[SoftDux]

Hi all,

Can someone, who has used both MailEnable & SmarterMail (preferable the Pro / Enterprise editions) tell me which one

Upto now, we've used SmarterMail 5 as it came bundled with DotNetPanel and never really saw the need to upgrade to SM 6 or SM 7. But now we're moving over to Enkompass, which includes a Lite version of SM 5, which is a bit outdated for a new product.

We've had many problems with SmarterMail, but this could be due to DotNetPanel's bugs as well, I'm not sure.

I have considered MailEnable as an alternative due to the high price of both MailEnable and their support. The community support forum isn't the best in the industry either

So now I installed MailEnable Standard Edition to see how it works, and it seems fairly simple to use. The only real advantage I see of SmarterMail is that the webmail interface looks a bit more professional. BUT, should that really warrant the extra cost? Surely someone logs-in to check mail, not to marvel at a nice-looking web interface? From a normal IMAP / POP3 / SMTP point of view, both look & function the same to the client. So I don't think clients will pack-up and leave cause the webmail interface changed a bit?

But, if anyone has extensively compared these 2 on a functionality level, then please share your experiences with me. I would appreciate some feedback on this.

SmarterMail 7 Pro = $1099 (unlimited domain, to compare with MailEnable)
MailEnable 5 Pro = $349

SmarterMail 7 Enterprise = $1399 (unlimited)
MailEnable 5 Enterprise = $699
MailEnable 5 Enterprise Premium = $1098 (same price as SmarterMail Pro)


Is the extra $700 really worth it?

[jeffhardy]

SoftDux -

We get asked this question a lot. The answer from an end user persepective is a bit different than from an admin perspective. I will touch a few basic details for both.

End User Perspective
Smartermail is best thought of as part of a class of mail servers on the level of Microsoft Exchange. Everything from archiving, and full collaboration to various mobile syncing technologies, up to 99.5% spam protection, mailing lists, and that webmail interface (it is pretty slick), etc. MailEnable does not, from a feature and technical standpoint, aspire to that level. They are going after the more entry level (in my opinion) mail service, which is a perfectly valid approach.

Admin Perspective
SmarterMail mailbox densities are quite high. Fully loaded and full featured Enterprise liceses in heavy user environments regularly pack more than 15,000 mailboxes per server. Stripped down professional editions can go much higher. Of course hardware and network impact these a lot.

Also look at the admin features like throttling, reporting, server stats, etc. A core strength of SmarterMail is also the automation. Look at the API documentation on the website. The owners of SmarterTools started in the hosting industry and they built this thing for ease of admin.

It really comes down to what you need to accomplish and the level of service that your customers expect.