Microsoft Exchange - Any Free Alternatives?

Serbian

I'm looking for a free alternative to Microsoft Exchange. All I need is some kind of mail server that can administrate accounts and also offer remote access via a web panel. We have a Windows 2003 server here, so it must be compatible with that.

I have searched Google for Open Source mail servers or Free mail servers but any of the results it gives back generally don't offer the functionality I need, or they aren't actually free.

Capt'n Midnight

http://www.altn.com MDaemon is about 1/10th the price of exchange and has been around for yonks. If you are a windows only shop it's well worth it as it's got a good track record and is very easy to manage and since everything is stored as text files disaster recovery is dead easy. It will run on windows 95 or better. Lookout is similar to OWA

And unlike a lot of freebie mailservers it scales up well and the cost per seat drops off - 1,000 users at $2 a seat !

looks like eudora don't have free servers

Linux etc. have stable free email servers, but some are not for the faint of heart "they'll charge large amounts of money to look at sendmail logs, even more if you actually want them to give an opinion..." maybe http://www.billworkgroup.org/billworkgroup/home

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/share.htm

Another alternative is an Internet mail server that uses the IMAP protocol. IMAP is supported by Outlook 2002 and by Outlook 98 and Outlook 2000 in Internet Mail Only mode. Oracle Collaboration Suite and CommuniGate Pro Groupware provide Outlook users with additional capabilities besides shared mailboxes, but there are many IMAP servers. Others especially targeting Outlook users include Bynari InsightServer, mDaemon GroupWare, and SuSE Linux Openexchange Server. Versions of Outlook without built-in IMAP support can get it with a third-party provider.

Outlook is not great at IMAP use thundrbird or something else -

Pricing -
Description Price(USD)
MDaemon Standard 6 User $110.00
MDaemon Standard 12 User $200.00
MDaemon Standard 25 User $330.00
MDaemon Standard 50 User $490.00
MDaemon Pro 6 User $330.00
MDaemon Pro 12 User $440.00
MDaemon Pro 25 User $550.00
MDaemon Pro 50 User $660.00
MDaemon Pro 100 User $880.00
MDaemon Pro 250 User $1,090.00
MDaemon Pro 500 User $1,310.00
MDaemon Pro 1000 User $1,940.00
MDaemon Pro Unlimited User $2,480.00

Serbian

Thanks for that Capt'n Midnight. Unfortunately I have no budget for this so spending $550 on the software is out of my league at the moment. I guess we will have to leave it for the moment unless anyone knows of other software?

bpmurray

OO is free, runs on loadsa platforms, adheres to the OASYS OpenDocument format, can handle Microsoft documents, does about 90% of what MS Office can do, and it's open source and free.

See http://www.openoffice.org

There is a commercial version called StarOffice, but you shouldn't need that.

Oops - just realized, you want to replace Exchange, not Office. Well, why not do both at the same time? Anyway, as an alternative, what you really need is server software to provide you with mail, document management, intranet, etc. You can find all of these for free on Linux. And they're not often targetted by the virus-writers, so the security is much, much better than for Exchange.

is_that_so

http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/software/internet/0,39024165,39188758,00.htm
Not free but not massively expensive either.
Also look at this comment.
http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/eac/knowledgebaseAnswer/0,295199,sid63_gci972524,00.html

Serbian

Thanks for the info anyway bpmurray. Unfortunately I just don't have the skillset required to run a linux server, that's why I'm pretty much stuck with Windows for the time being. As for migrating from Office? It's never going to happen where I work anyway

rogue-entity

Ah, bpmurray, OP was looking for an alternative to MS Exchange Mail server. OOo is a replacement for Office.

The only mail servers that I know of that you could use to replace Exchange on your budget would be the Unix/Linux servers which will only run on Unix or Linux, so you would need a seperate server to run this, it would not run on Windows 2K3. Unfortunatly, Windows is terrible at interoperating with non-windows systems.

Capt'n Midnight

A.S.
/me hangs head in shame for forgetting about these guys
http://www.pmail.com/

Pegasus Mail, the Internet's longest-serving PC e-mail system, and for the Mercury Mail Transport System, our comprehensive range of Internet Mail Server products. Pegasus Mail and Mercury are free products, dedicated to serving all who need them.

The rest below I'd already typed so I'll leave it in anyway
=================================================

Serbian wrote:

Thanks for the info anyway bpmurray. Unfortunately I just don't have the skillset required to run a linux server, that's why I'm pretty much stuck with Windows for the time being. As for migrating from Office? It's never going to happen where I work anyway

you've got 20-25 users with office and you can't afford the retail price of a single copy of office + windows for a mission critical thing like email

Seriously Mdaemon is worth a look compared to the other commercial packages because of it's ease of use and track record

These have also been around a while
http://www.eudora.com/worldmail/pricing.html

who knows what these are like
http://www.pppindia.com/intl/netmailshar/netmailpricing.htm
http://www.ftgate.com/content/245.htm
http://www.enstarllc.com/

This one is free but I've not heard of it before.
http://www.mailenable.com/standard_edition.asp

MailEnable Standard Edition provides robust SMTP and POP3 services for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 systems. Simple to install, with powerful administration software means that your mail server will be up and running quickly. This edition is FREE, contains no spyware or adware, for both personal and commercial usage, with no time or user restrictions.

Serbian

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

you've got 20-25 users with office and you can't afford the retail price of a single copy of office + windows for a mission critical thing like email

To be honest, it's not that the company can't afford it, it's that they wouldn't pay for it. At the moment we all just use Outlook on our machines and everyone is happy. It's just a pain in the ass when people go away and I have to forward their email for them and then they don't have a copy of their existing email because it's not on their laptop etc etc. Also, 3 people have entirely lost their email despite the fact that we have a tape backup running.

I was hoping there was something I could set up that would centralise everyone's mail, eliminate the problems above and at the same time not cost anything so I wouldn't have to harass people in work to purchase software (as is always the case when it comes to spending money where I am ); a lot to ask, I know.

If they can send and receive email, there isn't a problem in their eyes unfortunately.

Capt'n Midnight

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

/me hangs head in shame for forgetting about these guys
http://www.pmail.com/
...
This one is free but I've not heard of it before.
http://www.mailenable.com/standard_edition.asp

.

Serbian

Sorry, I saw that, I was just generally ranting

_Kaiser_

Well I know it's not much good to you given your budget (or lack thereof) but I can recommend MDaemon myself.

I implemented it here myself a few months back (previously we were using a terrible, buggy thing called CMail which started falling over every few hours, and the company wanted money off us before they'd even offer online support which wasn't very inspiring) and haven't had any problems with it since it was setup. Plus it's light on server resources - which was also a consideration at the time.

It has a webmail interface that looks a lot like Outlook 2003 (though of course you can connect via Outlook POP/SMTP as well) so if your users are already using that the changeover will be painless. I've implemented remote email access in the last month and it's all STILL running great

I'd try it if I were you. You can get a 30-day trial version on the site.

Serbian

Thanks for the input. Looks like MDaemon would be the one. Now to try and scrounge some cash from the company!

jamesd

Ive used Cmail server and MDaemon and both fine products. Couldnt fault Cmail server and one site has it for 3 years and just 1 glitch and a restore sorted it.

Serbian

jamesd wrote:

Ive used Cmail server and MDaemon and both fine products. Couldnt fault Cmail server and one site has it for 3 years and just 1 glitch and a restore sorted it.

I have been playing around with the 30 day trial of MDaemon and it seems really solid. I had it completely set up the way I wanted it after only a couple of hours. The only problem I can see is that when you use Outlook to connect via IMAP there is no way to get it to move items marked for deletion into the 'Deleted Items' folder, you just have to set the view to hide mails marked for deletion. If there was a way around that, then it would be absolutely perfect.

Annoyingly, you can do just that with WorldMail or whatever the web based client is called that comes with it. Why couldn't Outlook be that simple? Also, is the Outlook Connector any good?