Seven mail servers tested

Specifications

Product Domino Ipswitch Collaboration Suite Kerio MailServer
Company IBM Ipswitch Kerio Technologies
Web site www.lotus.com www.ipswitch.com www.kerio.com
Phone 13 24 26 1 781 676 5700 (US) 1 408 496 4500 (US)
Price AU$51.22 to AU$65.70 ex GST per user. Scenario 1 (200 users) AU$13,140 ex GST, Scenario 2 (30,000+ users) AU$1,544,000 ex GST. Starting at US$1495 US$449 (20-user license)
Warranty 12 months software maintenance is included in price which covers support and upgrades 60 days N/A
E-mail support (times/cost) N/A One-year's support included in price Unlimited with subscription
Phone support (times/cost) N/A One-year's support included in price Unlimited with subscription
Other support information N/A One-year's support included in price Forum, partner support
CPU (min/recommended) Microsoft Windows: Intel Pentium or higher; Unix: Power PC, Intel Pentium, UltraSPARC; iSeries: Power PC; zSeries: any CPU that supports the O/S release level; zO/S: any CPU that supports the O/S release level Pentium 350 MHz Microsoft Windows: CPU 500 MHz, Red Hat Linux: Pentium 500 MHz, SUSE Linux: Pentium 500 MHz, Apple Mac OS X: G4 or G5.
Memory (min/recommended) Microsoft Windows: 512MB, Unix: 512MB, iSeries: 512MB, zSeries: 1.0GB, zO/S: 1.0GB 64MB RAM 256MB RAM
HDD (min) Microsoft Windows: 1.5GB, Unix: 1.5GB, iSeries: 2.0GB, zSeries: 2.5GB, zO/S: 3 Volumes 10MB MailServer application (not including mail store) 35MB
Network requirements Microsoft Windows: TCP/IP, Netbios, NetBEUI, X.PC; Unix: TCP/IP, X/.PC; iSeries: TCP/IP; zSeries: TCP/IP; zO/S: TCP/IP TCP/IP connection TCP/IP and Internet connection
Other hardware recommended/required N/A N/A N/A
Operating system Windows 2000 / 2003 Server, AIX 5.2, Linux (Novell SLES 8), Solaris 9, OS/400, i5/OS, z/OS Windows Windows 2000/XP/2003, Red Hat 9.0, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, Fedora Core, SUSE Linux, Pentium 500 MHz, 256 MB RAM, SUSE Linux 9.0, Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
Other software recommended/required N/A N/A Groupware clients
Microsoft Outlook 2000/XP (Windows 2000/XP), Microsoft Entourage X/2004 (Mac OS X 10.2 & 10.3)
WebMail clients
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and higher, Mozilla 1.4 and higher, Apple Safari 1.2 and higher


Product Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Enterprise Edition Novell GroupWise Novell Open Exchange
Company Microsoft Australia Novell Novell
Web site www.microsoft.com www.novell.com www.novell.com
Phone 13 20 58 03 9520 3500 03 9520 3500
Price AU$12,181 incl GST (25 clients) Approx AU$160 per user per 12 months (basic pricing) AU$1715 for server and first 10 clients for 12 months -- extra client starting from AU$65 /12 months
Warranty N/A 90 days from date of purchase 90 days from the date of purchase
E-mail support (times/cost) 24 hours/no cost­ -- response time is 1 business day Included in premium support contract Included in premium support contract
Phone support (times/cost) 9am-5pm (Pacific Time)/AU$297 per support issue From AU$630/incident to AU$6500 premium support From AU$630/incident to AU$6500 premium support
Other support information Customers can sign up for a premier support service that includes all Microsoft products. Full 24x7 worldwide coverage available. Full 24x7 worldwide coverage available.
CPU (min/recommended) Intel Pentium or compatible 133MHz or higher processor/Intel Pentium or compatible 550MHz processor Server class Pentium III or equivalent Min Pentium III & AMD Athlon/Duron
Memory (min/recommended) 256MB/512MB or more 512MB 256MB/512MB
HDD (min) Need: 500MB on the hard disk where you install Exchange Server 2003, 200MB on the system drive, and additional disk space for mail storage. 2G 9G/15G RAID
Network requirements Network connection required 10Mb or above TCP/IP, supports RIM Blackberry, Palm, and Windows CE devices TCP/IP
Other hardware recommended/required CD drive Can be clustered for scaling and high availability N/A
Operating system Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server with SP3 or later
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition; Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition; or Windows Server 2003, Datacenter Edition		 NetWare, Linux, Windows SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 -- included
Other software recommended/required N/A Client software for Windows and Linux N/A

< Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next >

Like this article? Click below to send it to your mobile for free!

Talkback 4 comments

  1. Interesting review, however, it misses in a nunber of areas. 1) At the low end of the market, the appropriate Microsoft product would be SBS2003. It is quite difficult to price the e-mail component as a number of products are bundled, however, I Anonymous -- 30/03/05

    Interesting review, however, it misses in a nunber of areas.

    1) At the low end of the market, the appropriate Microsoft product would be SBS2003. It is quite difficult to price the e-mail component as a number of products are bundled, however, I suspect the SBS2003 is a more appropriate product when compared with some of the lower end e-mail systems you have reviewed. Are you comparing apples with apples? or apples to oranges?

    2) The the high-end of the market where clustering / high availability and a large number of users is concerned most of the reviewed packages couldn't deliver. Where is the indication of where these products sit in terms of number of users?

    3) The most important criteria for purchasing an e-mail system has not even been considered, i.e. user understanding and productivity. Given the article asks the question about alternatives to Exchange, surely there needs to be some indication as to why customers continually purchase this product. And the answer is they understand how to use the client interface, i.e. Outlook, and individuals are productive. My feedback from people is they hate Notes (especially after using Outlook / Exchange) and they love the functionality and integration that Outlook / Exchange provides. An e-mail system is provided to enhance user/worker productivity and, essentially, they don't give a stuff about the e-mail server. They want functionality they can easily use on their client device and this is what IT Managers respond to.

    4) I would suggest you have under-estimated Notes and Exchange for their back-end automation. Notes is a powerful database / workflow solution that provides much more than e-mail, so if you have such a requirement the other e-mail solutions look very ordinary. Likewise with Exchange, there is a huge amount automation / programming that can be achieved and an organisation with such requirements would seek a single solution rather than 2 separate systems.

    Regards,
    Russell Sumich

  2. What happened to mail servers like CommuniGate from Stalker and Scalix? Anonymous -- 31/03/05

    What happened to mail servers like CommuniGate from Stalker and Scalix?

  3. The review is a little simplistic. If an organisation is JUST looking at an e-mail solution then the scenarios are appropriate. However several of the packages offer much more. If an organisation is looking for that little bit mor Anonymous -- 12/07/05

    The review is a little simplistic.

    If an organisation is JUST looking at an e-mail solution then the scenarios are appropriate.
    However several of the packages offer much more.

    If an organisation is looking for that little bit more e.g. collaboration / workflow or the like then the conclusions will change substantially

  4. Mercury/Pegasus Anonymous -- 16/04/08

    I have seen my business grow from small to medium. If you are looking for free solutions to act as mail servers... nothing beats Mercury Mail Server on windows platforms.

    On linux, I found communigate to be much easier to manage/setup as compared to sendmail and it has worked very well for several years. With communigate free version, every outgoing messsage contains a 1 line message about the product.

Add your opinion


Back to top

Featured