Ipswitch IMail Server: a better email alternative

The School of Continuing Education (SCE) in Anaheim, California trains people for vocational skills. They have GED preparation classes, many different computer classes, and even a large administrative assistants program. Because of the wide range of class offerings, SCE has over 65,000 students.
SCE was using a standard ISP hosted email system for their students. Besides spam issues and needing more storage, SCE had a bigger problem. They needed more control and flexibility with their email server solution.

“When email is hosted on the provider side of the fence, we do not get the control over specific configurations that we would need to take care of in our own organization,” says Peter Tiepe, IT services coordinator for SCE. “The biggest reason to move to IMail for us was the administrative control, being able to have the servers here, being able to make changes on the spot, right now; without having to call an internet provider.”

At first, SCE began its relationship with IMail mainly for their students. But now, their faculty and staff have found it an indispensible tool as well. The shared calendaring has made the way they conduct business much simpler.

“Previous to the shared calendaring system, all of our managers, deans, and provosts had been emailing each other weekly calendars in Word documents as attachments. So the IMail Premium shared calendaring allowed us to completely eliminate doing that,” says Tiepe.
Since only students who request an email address receive one, SCE has approximately 15,000 users running on one IMail Premium Server. These accounts aren’t just used for everyday email; they are used in the classroom as well.

“About 80-90% of the students who take a computer class get an email address,” says Tiepe. “These classes teach things like: going out to the web, signing up for an email account, manipulating accounts, creating new messages, putting people into address books, replying to messages, etc.,” all using IMail Server.
For Tiepe, as the IMail administrator, his favorite thing about IMail is the anywhere access, web-administration. “I really like that IMail has 100% web administration. If I am at home and something is happening or something is not working, I can access my account pretty quickly via the internet and know within a matter of minutes what is happening,” says Tiepe. He also likes IMail over other email servers because of its price-to-performance ratio (the ratio between how much a product cost versus how well it performs) and the dedicated technical support offered by Ipswitch – Messaging Division.

“For the low cost of IMail, we route about 30,000 messages through our system each day. So I think the price-to-performance ratio is definitely where it should be,” says Tiepe. “IMail has always had excellent technical Support. I always get calls and emails back from them. Also, the knowledgebase has been pretty educational for me over the couple of years that we have been running the system.”

Tiepe was able to get the administrative control that he needed as the system administrator, with the price-to-performance ratio he was looking for with IMail Server. His end-users, the faculty and students, are winners as well. The faculty got a more efficient way to conduct business and the students have an email solution that helps them in their course work.

Technical Support
For approximately 4,000 South Florida businesses, PST Computers is the solution for all their computer needs. For over 15 years, PST Computers have offered email, web-hosting and internet access to their customers. PST Computers relies on IMail Server for their email messaging solution for themselves and their clients. Recently PST Computers had a major problem with their email.

When Tim Geurtin, Sales Manager for PST Computers, called the IMail Server Technical Support team he did not know what had caused this problem. The only thing he knew was that his server had slowed down so much that he could not even receive an email from himself. The IMail Server Technical Support team was able to help him fix the problem. “Because they are experts at what they do,” says Geurtin.

“Someone had been using our IMail Server as a spam server. In other words, two of our email addresses had been compromised by spammers and they had been using our server to send out thousands of spam messages,” says Geurtin. “That is bad for a couple of reasons. That makes our servers and our customers look bad, but more than that it almost brought the server to a halt from a service point of view.”

The IMail Server Technical Support team was able to diagnose his problem in less than half an hour. Then they lead Geurtin through the steps to remedy this situation.

“They logged in and within 15 to 20 minutes found out what the two compromised email addresses were, and then helped me put them on a black list, so they could not do it anymore,” explains Geurtin.

Unfortunately, Geurtin is not alone in this problem. According to IMail’s latest Spamometer report 96.4% of all email is spam and spam from botnets is now up to 72% of all spam accounted for. Botnets are computers that have been compromised by spammers. Spammers remotely access the computers and generally run undetected. The IMail Technical Support team was able to help Geurtin remedy this issue before it became disastrous.

This was not the first time that Geurtin has called the IMail Server Technical Support team, but every time he has been impressed with their skill and expertise.

“I have been in this industry for more than 20 years and I have used technical support from Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, and all of these huge organizations that really do not know the meaning of technical support,” says Geurtin. “Every year or two, I write a check to Ipswitch – Messaging Division for their support and it is one of the few things I do not mind paying for, because they always solve the problem and they always answer the phone. Whenever I call they are extremely knowledgeable and helpful.”

“For 8 years we have had excellent experiences with IMail Technical Support Team,” concludes Geurtin.

“Every time I have ever called it has always been the same pleasurable experience. Keep up the good work!”

IMail Server
IMail Server is an award-winning MESSAGING SERVER which is a popular alternative to Microsoft Exchange. It is scalable and easy to use with a low cost of ownership. It has the features business users require, without the overhead.

IMail Server offers three choices: IMail Server, IMail Plus and IMail Premium. IMail Server is the backbone of the line, and offers reliable messaging solutions with basic anti-spam for small to mid-sized businesses. IMail Plus includes all of the features of IMail Server with the additional benefit of carrier-grade spam filters. IMail Premium completes the line with secure instant messaging, shared calendaring, and global address books.

IMail Server benefits:

• IMail is a proven messaging platform that delivers billions of email messages worldwide for over 60 million users every day.
• IMail Server provides a solution to costs and complexities associated with deploying and managing Exchange Server 2007. For example, Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition with Forefront Security for 250 user costs significantly more than IMail Server Premium with Symantec security for 250 users.
• The webmail client now offers a low-bandwidth option for users with slow connections, like dial up.
• Service Agreements provide 12 months of unlimited technical support, via phone and email. Unlimited free upgrades to the latest software releases are also included with a Service Agreement.

IMail Server may be the best solution for the following primary market segments requiring email, and who are usually frustrated with the high cost of maintaining Exchange or the limitations of outsourcing to an ISP:

• Customers who currently outsource to an ISP and are dissatisfied by its limitations.
• Dissatisfaction may result from: low service levels, reliability problems, lack of control, lack of desired upgrades, and compliance threats.
• Customers who are dissatisfied with their current email platform for various reasons.

With Ipswitch’s IMail Server, end users and administrators are both winners: end users can continue to use the dominant messaging client and administrators can replace expensive, hard-to-administer, complex, messaging and collaboration systems that have a high total cost of ownership with IMail Server’s fast, proven technology.