Merak Mail Sever and the Suite Life

About Those Add-ons ...

One of the main reasons for operating a business e-mail server is that it can, in fact, remove 100 percent of spam (or pretty darn close), and it can be the first line of defense against e-mail viruses. Of course, users may have their own protection — which is obviously good, but if the company e-mail service is reliable and safe, it's a boost for the company. So, IceWarp's Anti-Virus and Anti-Spam add-ons aren't really all that optional. They're very good; we were especially impressed with the Anti-Spam module. Its arsenal is comprehensive: SpamAssassin, Bayesian filters (IceWarp maintains its own update lists for this), RBL (Reverse Black List), Challenge and Response, and black lists and white lists. The Anti-virus package is a tightly integrated Avast 4 engine from Alwil Software, which provides the regular virus definition updates.

Merak Mail Server also provides useful content filters (which now support conditionals) and e-mail policy management capability. It supports SSL (128-bit encryption) and has a range of options to ward off open relay, unauthorized access, and other network-based attacks. Overall, we'd rate its security and control features excellent.

'Extra' Add-ons

IceWarp builds on the e-mail services further by offering a number of add-ons: Instant Messaging (plug-ins for connections to major IM services such as AOL and MSN), WebMail Access, GroupWare (includes calendaring and group functions that can integrate with Microsoft Outlook). The WebMail Access, which takes advantage of the native Web server, is a full-featured Web-based e-mail client that taps into most of the capabilities of the mail server. Although quite a few mail server products support more than one language, Merak mail supports dozens of languages as skins and in our book qualifies as a truly international mail server. Finally, for enterprises that want to tailor features, Merak Mail Server supports executables and API DLLs.

Because so many features are built-in, IceWarp is justified in emphasizing the low cost and value of Merak Mail Server. Of course, its business model is based on selling add-on products, and many of these we find compelling, especially the Anti-Spam module. Although there are some limitations for managing large numbers of e-mail servers, Merak Mail Server now has the administrative chops for most corporate and ISP uses. Version 8 is a must-have upgrade for current users and a "must see" for organization considering their own e-mail server.

Pros: The "basic" server package includes a large number of useful components; Suite of add-on products is well integrated; Administration is now a forte.
Cons: Given the complexity of some configuration tasks, it needs more Wizards (fortunately, some are in the works) and the documentation could use more "strategy" guidance, i.e., more than a bare-bones explanation of the options would be preferable.

Reviewed by: Nelson King
Original Review Date: 08/18/2005
Original Review Version: 8.0