I wondered if anyone knows of any good solutions for shared group email management software. We don’t want to go down the route of Exchange Server - far too complicated for us. However, we want email for 4 or 5 staff, shared contacts, shared calender etc etc.
At the moment, we have copies of Outlook Express on each of our machines with mailboxes for everyone on each so every 5 minutes or so, all mail is downloaded to each machine for all users. The reason for this is that it is not only one person who works on a job, so they need to see all the email. In addition, the directors want to see every email that goes in or out of the office.
So really, we want a centralised email system (or an online system?) with centralised contacts and a centralised calender.
I can recomend a IMAP based system.
The mail is stored and stays on the server.
With SIEVE scripts you can filter and distribute the mails on the server.
ie check for topics/or x-headers to forward the mails.
You can also share mailboxes/mailfolders for different users.
so some may only read certain folders others can delete/move messages.
kerio mail server is cool for imap.
but to be honest, i cant stand imap…it’s nice to be able to access mail anywhere, but it’s slow and annoying, especially with attachments.
and i hate outlook and thunderbird.
but if it’s for office use only, with a fast LAN it works ok.
for my personal e-mail i use gmail.
It is a server, much like Exchange, but is priced very well for small office environments and has some great features such as a web-based interface option. I haven’t experienced any real problems using IMAP with it, and there are plenty of options for shared and public folders. Bonus: one can purchase a fax server plugin for full emial fax support.