited email accounts and unlimited space !!! You can increase your VM dynamically up when you need it. Drawback is, it takes little maintenance once in a while. But most likely cpanel auto update is very stable and I have VPS running for 5 years and every year we are just increasing our disk space.
If you want calendar along with live docs editing etc, then you have to go with Google Apps which is cheaper then MS Exchange. But if you need strict Exchange kind of services, then you will have to go with hosted Exchange.
I will not recommend spending money for Rackspace or any such Cloud Email which is priced per user, which is total waste of money as they do not offer anything apart from linux server with cpanel. Those services are only for non IT people. Since you have already asked question on Stack Overflow, you can easily setup and manage cpanel based linux OS.
you could run a Ubuntu VM in Azure and set up Postfix
You can install a Free Mail Server on a Virtual Machine on Azure like:
https://www.hmailserver.com/download
I have found the same problem myself.
The only alternative in the past would have been to use Google's equivalent service, but they have also stopped it.
Realistically, there isn't a free answer to using custom domains with emails that I am aware of. Both Microsoft and Google offer paid for services, but cost per user/mailbox, per-year - compared to their free services this is a big jump in price.
Google charge £33 per user/mailbox, per year.
Microsoft are slightly dearer at £39 per user/mailbox, per year, but include access to online versions of Office for each user too.
For my situation, the Microsoft route may be the better option, based on my customer preferences but I am sure that the Google service is equally adequate.
Hope this helps. (But let me know if you find a better alternative!!!)
How many real people do you have reading e-mail? As many as you got mailboxes? If not, then I really suggest you go for Exchange Online from Microsoft which goes for $4 per user (not mailbox) per month.
The trick is, that once you've set up your domains, you create a Shared Mailbox through PowerShell and while doing so, you give the real people (you pay for) the rights to read and send as. The cool thing is, that the user does not need to do anything. The mailbox simply appears in their Outlook.
I'm looking for some e-mail client with:
multi accounts,
IMAP protocol,
signatures,
e-mail addresses sync,
freeware for business use.
I don't want Thunderbird because it freezes sometimes and stops receiving new mails. Synchronisation is riddiculous... Annoying thing is search box... The results aren't clear at all.
I wonder if there's any that works fine, has all the options I want and is freeware.
Alternatively if there's some non-freeware that is noticeable, you can list it here.
Thanks in advance!
You can use OperaMail (http://www.opera.com/computer/mail), eM Client (http://www.emclient.com/) or Evolution (http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/)
I think that the best is OperaMail
I'd go for the e-mail client that is built in the Opera browser if I had a small company. You have one application for web browsing and e-mail communication with lots of features. I however have no idea whether you are able to choose you browser freely.
Other alternatives could be Pegasus Mail and Incredimail.
We currently have POP3 mail accounts where I am and try as I might to convince my manager that we should be using hosted IMAP or Exchange he won't budge because of the cost. The staff are mostly out of office so there is no domain server here, however, we do have a dedicated server and I wondered whether I could use this to collect the mail and distribute it from there in some way.
Effectively what I'm trying to do is ensure mail is stored somewhere other than the end users machine because backups are user dependant at the moment. With hosted Exchange or Exchange on this server would be simple but my manager won't shell out for it. I have seen free mail servers called MailEnable and Axigen but unsure if they will do the job. Sorry if this seems like an easy or stupid question but never needed to do this before.
I am assuming due to the reference to Exchange that you are on Windows.
If you have an old box lying around that works, you could install linux on it and then choose from a number of different imap servers. Dovecot and Courier are both good choices and I have worked with them before.
You could use fetchmail to then pick up the mailboxes and then deliver to the imap boxes or get them deliver directly.
Setting up such a linux server for email was one of the first things I ever did on Linux. While initially daunting, once you get the hang of it, it is pretty straightforward and there are plenty of resources out there to help.
Ubuntu is probably the easiest to get used to. CentOs is also a reasonable choice.
You shouldn't be running your own server if you aren't willing to administer your own server, and they are not easy to configure if you don't know what you are doing (e.g., you mess up and you are exploited for spamming).
Look into a service like mailgun. In my application we are using them for forwarding to REST endpoints as well as onto another SMTP server.
Competitors that wound up not meeting my needs but may meet yours include Dyn, email yak, Sendgrid, etc. etc.
Why not just setup the mail clients to store their mail files on a standard network drive or share? I follow that this situation is pretty silly in your view - 100% because of the ridiculous constraints that you are being asked to work within: I would similarly find the solution I am suggesting ridiculous generally; but under the circumstances, it seems like a simple answer to your problem - replacing distributed mail storage and backup with centralized storage and backup.
Don't POP3 email clients have the option keep a copy on the server? Mine certainly does. See second tick box on the pic.
You can then periodically take a back up of all the emails from the server to stop it getting clogged up.
I'm working on an issue tracking system and would like the application to handle email replies. That is, I would like a script that can monitor an email queue and perform some action based on the email contents. It should then be able to delete the email, etc.
I currently use MIME::Lite to send email, and I can handle writing the script etc. (read: I'm not new to Perl). However, I have no idea what modules are good for doing this particular task. I'd like to get started on this as quickly as possible so I hope to narrow my search space for possible modules.
In case you need to know, the application will be running on a standard linux, Perl, MySQL stack with Exchange as the mail server.
Can anyone suggest a Perl module to help me out? Any tutorials or best practices related to this would also be helpful.
Thanks!
Do you have access to the Exchange server via IMAP or WebDAV?
For IMAP:
Mail::IMAPClient
IMAP::Client
Net::IMAP::Client
Email::Folder::IMAP
For WebDAV:
Email::Folder::Exchange
POP3 would also be an option if it's enabled on the server. IMAP is probably the way to go if you've got it.
I've done something similar using Mail::POP3Client
The Perl Email Project # http://emailproject.perl.org/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page has recommendations and other information on the mail oriented modules for perl.