Kerio MailServer v6.6.2

Kerio Technologies
Score. 3.78 out of 5
Tested on: RHEL 5
Pricing: For 100 users, first year: $2,299 (including anti-spam); $2,759 including antivirus, antispam  (as tested with McAfee); Subsequent years: $690 (including anti-spam); $828 including antivirus, antispam

Kerio worked its way into the hearts of Windows network managers by providing a low-cost software router and firewall during the late 1990s that served as an alternative to more expensive products during the Internet's high growth years. In 2002, Kerio introduced its MailServer (now available on Unix and Windows platforms) to meet the needs of its core market: midsize businesses with a Windows focus.

We found Kerio MailServer to be a great product, well-matched to this market. While the lack of scalability and technical support style ("Most emails will be answered within two business days," according to the company Web site, but ours took five business days) will limit Kerio deployments to midsize enterprises with less than 1,000 mailboxes, we found Kerio MailServer an easy drop-in replacement for Exchange.

The focus in Kerio MailServer is strictly on mailbox service. If you're looking for the ability to fine tune SMTP MTA parameters, it's not in there (or at least not easily available without a prescription from Kerio technical support).

The show-stopper for us, though, is the lack of ability to search messages stored on the server, a serious drawback in the days where Internet search has everyone accustomed to searching for anything, anywhere, at any time. Although Kerio MailServer still has many outstanding features, this critical feature kept it from being an obvious No. 1 choice.

Kerio's choice of a dedicated management application will be frustrating to network managers accustomed to Web-based management of everything, although the broad support for management on Linux, Mac and Windows will help mitigate some of that frustration.

Kerio was also one of the two vendors to fully support Macintosh users, so anyone looking for a full groupware solution for both Macintosh and Windows should start with Kerio on their short list.

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