[WinMac] Small office mail system (long)

Ben Rubinstein(benr[at]cogapp.com)
Wed, 10 Mar 99 20:33:42 +0100

Hi,

I'm looking for comments/recommendations for an email system for a small
office (10-20 users). I've been lurking on this list for some time, and
read with interest the summary posted several months ago by someone who
asked a similar question, but I think their interest was related to a much
larger installation.

Background:

Our current situation is that we use Quarterdeck Mail (formerly Starnine
Mail, originally Microsoft Mail) on Macs for our internal email; with a
home-brew rig that receives internet mail from our ISP whenever the line
is up (and brings the line up when it needs to send mail), uses a table
plus rules to determine an internal recipient, and forwards it through the
internal mail system. This situation just evolved: we were using MS Mail
from about 1990, and just kept upgrading it, and about five years ago
started using the internet, and hacked up a solution on a spare Mac to
move mail back and forth, and later taught it to handle enclosures, and so
on. We wouldn't have chosen to go this route if we were starting now.

The internal mail works pretty well: QD Mail is reasonably flexible,
allows local and server folders, filtering rules etc; it has the great
advantage of a nice HyperCard XFCN that has allowed us to create a number
of robots which do things like process email sent from forms on web sites;
we all know it well. But it has some disadvantages: the latest version of
the QD Mail client is a bit slow; we are locked into a proprietory system
with no choice of clients; there's no Windows client, so we have to put a
Mac on everyone's desk even if all their work is on Windows. And the real
problem is that the interface to the internet is impoverished, and only
improves when a programmer here can devote some time to it; and its
integration with QD Mail will always be weak.

I'd like to move to a standards based (ie POP3 or IMAP) system for our
internal mail, allowing a wide choice of Mac and Windows clients. I'd
prefer to use a server running on Mac, because we've got several old
machines lying around, and because most of us are familiar with Macs and
will find it easier to administrate. And I'd like to retire the homebrew
system which interfaces the internal mail to the internet, so I'd like a
single system which knew how to talk to an ISP over a dial-up line.
Things I'd be sad to lose in the transition (but recognise I might have
to) include the ability for each user to create some folders on the
server, and some on their local machine; and the flexibility in
translating internet addresses to local users that we have currently.

Questions:

As far as I can see, my choices are
  - Apple Internet Mail Server (AIMS)
  - Eudora Internet Mail Server (EIMS)
  - Communigate from Stalker Systems

[Q] Is there another product I should add to this list to consider?

[Q] For any of these products, can anyone tell me if they think it would
do the job, if they'd recommend it, if they think I should avoid it? For
any of these products, what are their strengths or weaknesses?

[Q] Another consideration is that we've obviously got a lot of old mail
messages stored in QD Mail. We can get it out, and massage it into any
published format; do any/all of these products offer a sensible import
format that would old messages to be transferred, with original dates and
senders?

[Q] One other alternative is that I know that Starnine offer an SMTP
gateway. Obviously this would leave us still locked into one source, Mac
only, client; but I'd be interested if anyone has experience to report
with it.

Thanks in advance for any information or advice. Please reply either to
the list or directly to me as you think best - I'll summarise what I learn
to the list.

Many thanks,

Ben Rubinstein
Cognitive Applications Ltd
benr@cogapp.com

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Wed Mar 10 1999 - 12:37:50 PST