A short while ago, Terry received an approach by a representative from the Romanian software company, Axigen as a result of them discovering the article on their Mail Server put up by GaMer in the We Got Served Wiki. Clearly they were impressed and from some basic searches through the Forum, there appear to be a number of fans within the membership. There have been many calls for email to be included in Home Server, but for many, the setup and administration would be too difficult on Microsoft’s main offering of Exchange. In terms of official add-ins, there is only one so far – VPOP3 from Paul Smith Computer Services. However, there are a number of available mail server packages suitable to run on a Windows platform with the Wiki also holding a basic walkthrough of hMailServer and my own original article on Mercury Mail Server showing that you can integrate these items into your Home Server.
So what does Axigen offer to attract us. Firstly, their 5 user package is FREE. You are limited to a single domain, but for most home users this should not present a problem. For a small charge, this can be increased to 10 users, 10 domains and also include mobile push email and PIM sync. As a commercial offering, the Axigen Mail Server also includes Calendar, Tasks, Notes and Journal which pushes its capabilities towards the Exchange end of the market.
Since GaMer’s Wiki article, the version has moved on from 7.1 to 7.3.3 (which came out just as I started writing this). However, the installation instructions are still valid and so I won’t repeat the detail here. The Wiki screenshots are also still relevant. Worth noting is that this is not a WHS Add-In. Installation must be done via an RDP session to the Server (or directly on the Server if you have screen, keyboard, mouse). Once installed though, all admin is through a web interface, so the lack of Add-In functionality is negated from a day to day perspective. Downloadable installation and configuration Documentation is still at Version 1.0 and is for version 6.x of Axigen dated December 2008. While it is still relevant, it seems not to be keeping up with the product development. Online documentation purports to be more current. There is a more up-to-date manual for the end user, covering Web Mail and Outlook integration. There are also a lot of very useful Knowledgebase articles on-line which cover various setup and management issues that may arise depending on a users requirements and configuration.
There are a number of options presented during the installation. Like GaMer, I was a little confused as to which options to select as most suitable for a home setup. To be fair, I searched through the documentation to seek clarity. I must confess that while I could work through some of the terminology, I suspect this would be daunting for any WHS users who do not have significant knowledge of internet protocols and domain naming policies. The Wiki puts forward the most likely settings suitable for WHS users. I need to confirm that you must not use port 80 for the Webmail as it will kill the other web services on your WHS. Go for something like 81 or 8080. Also, the lack of automatic setup of the Windows Firewall was a little disappointing as again this will make installation that much more difficult for the less technical. Clearly there are also router changes needed if you are going to use Webmail over the internet and have Axigen accepting SMTP email.
Another ‘gotcha’ stems from the product’s obvious heritage from Unix / Linux when you try to access the Web-based Administration. Not only are passwords case sensitive, but the Username is too. After trying ‘Admin’ a few times, I worked out that the default username is ‘admin’ and then managed to get going.
The first task is to get the licence file into the product. There is compulsory registration, even for the free version and this will result in a licence file being emailed through. To apply the key you click on the ‘View Licence Info’ on the main Admin screen. Upload the licence file, restart the Admin Console and the configuration starts in earnest.
To go through all the configuration options would be like re-writing the Axigen documentation. There is almost too much on offer and it would be nice to have a ‘Basic Admin’ option to remove all the features (or at least hide them) not expected to be needed by a standard home user.
I also tried to enable the Groupware function, only to get a message that despite it showing ‘Disabled’ it would be enabled on a restart of Axigen. Clearly the licence file (kindly supplied by Axigen for this review) had it included but there was no notification that a full service restart was needed after the upload. I couldn’t find a way of doing this through the Web Admin (serious omission, or very well hidden) so I had to drop back to RDP to the server and restart the service through Control Panel.
I now started to move through the configuration to set up my first account. Something which is key to me (and probably many other home users) is to use a local mail server to bring together mail from various sources into one mailbox. For this I need a server to be able to collect messages from POP3 mailboxes located on the ISP(s) servers. I took it that this would be covered by the Axigen RPOP service. Here I really started to struggle. It is very obscure on how to set this up. Mercury and VPOP3 allow POP3 collection on both a domain basis, sorting mail automatically into the appropriate mailboxes and on an account by account basis (one POP3 account per mailbox on VPOP3). In the end, after failing to find anything useful in the online Knowledgebase, a full seach of the Axigen web site revealed it is set up in the individuals WebMail account (and appears not configurable at all through the main administration system). If you are not using Webmail, there appears to be no way of configuring Axigen to act as a POP3 mail collector. In case someone else needs to do this, log into the Webmail account for the user, click on Settings in the top right of the window and then pick Remote Mail in the Settings window that pops up. The main Web Admin only allows the setting of the maximum number of accounts each user can set up and the minimum poll time allowable. A plus point over VPOP3 is that Axigen has GMail and Yahoo mail support.
Putting Administration and Setup frustrations to one side, what is Axigen Mail Server like as a usable product? The Web Admin interface is a little confusing and it takes a bit of practice to track down exactly what you are after. That said, something like a mail server should need minimal ongoing admin once the interfaces and accounts are set up. The documentation is based more on explaining each admin screen rather than being based around functional explanations and so I would foresee a lot of searching to find out how to fulfil a specific task.
The Webmail interface is very attractive in my view, competing well with Outlook Web Access. You have the ability to drag messages between folders and the addition of Contacts and Calendar is a real bonus.
