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i love linux as much as everyone else but in reality there isn't a product yet out side of exchange that gives the amount of seemless intgration that exchange gives.

So what's wrong with the following products?
http://www.egroupware.org/
http://www.group-office.com/
http://mirror.open-xchange.org/ox/EN/community/
http://www.scalix.com/
http://www.kolab.org/
http://www.opengroupware.org/
http://www.zimbra.com/
http://www.openconnector.org/
Non-free alternatives:
http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/
http://bynari.net/index.php?id=7
http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/
http://www.officecalendar.com/
http://www.samsungcontact.com/
http://www.zarafa.com/
http://www.postpath.com/

I look forward to reading your reply.

Why not give the personal version of CommuniGate Pro a try for testing? Its a enterprise level mail server that for the last two years has been promoting SIP capabilities.

CommuniGate Pro operates on dozens of platforms [Linux, UNix, Windows, VMS, OS/2...check out their website]. The same binary that runs a free 5 user license is the same one that operates clusters of millions of users.

Technically, it could replace all computer communications with email/SIP/video/VoIP. Here is an article [pdf] outlining their attempt to expand to home users: HERE

Why not give the personal version of CommuniGate Pro a try for testing? Its a enterprise level mail server that for the last two years has been promoting SIP capabilities.

CommuniGate Pro operates on dozens of platforms [Linux, UNix, Windows, VMS, OS/2...check out their website]. The same binary that runs a free 5 user license is the same one that operates clusters of millions of users.

Technically, it could replace all computer communications with email/SIP/video/VoIP. Here is an article [pdf] outlining their attempt to expand to home users: HERE

I have been running CommuniGatePro mail servers for years. They have all the features you're looking for and more. The main thing I love about CommuniGate is the fact that I have one application that is the MTA, IMAP server, POP Server, and WebMail all in one. No dependencies. No futzing around with PHP or config files for half-a-dozen different applications. And it also supports clustering. A low-end cluster would consist of 2 machines with a NFS or CIFS/SMB backend for the storage. They also support so many operating systems it's not even funny. Solaris, Windows, Linux....even OS/2! You can grab a fully-functional trial off their site and have it up and running in minutes. Check it out, you won't be sorry. Their stuff scales from small systems to really huge ones with millions of accounts. For example - UC Berkeley's mail system is CGP. You can check 'em out at http://stalker.com/.

Scales beyond anything you can be doing, and has the features you're going to want. Check it out: http://stalker.com/

Run it on Linux, it just works...

It's an enterprise groupware mail server, it supports webmail, ldap, imap, voip, pop3, smtp, supports 35 different platforms, can handle just about all you can throw at it. According to their page, "CommuniGate Pro holds the world record for scalability and performance delivering a fully standards based carrier-grade Application Server and development environment for next generation voice and data"

In my company we use it extensively, and if you have clients that are used to outlook, there's a webmail skin outlook-style so they will be comfortable with it.

http://www.stalker.com/

I'd also check out Stalker Software's latest version of Communigate Pro. I'm heavily leaning toward this for my own new company. It's a very capable, and very reasonably priced (~$700 for 25-user license), especially when you consider that not only is it a generic SIP switch and PBX, but also a world-class e-mail and calendar server that works as a truly open drop-in replacement for Exchange server with Outlook, or standards-based or web clients. (CGP is used by some of the world's largest ISPs as their mail server, so it's seriously industrial strength and routinely trounces competitors in the shootouts for large-scale mail servers for ISPs, Universities, and small countries and planetoids.)

The integrated calendaring is what sold me initially, but the SIP/PBX functions look like they could be a super addition, and provide some very interesting opportunities for a truly integrated messaging and communications backbone encompassing voice, e-mail, calndaring, and even screen sharing and video. Pretty darn cool.

Caveat: The PBX functionality is new and although I've talked to Stalker about it, I haven't actually tried it yet. It looks to be greatly enhanced in the brand new version 6, though.

It runs on darn near anything (around 2-3 dozen hardware and OS platforms including all major open source OSes) and there's a free trial available if you want to try it.

My research leans toward Polycom, Snom, or Cisco for IP phone sets. Personally, I think support for 802.3af (NOT proprietary) Power over Ethernet is pretty much mandatory, though, and the incremental cost per port is falling like a rock.

I have no affiliation with Stalker other than as a potential customer, but tell them Dub Dublin sent you so they'll give me a good discount when it's time for me to buy... ;-)

There are drop-in replacements for exchange:

Communigate Pro http://www.stalker.com/ is a drop-in replacement for exchange with minimal changes.

However, if I were to want a solution that blows exchange away, I'd look to:
Oracle Collaboration Suite http://www.oracle.com/collabsuite/index.html, which goes far beyond Exchange into voicemail, desktop sharing, and remote access. It's simply amazing.

You never mentioned the type of organization and users.

Assuming a mix of technical staff and business operations (not a health organization or lawyers office etc.) You'll have to anticipate that you will have to deal with a lot of user desires for different clients etc. "Groupware" users are largely business folks due to the shared calendars, contacts, etc. However, when you add IM, online meetings and other SIP-based services, you'll end up with an incredible communication tool for the entire company.

I've been running Communigate Pro (http://www.stalker.com/ for a loong time, and it will do everything above at a very good price. It will also give you an LDAP server and the groupware you want. It has class-A support for IMAP, MAPI, POP whatever, in addition to webmail. It does SIP, meaning IP telephony and instant messaging and can provide microsoft meeting etc. support out of the box. The next version will be an IP PBX as well so you can build your phone system around it too.

Communigate Pro administration is incredible:
1. Setup takes about 30 minutes
2. Version upgrades take about 5 minutes.
3. A simple web interface for most tasks
4. Uses standard unix mailboxes or maildir
5. runs on just about any platform
6. has a CLI and a scripting interface
7. Aids you in solving all sorts of compliance issues etc.
8. Supports the essential virus scanning, spamassassin, and automated rules.
9. Users web-mail is a great tool for users to self-administer
10. Beautiful quota handling!

Your cost with CGPro is much lower than Exchange, and still you have much better support for open standards while providing good support for Outlook users.

You should really check it out.

Johan

Give a try to CommuniGate. trial is free. It provides more, than ordinary user needs, and may be suitable for your case.

Have you looked at CommuniGate Systems (aka Stalker Software)? There is a deployment in Sweden with 4-5 million users using their cluster. I guess it is too late for your choice but there is indeed an alternative to Openwave. http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro I'm not directly affliated with them. I just built a few clusters using their software. ;-) Regards..

It's been said before, but I'll have to throw my lot in with Communigate Pro. There have been installations of over 4.5 million.

Check out their page on dynamic clusters. I use it every day and must say it's the best investment I've made in commercial software.

It's not free, but the best most scalable non-microsoft solution has got to be CommuniGate, it could scale to millions of accounts easily. Supports just about any OS and even includes almost any messaging protocol you can think of. Check it out at www.stalker.com.

I'd start by looking at Communigate Pro from Stalker Software. They have a Dynamic Cluster solution which taps out at 5 million accounts, and includes everything you are asking for. They have a Super Cluster that will handle 5 million+ if need be. Their prices are very reasonable, and they have won numerous awards. Their Network Computing stress test did something like 160,000 e-mails per hour with zero errors. They have a free unlimited trial to download, and runs on 21 platforms from Windows and Linux to QNX and BeOS!! http://www.stalker.com/content/solutions.htm

Even though we are a small customer, I've almost never failed to get one of their "top" engineers (like Vlad) on the phone for support immediately. In my experience they don't run you around to "help-desk" level guys first like so many other companies. The very few times we've actually had issues, they were solved immediately (and, were almost always something we screwed up :-)

The best part, IMHO, is they make it a point to be standards-compliant. They point you directly to the RFC's for every item right from their web site. They also have support for Mailing lists, MAPI, ACAP, SIP, RADIUS, etc. WebMail address books are stored in vCard format. Their calendaring solution uses iCal/vCal, their users are stored in LDAP, and they have a good Perl module and CLI interface. Their plugin architecture is simple and flexible enough that I was able to sit down and write a plugin in Perl that allowed our users to be authenticated off both their internal system and a proprietary, in-house database we have (which-ever set of credentials match, works). It only took me about 20 minutes to get it all working. This sort of thing allows excellent opportunities for scripting management tasks. In fact they encourage it.

A million email addresses won't be cheap, but I can't think of too many other "supported packages" that can handle something like that "out of the box". Check them out at http://www.stalker.com/ You can try it for free even.

Same here, great product. I replaced exchange in my corp with communigate a few years ago and it is rock solid. Runs at 20% processor utilization vs 95% for Exchange 5.5 on the same hardware and load.

And while it was SMS accounts, how about 4.5 million accounts on a single server! http://www.stalker.com/Papers/Uboot_press_rel.pdf

Using this as a reference point (and from recommendations I've heard)...
I recommend CommuniGate.

It is easy to use, can be expanded to cluster servers and is reliable.

Works with squirellmail, and a bunch of other cool features. Plus the name of the company is kind of cool.
http://www.stalker.com/content/solutions.htm

Just thought I'd add a few details and address some of the questions here. My name is Thom O'Connor and work for CommuniGate Systems (CGS), and was the one who put together and ran these tests - you can (mostly) verify this by looking at the comments in the source on the results page.

First off, on the SPECmail test itself. SPECmail is a standardized test (the only one I'm aware of for email) that attempts to closely regulate a level playing field for measuring email performance. It is critical to understand that this is not just measuring SMTP. The 30 million message a day text is a little vague, but it is important that this includes a distribution of delivery, relayed, and retrieved email. Sure, anyone can just relay many millions of messages an hour.

SPECmail does POP and SMTP, so the test measures not just MTA behaviour but also local delivery and then retrieval of the messages. The SPECmail test also uses Quality of Service (QOS) measurements such that a message injected via SMTP to the system MTAs (the CommuniGate Pro Frontend servers in this diagram) must then be delivered locally into the users' account, then be retrieved within 60 seconds. Satisfying the QOS criteria during the benchmark is often the most difficult part.

So, SPECmail itself just does POP and SMTP, which is a little 1990s I agree, but SPEC is coming out with a SPECimap test in the near future, and CGS is also very interested in seeing a SPEC VoIP/SIP test for measuring CommuniGate Pro's Real-Time capabilities.

A few others questions I've seen raised here:

1. The CommuniGate Pro Dynamic Cluster described in this test is fully and completely appropriate for production use in all aspects. In fact, if you're running a 2+ million user ISP on a CommuniGate Pro Dynamic Cluster, we'd recommend you to use these results as a guide for your architecture (although load balancers should be added to the gateway point for all inbound connections). In fact, CGS has ISP customers running architectures which match the layout of the described system almost exactly. All systems in the Cluster service all accounts - you could lose 4 Frontend Servers and 3 Backend Servers, and all users could still access their email (albeit with decreased capacity).

2. HyperThreading was disabled in the BIOS because the downloadable Solaris 10 x86 operating system would not (yet?) support the Intel x86_64 Potomoc chipset properly. That said, on top of the recent security vulnerabilities on the topic, we have also discovered miscellaneous threading and even NFS issues related to having HyperThreading enabled on Linux 2.6, FreeBSD 5.4, and Solaris 10 x86 systems.

3. On NFS...NFS is used safely and securely in this test. The integrity of data storage is one of the major criteria that the SPEC organization closely evaluates when reviewing a SPECmail submittal. Obviously, there are many ways to cheat and/or cut corners using Solid State Disks, unsafe RAM for message queueing, and other techniques that you would never want to use on your production message system. However, the test described here was performed using a standard (albeit excellent) BlueArc Titan Storage System with write caching only in NRRAM and using proper mount options and layout for security, redundancy, and data integrity.

Hope this clears up any misconceptions. Obviously, I'm clearly biased about the work here, but assembling and then passing a SPECmail test of this size is a gigantic effort. If anyone thinks

My old web firm used Communigate Pro and we always found it to be a highly reliable and stable system. Their support used to be handled by one of their lead programmers and was top notch.

While the focus of this article is on Groupware products, CommuniGate Pro is unique in that it is scalable to millions of users. It also broke the SpecMail record. Read more here.

You already mentioned openexchange. Of course there is always Lotus Notes, not exactly a drop-in m-exchange replacement but an interesting product all the same, and well suited to large enterprises.

Here are some possible ms-exchange replacement products of interest, in no particular order -

http://www.scalix.com/

http://www.bynari.com/

http://www.stalker.com/CommuniGatePro/

I work at a school with a slim budget. Network-wise, Office/Exchange licensing prices us out. Then I came across The Project which uses Comunigate Pro www.stalker.com. All web-based. Does the job nicely, and is fairly priced at least for education.

I tried a few methods, mozilla's import (strips any html emails down to a pseudo text only format (the text bit of a rtf file I believe).

I then setup a simple imap server and tried to drag the emails from outlook into the imap folder I mounted. Big mistake, outlook "hangs" after a random number of messages (always less than 30) so I ditched that.

outlook2mac from littlemachines looked good and was only $10.00 but I wanted something free.

In the end I downloaded a 30 day trial of communigate pro from stalker software plus their mapi outlook connector. Setup the account and checked "convert outlook rtf into html" and copied stuff accross. I then connected to the imap server that comes with communigate pro using thunderbird and copied the stuff to its folders (and thus converted it to mbox).

Convoluted but it did the trick!

CommuniGate Pro is an exchange replacement too

Recently a couple of communigate-admins have been working on the integration of the blackberry with communigate which runs on 19 different platforms. Just do a search on the communigate mailing list. Also, I've been able to read my mail from the standard text-based browser on my nokia 3300. Don't have a blackberry so I'm not able to share any experiences with that.

Recently a couple of communigate-admins have been working on the integration of the blackberry with communigate which runs on 19 different platforms. Just do a search on the communigate mailing list. Also, I've been able to read my mail from the standard text-based browser on my nokia 3300. Don't have a blackberry so I'm not able to share any experiences with that.

The only good alternative I've found, though not open source, is communigate pro from stalker software. I've used it for some years now in my company. It includes an outlook-connector with all groupware and calendaring-features Outlook/Exchange offers with a price which is affordable. Moreover it runs on 19 different OS's.

The only good alternative I've found, though not open source, is communigate pro from stalker software. I've used it for some years now in my company. It includes an outlook-connector with all groupware and calendaring-features Outlook/Exchange offers with a price which is affordable. Moreover it runs on 19 different OS's.

CommuniGate Pro.

Try CommunigatePro: it's not open source but extremely reliable and flexible and can handle huge volumes of mail, and can do clustering over multiple servers too. I've had experience with it on couple of large-scale installations, 50K accounts+ with millions of msgs per day.

Communigate Pro works for me!

Take a look at this. It is the step by step installation guide of Communigate. It usually takes less than 10 minutes to do the initial install, after that the software itself comes with a very easy to use web interface (altho a bit cluttered) and has the added bonus of having it's own webmail interface, IMAP/POP/SMTP/Virtual Domains support and is available for almost any flavor of Unix you can think of. I have tested it on Solaris (Sparc) and Redhat Linux.

It also supports clustered installs, antivirus/anti-spamming plugins and LDAP. I haven't tested those yet.

As for DNS, most of the real problems I've had with DNS concern the software itself (such as, Bind refusing to listen on a given interface, etc) but the config of the domains themselves are quite simple if you are not attempting anything fancy. I can't really give you much advice on the subject.

You should download the trial version of the software and try it out for yourself. It is fully functional, except that it adds a tagline to every message that passes thru it.

The downside is that the license is mailbox based so, depending on how many you need, it might get expensive.

Agreed. By the poster's admission, "they" (I guess he means his company) are not knowledgeable on email, so I'd suggest outcourcing or buying a turn-key solution. Myself, I'm partial to Communigate Pro, but even then you need some knowledge (DNS MX records and such).

Production email is far too important in a business to start experimenting.

If, on the other hand, you can afford to experiment (maybe with a secondary domain), the easiest installation of Courier IMAP I did was on FreeBSD. There was a webmin module for it, but it was nowhere near ready when I tried it so I dropped it.

Needing answers to the same question, yesterday i bought a copy of this book: Managing Imap Perhaps you should get hold of it too. It covers the whole IMAP thing and Cyrus and UW in detail. If you are not worried about using proprietary s/w, and want something easy to set up for testing, have a look at Communigate. This is a complete mailserver solution, very quick to install set up configure, has an IMAP module and lots more. A licence costs $$ but the free version is identical save for a 1-line- text advert appended to outgoing emails. (Linux versions available, don't know how it would fit with Gentoo though)

They discussed and tested the following

1. SuSE OpenExchange Server 4
2. Samsung Connect
3. Stalker CommuniGate
4. Easygate Workgroup
5. Bynari Insight Server

The April archive is online and link is here. There are a number of PDF files with the article details in them.

The CommuniGate Pro MAPI Connector acts as a "MAPI provider". It accepts Messaging API requests from Microsoft Outlook (Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, Outlook XP and later) running in the "groupware" mode, and from other Windows applications. The MAPI Connector converts these requests into extended IMAP commands and sends them to the CommuniGate Pro Server.

CommuniGate Pro is the best Email Svr I'Ve ever used.
Its easy to configure, very feature rich, performant and features cluster config.

The only problem is it costs you an arm an a leg for the amout of users you have.

I'm running it with only a couple of hundred users using mostly IMAP but I never had any problems with it.

I used to run an NT box (long gone) that used Communigate Pro. It has a decent web interface and is available on dozens of architectures/OSs. Sure its not free but there are lots of other options out there that are. Actually if you don't mind a one line tag on all email sent out then it is free. I really liked to documentation. It showed you how to filter and block spam right at the server.

I believe CommuniGate Pro, from Stalker Software does this.
It's a neat software package available for almost any operating system or flavor of *nix.

I believe CommuniGate Pro, from Stalker Software does this.
It's a neat software package available for almost any operating system or flavor of *nix.

We use Stalker's excellent Communigate Pro as our corporate e-mail server and in a recent version they added support for Microsoft's SPA.

It is true that SPA is a pure Microsoft authentication protocol used for avoiding to send the password in the clear. I think the specs are not published. The only e-mail server that officially supports it is Microsoft Exchange and on the client side you have Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express on the Windows side and Outlook Express and Entourage on the Mac side...

Of course we also use 128bit SSL so the need for SPA is irrelevant.

We use Stalker's excellent Communigate Pro as our corporate e-mail server and in a recent version they added support for Microsoft's SPA.

It is true that SPA is a pure Microsoft authentication protocol used for avoiding to send the password in the clear. I think the specs are not published. The only e-mail server that officially supports it is Microsoft Exchange and on the client side you have Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express on the Windows side and Outlook Express and Entourage on the Mac side...

Of course we also use 128bit SSL so the need for SPA is irrelevant.

It's not free, but the price is reasonable for your size operation - $4999 for up to 30,000 accounts, and includes unlimited mailing lists. That includes two years of upgrades, unlimited e-mail support, and a _very_ active mailing list that has a lot of very knowledgable users as well as frequent input from Stalker employees.

Sorry for sounding like a commercial, but we switched from Netscape Messaging Server a year ago and I can't believe how much better life is now :).

Anyway, Stalker is here, and the direct link for Communigate Pro is here. Worth checking out!

It's not free, but the price is reasonable for your size operation - $4999 for up to 30,000 accounts, and includes unlimited mailing lists. That includes two years of upgrades, unlimited e-mail support, and a _very_ active mailing list that has a lot of very knowledgable users as well as frequent input from Stalker employees.

Sorry for sounding like a commercial, but we switched from Netscape Messaging Server a year ago and I can't believe how much better life is now :).

Anyway, Stalker is here, and the direct link for Communigate Pro is here. Worth checking out!

A very good package that does it all is Communigate. I've used it before, and I really liked it. Commercial, but very nice. Handles really large loads like a dream...

G

It is quite easy to beat MySQL when it comes to features, though most of the small busnesses will most likely love it.

Sendmail is better then Exchange but can you say Postfix or Exim? Sendmail is no joke to configure and in the end you still get poor performance and potential security problems. Postfix has solid secure design, easy configuration and rocking performance.

Pop3d is what? WUimap, qmail, qpopper, courier?

If you don't mind spending time configuring software the best solution IMHO is Cyrus.

Also check out Communigate Pro if you are looking for a cheap easy email solution.

This is a terrible performance for a mailserver. A high performance mailserver should be able to handle 50K-100K accounts on ONE box. Take a look at CommuniGate Pro (www.stalker.com) from Stalker Software if you don't believe me. This fine server is available on almost any platform you can think of and makes Exchange look like a Mikey Mouse server in comparison.