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| NTMail 4
by Bob Walder It is hard to imagine life without e-mail these days. Most business users have an e-mail address � and home use of e-mail is spreading too. However, when it comes to providing an e-mail address for each user in a small organisation, those companies who want to bring the operation in house are faced with some tough decisions, and usually much higher costs in terms of software. The thing is that e-mail needs to be reliable, solid and robust, and this costs money. Those who can afford it might opt for Microsoft�s Exchange Server or something similar, but NTMail offers all the functionality you need for a much lower price. Performance is excellent too, since it was developed form the ground up as a native NT application, and thus takes advantage of OS features such as multi-threading and multiple processors. With over 8,000 installations, NTMail handles over 2 million e-mail accounts world-wide. One managed service provider � PostBox Ltd.�� delivers over 42,000 e-mails within a 12 hour period from a single P90 running the NTMail mail and list servers. Installation is straightforward enough, and with Version 4, all maintenance operations can be performed via a simple Web browser-based interface. This is provided by the Configuration Server, which runs on a different port from any existing Web servers, allowing it to coexist happily with IIS, Netscape Commerce Server, etc. A series of simple forms allows users to be added, removed, mail to be read, domains to be added and configured and so on. In addition, specific users can be granted the right to administer particular domains. Multiple domain support is one of the neat features of NTMail, since it is far simpler to implement than some of its rivals, and each domain appears to the outside world as a completely separate system, even though they all reside on the same physical box. This sort of feature makes NTMail a good choice for ISPs. NTMail operates as a number of native NT services - one for the Configuration Server and one for each of the other types of service supported, such as POP, IMAP, LIST, POST and SMTP. It also integrates closely with NT in terms of user security, where the native Windows NT system database may be used instead of, or in addition to, NTMail's own user database. As you would expect, NTMail complies with the relevant Internet standards, including Post Office Protocol (POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4, revision 1) and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Wherever possible, non-compliant e-mail is made compliant by NTMail so that other mail servers do not have problems processing it. Clearly, there is a huge range of clients that will work with NTMail. The basics are not ignored either, with support for Post Office Protocol (POP3), Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP4, revision 1) and Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Other useful features include a simple Web proxy, Auto Responders, which return a standard response when someone sends an email to them, and "robots" that will accept and process ALL email for a single domain. Optional extras include the JUCE anti-spam filter and an integrated anti-virus scanner, yet more features which make this product at home in the largest corporate environment. Verdict With all the usual mail server features, plus automated responders, list servers, multiple domain support, anti-spam option and anti-virus option, NTMail provides everything you need to run a mail server supporting anything from 5 to 5000 users. � Supplier : Internet Shopper Ltd.
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