Kerio has a very impressive product with MailServer 6, that is easy to install, configure, monitor, and administer. This application comes in two parts, the first part is the mail-server engine itself and the second is the administration application.
It took us less than five minutes to install and configure this mail-server. Mind you it took about half an hour to play around with all the options and features in the administration console. One of the best features of this application is its comprehensive in-built anti-spam engine, which is based on Spam-Assassin.
As you can see from the screenshot the package is well featured without being overly complex and the finish to the product is exemplary.
If you are after a small to medium enterprise solution that is ridiculously easy to administer then you would be hard pressed to go past Kerio MailServer 6 -- I suggest you download and begin evaluating it today.
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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