Merak Mail Sever and the Suite Life

Merak Mail Server: High-performance Windows e-mail server supported by a suite of products such as Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, FTP, IM, and WebMail.

When a product such as Merak Mail Server reaches a version as high as 8, it tells you something: The product has been around long enough to improve substantially, and, no small matter for a smaller software company, it's successful. For this latest version, IceWarp Software greatly improved its administrative capabilities and surrounded the efficient server with a suite of options that make it one of the best choices for business e-mail management.

Merak Mail Server comes in three versions: Lite (for small businesses), Standard (for general use), and Professional (for ISPs and large enterprises). Standard and Professional versions are licensed for an unlimited number of domains and users. A smorgasbord of add-ons are also offered for the products: Anti-Spam, Anti-Virus, Instant Messaging, WebMail Access, FTP Server, GroupWare Integration, and the Email Server Migration Tool. These are sold separately and priced in part by the number of users. IceWarp also has several discounted bundles with all or some of the add-ons.

Having a suite of products to fill out the functionality of a mail server is not a new idea, but IceWarp goes at it full tilt. While the vendor does make it possible to buy only those features that are wanted, the complexity of their arrangement may make it difficult to decide which features are necessary. In any case, the basic server is a good value, and the all-inclusive full-boat bundles are priced at around $4,445 (Professional) and $3,270 (Standard).

Distributed in a humble zip file, Merak Mail Server installs in a few minutes on most Windows and Linux networks. The new Merak Administrative Console handles configuration. What in previous versions was a forest of tabs has been simplified by splitting the Console into two panels: On the left is a menu hierarchy (Windows Explorer-like) that lists the Mail Server services; select one, and on the right appears a tabbed panel to display the various options. Considering the literally hundreds of options available to a full-blown Merak Mail system, this new arrangement provides efficient navigation. Many elements, including the toolbar are now customizable.

Understanding the many settings and options is something else. New in this version are a few Wizards to explain and guide (for example, adding domains), which IceWarp says will be increased in number shortly. For similar information, there is always the manual, which runs to 451 pages and is disappointingly unclear.

The Professional edition has the tools for using ODBC Logging, running with multiple CPUs, task scheduling, TCP/IP SSL tunneling, and a remote server watchdog. Load balancing is supported, but Merak Mail Server is not as oriented toward multiple server operations (e.g., server farm, clustering, and failover) as other products, such as Stalker Software's CommunigatePro.

Merak Mail Server covers all the usual bases of e-mail — POP3, SMTP, and IMAP4. Likewise, support for dial-up, LAN, Internet, and ISP services are covered. The e-mail engine has been re-worked and tuned through all eight versions. It's robust and capable of handling a heavy load (especially using the Professional Edition) and includes support for multiple domains. Some of the built-in features include proxy services, mail and list server, notifications, catalogs, remote accounts, system backup, and in this version support for HTTP includes a native Web server.

During the course of Merak's many releases, user management has improved, and version 8 adds something important: user groups. With groups, the setting up different kinds of users is much easier, in effect making templates for policies and options that are applied simply by assigning a user to a group. The Professional version can use LDAP directories to authenticate users. Because Merak Mail Server has so many user-related options (such as quotas, mailbox sizing, notifications, and policy rules), it is well worth the time to understand and implement them carefully.

Besides the much-improved Administration Console, the mail server can be managed remotely and over the Web. It has much better than average real-time and statistical reporting (logs) capability to monitor and analyze e-mail traffic and usage. Additional administrative tools include command-line operation and system scheduling. Given the improvements, Merak Mail Server is now one of the better-organized and more-manageable e-mail systems.

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