E-mail on the cheap

[astcell]

I want to build a domain with 1200 mailbox users whoi are in other domains. Hardware is cheap but Microsoft will assassinate me with the license costs.

So I was wondering about free this and free that...assume you had state of the art hardware, what OS and software ops would YOU buy to get the job dome and pay M$ as little as possible?

[phobal]

Employ someone who is in an accredited university or college. Microsuck gives out licenses for dirt cheap to students, with very few strings attached.

[astcell]

Dirt cheap is not cheap enough!

[JoeSchmuck]

I want to build a domain with 1200 mailbox users whoi are in other domains. Hardware is cheap but Microsoft will assassinate me with the license costs.

So I was wondering about free this and free that...assume you had state of the art hardware, what OS and software ops would YOU buy to get the job dome and pay M$ as little as possible?

So I assume you mean without using someone elses email server as my 0wn. That would be free and cost me nuthin for hardware, to boot.

[astcell]

Oh no I have all the hardware I will ever need. But I can use Linux for the server, and maybe there is a free e-mail client, or server software, etc. It'd be interesting to see just what can be assembled for cheap or free with all the freeware out there.

[phobal]

Dirt cheap is not cheap enough!

90-95 percent off isn't cheap enough?

[astcell]

90-95 percent off isn't cheap enough?

You wanted me to hiore a student or teacher, so I hire someone at $50K a year to save a one time cost? Oh I guess you expect me to hire them, have them buy the software then fire them the next day.

I wonder if there even is an Exchange Server type piece of software that is free or cheap.

[yankee]

I recently put together a system for 3000+ users using the following:

Linux (pick you distro)
SMTP - Postfix
POP3 - qpopper (patched to use maildir; it's faster than mbox)
listserv - mailman
webmail - sqwebmail

Doing quotas with linux filesystem quotas was a bit of a challenge (not to make it work, but to get it to report when someone was getting close to their quota), but all in all, it I'm satisfied. I would recommend doing authentication using mySQL or LDAP rather than /etc/passwd for a system this large so you don't have to be root to edit user accounts.

[bascule]

As I'm such a djb whore I can't help but recommend qmail. Throw on the large concurrency patch and you'll be hard pressed to find a better performer, let alone a more secure or reliable mail system. qmail also comes with a POP3 daemon.

For IMAP I've been hard pressed to find better than Dovecot. It's a well coded IMAP daemon that actually compiles cleanly on Solaris.

[TwinVega]

You wanted me to hiore a student or teacher, so I hire someone at $50K a year to save a one time cost? Oh I guess you expect me to hire them, have them buy the software then fire them the next day.

I wonder if there even is an Exchange Server type piece of software that is free or cheap.

If only there were a student willing to help...in exchange for Starbucks girl pics, I wonder who that could be

[Gadsden]

I recently put together a system for 3000+ users using the following:

Linux (pick you distro)
SMTP - Postfix
POP3 - qpopper (patched to use maildir; it's faster than mbox)
listserv - mailman
webmail - sqwebmail

I have to agree with yankee.. the above has worked quite well for me..

[skroo]

I have to agree with yankee.. the above has worked quite well for me..

I agree with you, but here's the problem: while they're all good at what they do, none of them replicate the integration functionality of Exchange (which is what I presume astcell was trying to avoid paying hideous licensing costs for in the first place). Whoever's first to come up with what's essentially an Exchange server for *nix that is at least comparable in performance is going to do one of the most key things in making *nix a viable enterprise platform.

Having said that, for alternatives you may want to look into Novell's Groupwise. The Groupwise client sucks ass, but the server works quite happily with Outlook and provides essentially the same set of tools (IMAP email, calendaring, contact and distribution lists, etc.). I've never had to implement it so can't comment directly on the licensing, but we run it at work and it seems to be relatively robust in a rather large environment. And to dispell a popular myth: it does not require IPX to run.

And as an aside... I wouldn't be surprised if Novell ports it to Linux as a side effect of the recent merger. See my earlier comments re: Exchange servers for *nix.

[astcell]

I have considered Groupwise however Novell inserts other issues. I guess Exchange has the market wrapped up in this case.

There's an idea for a contest -- write a program to surpass M$!

[skroo]

I have considered Groupwise however Novell inserts other issues. I guess Exchange has the market wrapped up in this case.

Just out of curiosity, what are the other issues?

[astcell]

No Novell drivers for the dongle.