The skinny side of Internet mail

If a fancy groupware system is too fat for your needs and your budget, we've got something that may just be the ticket.

We recently tested Version 4.5 of Rockliffe's MailSite package. MailSite is an Internet mail service and a list server for Windows NT and 2000. New features in Version 4.5 include antirelay and antispam wizards, message filtering, additional language support for the Web interface, and wireless messaging access from any Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) device.

MailSite's strong points include remote manageability, distributed management and list moderation, a multilanguage Web client, and new options available for wireless devices. If you choose to really take advantage of MailSite's scalability, you're looking at a software investment of 8 cents per user or less.

Off to see the wizard

A new feature of MailSite is the use of antispam and antirelay wizards. If you're an old hand at using MailSite, you probably know where to go, and what to configure. But for the new MailSite administrator, the new wizards can put measures in place to reduce spam and control relaying. It asks you the basic questions, including domains and sites you don't want mail from, whether to check if addresses are valid, and how many recipients can be delivered at once. The wizards then add the appropriate entries into the various "security" screens. You can rerun the wizard at a later time, or edit the entries directly. The additional wizards for antispam and antirelay complement some of the existing wizards, and make it easy to protect yourself without knowing the finer points of administration. As you become more experienced, you can fine tune MailSite's behavior if needed.

Hand in hand with antispam is message filtering. With MailSite, it is easy and straightforward to create filtering rules. A wizard gathers fields to check, and what words or expressions to check for. MailSite can scan all of the usual headers, such as "to" and "from," but can also scan the message body for words and phrases. It does not, however, scan attachments because there are no guarantees that attachments will contain text. The message filtering works against sent and delivered items.

Actions can then be taken once the filter is triggered. The message can be rejected with an explanation, or it can be copied or forwarded. If the message is not rejected, you can choose to deliver it anyway, and you can tell MailSite whether or not to run other filtering rules against the message. For example, maybe a message contains project code words and profanity. If project words take priority, you may not care about subsequent rule hits.

NetResults

MailSite 4.5

Rating 8.00 COMPANY:Rockliffe Systems (408)554-0766, www.rockliffe.com COST: $3,995 per server(50,000+ users). PROS: Easy to manage, customizable and multilingual Web user interface; provides IMAP point of presence, Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) access; remotely manageable. CONS: WAP functionality is limited; folder management is weak on Web interface.

Feat- ures 50% Mgt. 30% Docs 10% Install 10% Total 8 8 8 8 8.00 Individual category scores are based on a scale of 1 to 10. Percentages are the weight given each category in determining the total score. Scoring key: 10 - Can't be better;9-8 - Excellent; 7 - Very good; 6-5 - Average; 4-2 - Needs improvement; 1 - Not supported or doesn't work.

"Welcome" or "Bienvenidos?"

Another feature we liked was the multiple language support in MailSite Express, the Web client. This function can be valuable for companies that have offices in several countries, or employees who speak different languages. MailSite Express includes 17 languages (English, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish) to choose from. Assuming that your browser can support the languages, the menus and buttons will change to the language the user selects at logon, but the mail messages will remain in whatever language they were sent. We enjoyed seeing this type of out-of-the-box flexibility.

The Web user interface has some quirks, but overall is very easy to use. First, you must have cookies enabled, or you will not be able to complete a logon and won't be able to create hierarchical folders within the folder manager. If you use an Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) client, such as Outlook Express, to create a folder hierarchy, it will be displayed flat through MailSite Express. For example, using Outlook Express you may create a folder called "projects" and then add subfolders called "current" and "completed." When you use the Web interface, you will see three folders: projects, projects/current and projects/completed. This is not in violation of the IMAP Request for Comment, but it certainly isn't how most IMAP clients handle things.

For those wanting to personalize MailSite Express, Active Server Pages can be configured to use your own graphics and logos. You are free to change as many as you wish, as long as the names remain the same. There is an appendix in the manual dedicated to assist you with these modifications.

How we did it We installed MailSite on a Tangent Pentium II 300-MHz server with 128M bytes of RAM and 9G bytes of disk space running Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Internet Information Server 5.0. The desktop clients were Dell OptiPlex G1 machines with Pentium Celeron 433-MHz processors and 128M bytes of RAM. For the Internet Message Access Protocol clients, we used Outlook Express and Pine. We used the latest versions of Netscape Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer for Web client and administrator functions. Our Wireless Application Protocol client was a Sanyo SCP-4500 device provided by Sprint PCS for use on the Sprint PCS network. We simulated everyday user and administrator tasks such as user administration, list moderation and "using" e-mail across the interfaces. The list server was also put through its paces, as we created several lists, some of which were moderated.

The Web management interface is also handy. With a browser, you can manage your account or other accounts with administrator privileges. You can use either a standard HTML console or a Java console. However, if you want to manage any of the lists, you must use the HTML console. Also, the additional language support is not included for the management consoles. Incidentally, the management functions do not rely on Internet Information Server (IIS) as MailSite Express and MailSite Pocket wireless gateway does. There is a separate service that is dedicated to this processing. For the security conscious, this service can be disabled to prevent remote management. Not only can you prevent all remote management attempts, but you can keep your management services separate from any possible attacks to IIS.

E-mail junkie

The last newly added feature that drew our attention was the WAP functions, for those employees who can't bear the thought of being away from their e-mail. The MailSite Pocket tool can access mailboxes from any WAP-enabled device. This gives employees the flexibility of reading e-mail anywhere their WAP-enabled phone or wireless PDA has coverage. There are some limitations, however. You cannot compose messages, and while you can move a message to a folder after you have read it, you cannot move to a different folder to read messages. In other words, once it's out of your in box, you can't see it any more. Not surprisingly, you cannot see attachments because they cannot be guaranteed to be text. For a first cut, this WAP support is good and quite stable. But we're sure that the more you use it, the more you'll want navigational and composition enhancements.

The installation of MailSite was clean. It was smart enough to know what portions of the package could be deployed successfully depending on how Windows NT was configured. The documentation was particularly thorough, and even contained a checklist to ensure that your network connectivity was in order for those new to system administration.

With Version 4.5, MailSite has continued to build on a solid e-mail and list server package. The new enhancements, especially MailSite Pocket, are definitely a step in the right direction. For those of you running MailSite, this would be a worthwhile upgrade.

For others who need to give a lot of users e-mail accounts or provide e-mail lists, but don't have a lot of money to invest in hardware, you should give MailSite a try. The licensing is done per server, so as long as your server has the horsepower, you can easily host 50,000 users and thousands of lists on a single box. A 30-day evaluation copy is available on their Web site.

Berkley is the LAN Support Supervisor at the University of Kansas. He can be reached at berkley@ukans.edu.

Berkley is also a member of the Network World Global Test Alliance, a cooperative of the premier reviewers in the network industry, each bringing to bear years of practical experience on every review. For more Test Alliance information, including what it takes to become a member, go to www.nwfusion.com/alliance.