Testing the Axigen, Kerio, and Merak commercial mail servers
MAIL CALL
They run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, cost money, and juggle email messages: these three commercial mail servers aim to convince admins they are worth the price.
The task appears so simple: a mail server receives and sends email. Suitable software has been around since the birth of the Internet. The major players include Sendmail, Postfix, Q-Mail, Microsoft Exchange, and Lotus Notes. But right now, many new Linux-based products are starting to leave the developer labs. These new products aim to be quicker and better than the industry favorites. We tested three candidates from this new breed of mail servers. Our test entries include commercial mail servers by Axigen [1], Kerio [4], and Merak [7]. All of these products are new developments that are not based on existing Open Source servers. We used Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 as our test platform. The core test criteria were administration, look and feel, webmail functionality, suitability for groupware, and performance on powerful hardware.
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