GFI MailEssentials 8 Packs In Comprehensive Anti-Spam and Mail Monitoring Page 3

Reports
While most email server software packages provide basic logging functions relating to sent and received messages, the log files that they provide are often cryptic and unmanageably long. While a variety of third-party software packages can be used to parse and display this data in different types of reports, this feature is already included in GFI MailEssentials 8. The GFI MailEssentials Reporter tool provides a wide variety of reports, including ones that display daily usage statistics for individual users, domains, and the server itself. For example, the user report displays information such as the total number of email messages sent by a user, and their cumulative size. Furthermore, these reports can be tweaked and tuned through the use of filters that allow you to view specific information such as the amount of inbound or outbound mail sent by a user, dates, and the number of messages retrieved.

For administrators, the reports generated by GFI MailEssentials provide a simple way to not only manage servers more effectively, but also provide management with a slick printout that will certainly keep them happily occupied for hours.

POP3 Downloader
The last major feature of GFI MailEssentials 8 is an integrated POP3 downloader utility. The main purpose of this utility is to download messages from an external POP3 server (at your ISP, for example) to your local Exchange Server. While this capability is not usually necessary if you have a properly configured SMTP server on site with the appropriate DNS MX record configured, some companies will still find this feature useful. For example, companies using a dial-up Internet connection will often not receive email to their internal SMTP or Exchange server in cases where they dial into the Internet only intermittently. In this case, mail can be stored on their ISP's POP3 server, and then downloaded once a connection is made. Once connected, mail can be downloaded and forwarded into a local mailbox bearing the same name, or to a different specified local address. The POP3 downloader also allows you to specify a schedule at which the server should connect to the Internet to download messages. Again, this feature is not for everyone, but many companies will be thankful for a feature not natively implemented in Microsoft Exchange.

Final Thoughts
Having used the previous version of GFI MailEssentials for well over a year, my feeling is that GFI has put a great deal of time and effort into making version 8 a much more robust, useful, and intelligent application. Not only does it do a superior job of defeating spam compared to other products on the market, the additional features like Mail Monitor, disclaimers, and the reporting capabilities combine to make it an unbeatable value for any network that includes its own mail server. However, there is still always room for improvement &emdash I would love to see GFI include the ability to configure their products via a web interface (instead of only via the MMC), if only to give administrators maximum flexibility. That aside, this is one product that you simply cannot afford not to try. Given that many of the core features are also provided in the freeware version, you simply have nothing to lose. Use GFI MailEssentials for a week, and you might wonder what you ever did without it.

Resources:

• More information about GFI MailEssentials 8 from GFI Software's Web Site
• 60 Day evaluation version of GFI MailEssentials 8 from GFI Software