[Liverpool] E-mail servers, anyone?

[Ben Arnold]

Hi Stu & Sebastian --


Thanks for the info, much appreciated. Stu; Zimbra does seem to be
flavour of the few months, seen it in passing touted as a corporate
solution. Sebastian; I like the idea of the more traditional, component
approach, with each config. doing exactly what it should. With time a
factor however I think a bundle would be more appealing, especially
with the extras. If it were my experimentation I'd definitely look at
that lot and see how it goes! The web interface isn't that important
actually, since we're on internal access only anyway.

With the amount of work on over the next few months (there's a lot of
it), we're probably going to get someone in to set one up for us; we
could research it and do it ourselves but it would take a fair bit
longer than the... good point: couple of days for from a blank disk to
job done would be enough surely?

I'll probs send something over to ManLUG this week to see if they've
any more experience & info. As long as something is sorted by the time
the Windows licenses expire (remember them?) we're happy.


Cheers,
Ben


On Wed, 26 Jan 2011 23:06:46 +0000, you Stuart wrote:
|  Hi,
|  
|  As far as I am aware Zimbra is probably your best bet. It does all
| those groupware features you mention out the box. As for the others I
| have no idea.
|  
|  Stuart


On Thu, 27 Jan 2011 19:28:48 +0000, Sebastian wrote:
|  Probably not exactly what you are after - but I mainly use Exim for 
|  smtp, Dovecot for imap/pop3 and Thunderbird+Lightning on the client 
|  side. I also sync calendars and address books with a plugin for 
|  Thunderbird called SyncKolab - which saves the stuff in imap folders
| on the server and syncs them from there. I wouldn't say thought that 
|  SyncKolab is the most reliable thing out-there - so I highly
| recommend thorough testing before deployment. Otherwise Exim and
| Dovecot are really thorough, industrial pieces of software in my
| opinion - and from what research I've done.
|  
|  I haven't implemented yet any sort of webmail interface - as I don't 
|  like open ports towards the Internet and constant monitoring. All
| remote access is done from laptops equipped with openvpn, through
| Thunderbird installed on them. I believe though that you can bolt one
| of the popular webmail interfaces on top of Exim and Dovecot.
|  
|  I have one client where I had to allow email access for iPhones -
| and they work fine talking to Dovecot from the Internet (I had to
| open a port here though towards the Internet - after reading all the
| security docs and tightening things as much as I could).
|  
|  You might notice that I didn't go the integrated route - with one of
| the collaboration suites. Many of them integrate Exim and/or Dovecot
| anyway 
|  - however, I liked the idea of being able to choose and pick every 
|  single component to suit my needs - but I accept there are plenty of 
|  advantages choosing one of the ready made collaboration suites.
|  
|  Hope the above helps,
|  
|  Sebastian

-- 
Ben Arnold
Chester, UK

e: ben at seawolfsanctuary.com @ benarnold at fsfe.org
w: seawolfsanctuary.com | linkedin.com/in/benarnold

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