As much as I like the postfix/cyrus combo on OS X Server, it is not,
nor has it ever been, a good solution for someone hosting an ISP.
The fact that it doesn't handle virtual domains/users and you can't
delegate control of virtual domains are two of the many factors that
prohibit it's use. Tiger will fix some of this, but I still wouldn't
really suggest it for someone who truly wants to run a black-box mail
server.
But let's face it, I don't know of any server operating system that
comes out of the box with an ISP-level mail solution built-in. If
you're making money off of being an ISP you should expect to have to
put at least a little into it.
As mentioned before, Communigate really shines here, but now that they
have integrated the Exchange connector with the product they have
dramatically increased the pricing. If your revenue stream is decent
enough I'd still highly recommend CGP, especially as you can make money
off of reselling the calendar/groupware services.
Other options that are of interest:
1. As mentioned before on this list George Szekely has a very nice pkg
installer for exim/courier with a mysql backend. It's free, and will do
great for no-frills ISP setups. However, if you're charging money to
host you're probably looking for something more. Find it here:
http://maxo.captainnet.net/installs/index.html
2. Surgemail is a real interesting contender. It's dirt cheap, like
$600 for 10,000 users ( and $2k for cluster which is very very
reasonable) and has many CGP-like features, including the ability to
delegate domains. I haven't had a chance to do much with it, but I'd be
real curious to hear from anyone who is. http://www.surgemail.com
3. Kerio is of interest. It's not really great for ISP's yet, since it
has no domain delegation, but if you're looking for Exchange
compatibility, Kerio will do this for a fraction of the price of CGP.
http://www.kerio.com
4. There are quite a few OSS solutions, but none others that have a pkg
installer that I know of. I'd suggest taking a look at freshmeat.net to
see what's out there. These will require a bit of work to get them up
and running, and to keep them running. Again if you're making money at
this or even if you aren't, you probably have better things to do than
babysit updates and things like that, so certainly look at the other
options.
Joel
www.afp548.com
email@hidden
On Oct 27, 2004, at 11:03 AM, Chris Chapman wrote:
I have to second Steve's question here. I myself am looking to
transition my hosting company to total MacOS X based systems and I
simply cannot accept the future headache of constantly having to
rebuild mailboxes and such - seems like utter silliness to me. I've
never had to do this with my linux/bsd servers - why start now, right?
Is this problem THAT prevalent?
The main attraction to moving to MacOS X as a host OS is the ease of
OS updates and the great hardware. But if this comes at a cost of
availability and uptime, I simply cannot make that move. What are the
other hosting companies using MacOS X out there doing? Are you having
to roll your own solutions, bypassing the built-in server admin and
update features? What are your experiences here? Note, I'm talking
about pure webhosting/email/ftp/dns - no fileserver functionalities.
cc
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chris chapman
On Oct 27, 2004, at 9:01 AM, Steve Linford wrote:
Are there any ESPs here using MTAs running on OS X Server? I use
CommuniGate Pro, which is excellent, but as some may have heard has
just undergone a drastic price change that has effectively priced it
out of the small ISP market, so I'm trying to find out what can
replace it at the next need to upgrade...
I take it that ESPs with many hundreds of domains (each domain having
mail users maintained by the domain owners via a control panel) can't
use OS X Server' mail setup, as it seems to not support multiple
domains each with their own users sets, unless I'm missing something?
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