FOSS alternative to Exchange?

[CelticWhisper]

Hope this is the right place to ask.

To make a somewhat long and complicated story short, we're looking at moving our company E-mail off of a dedicated appliance and onto a server running some kind of centralized E-mail system. Our support company wants to implement MS Exchange. I do not want to implement MS Exchange. The reasons are mainly licensing costs, closed/proprietary systems, and the fact that I worked somewhere before that used Exchange and had no end of problems with it.

I'm hoping to find a free (as in beer - for the purposes of this topic, consider me unwilling to pay any money at all for the software itself) open-source alternative to Exchange so I can hopefully save the company some money and save myself the problems we had with Exchange at my old organization.

I'm a one-person department, so I'm looking for something that is easy to install, setup, and maintain. I do not have the luxury of reading manuals for more than a few minutes at a time to figure out what I need to do, as my time is already split between about 20 things at any given time of day.

If Exchange really, truly, honestly is the best E-mail system out there, which I frankly doubt, then that's fine and I'll go with it. As it is, however, I'm relatively sure that there must be something superior to Exchange that costs less and avoids vendor lock-in to Microsoft.

Any ideas?

[CelticWhisper]

From doing a little more reading I'm starting to think it comes down to Scalix or Zimbra? Either of these good, or would you advise something else?

[_V_]

OpenXchange (http://www.open-xchange.com/), but I have never toyed with it, so I can't really give any valuable input. However, some good reviews out there.

[AltecXP]

Sounds like your exchange was never set up correctly. In 4yrs at my job I have never had to touch my Exchange 2003 boxes unless I am running updates, and I have 3 servers with email for over 2,500 people.

[jakem1]

Why doesn't your company just outsource it's email to a hosted exchange provider? I was in a similar situation to you, having to manage an email server with little time or inclination to learn what was necessary and eventually we switched to an external provider. Ultimately, it costs us less to do that than to put up with downtime and other hassles associated with managing a server without the right experience.

BTW, Exchange is great and I can't praise it enough. Exchange and Outlook make a killer combination.

[breed]

100% agree with the outsourcing of MS Exchange. You can do this very cost effectively, not sure if it would be cheaper than MS licensing costs in the case of 2500 users. You could either have someone manage your current setup for you (consultant, etc.) or you could move to a hosted Echange model.

I just set up a small business with this service from 123Together, you can go to http://www.123together.com/ to read more about them. I am in no way affiliated with this company.

Also, if you are looking at Free/Open Source, sendmail and postfix are two great options. Exchange is a really elegant solution, especially for calendaring and collaboration (Office Communication Server). Coming from a die-hard UNIX guy, I can't say enough good things about Exchange.

[AnthonySterling]

Let me get this straight, you've administered Exchange before, yet despite not wanting to 'read any manuals' for any length of time, you want to use an unknown piece of software?!

Barmy. :blink:

[Prince Charming]

There are plenty of F/OSS mail servers out there, but you are not going to find a free alternative that comes close to replicating Exchange Server. You're really doing this wrong with the 'I don't want Exchange' attitude, because Exchange truly is a brilliant piece of software. I'd echo the reccomendations for a hosted exchange solution.

[reap3r]

Hey,

I have used Zimbra in prod environments with up to 100 users. It is brilliant and makes users working from outside your network a dream. I would certainly get a dev box up and running to give it a shot.

[Vortex566]

+1 Zimbra

We are in the process of mirgrating to Zimbra, having set-up a Zimbra server I can say that it is a joy to work with.

I would be happy to help with any questions you might have but Zimbra would be something you should look into ASAP.

[CelticWhisper]

Thanks for all the input. I'm not sure about hosted Exchange, I'd kinda prefer to keep things in-house if possible. I think I'm going to have to take a good, long look at the latest version of Exchange and see what all it has to offer, since it seems to get high accolades around here.

Also, with regard to Zimbra, my next question is to the point of client-side compatibility. Will Outlook work with Zimbra as more than just a POP3 client? What about calendar sharing? BlackBerry syncing? And the big one - does Outlook interoperability cost money?

Also, if we go with Zimbra, I'm planning on running it on a Linux server (which may actually be a requirement, as I can't recall offhand if there was a Windows version or not). Is there a distro that's particularly well-suited to run it? Debian, Slackware, SuSE, Fedora...?

Thanks again!

[markwolfe Veteran]

  CelticWhisper said:

...

Also, if we go with Zimbra, I'm planning on running it on a Linux server (which may actually be a requirement, as I can't recall offhand if there was a Windows version or not). Is there a distro that's particularly well-suited to run it? Debian, Slackware, SuSE, Fedora...?

Thanks again!

Generally, for server work, I would go with something a little less consumer-y. You don't need the latest "packages of the day", and want stability and a proven, tested track record.

Something along the lines of Red Hat (it is popular and built for servers)? Use the free clone of it: CentOS (Y)

[CelticWhisper]

CentOS. I shall have to look into that. Interesting that you don't recommend Slackware, though - I'd always heard that was a great server distro.

[Aaron Veteran]

  markjensen said:

Generally, for server work, I would go with something a little less consumer-y. You don't need the latest "packages of the day", and want stability and a proven, tested track record.

Something along the lines of Red Hat (it is popular and built for servers)? Use the free clone of it: CentOS (Y)

I run CentOS 5 on a server here at work. It runs an internal wiki and a Subversion respository. Had no troubles with it. Another option I would suggest is the latest Ubuntu LTS release. What I do like about CentOS is the gui based tools for configuration.

[Growled Member]

Just want to throw out that Debian is an excellent server distro.

[Baboo]

u can use sendmail or dovecot

[Vortex566]

I am running Zimbra on a Ubuntu server. It is nice and easy to get up and running as long as you have some basic Linux and DNS knowledge. If you want any advice or help drop me a PM.

[Guest]

Depending what you need and how many users Google Apps is free. They also have a premium service. Personally I look at Google Apps before recommending Exchange to people now. Exchange is one hot application but it comes with a hot price tag.