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Gordano Ltd.'s NT Mail version 5 is a very flexible and easy-to- manage mail server for Windows NT. We examined the latest update to NT Mail, using criteria similar to those used for our recent e-mail server roundup (InternetWeek, June 7, 1999, "Standards-Based E-mail for the Enterprise"), and were impressed with what we found.
NT Mail is a standards-based mail server that runs as a service under Windows NT Server. It supports all the usual features: Clients can access it using the POP3 or IMAP4 protocols or using its included Web-based interface, which doubles as the administrative console for authorized users. A single instance of NT Mail can act as the mail server for any number of domains. User access can be authenticated using the APOP protocol. Internet mail relay can be disabled or restricted. Yep, the usual, though NT Mail's lack of support for creating or viewing HTML-formatted messages on its Web-based interface is a bit surprising.
We tested NT Mail version 5.01 on an IBM Netfinity 5500 server with dual 450-MHz Pentium II Xeon processors and 256 MB RAM-the same system used in the June roundup, although now running Service Pack 6a for Windows NT 4 Server. For POP3/IMAP4 access, we used Eudora Professional version 4.2.2 running on a Windows 2000 Professional release candidate 3 workstation. For Web-based access to e-mail and for administration, we used Internet Explorer 5 on that same Windows 2000 PC, and Netscape Navigator 4.08 on an IBM ThinkPad running Windows 98 second edition. Access to the mail server was both over our LAN and from the Internet; our ISP's mail server has long been configured to provide SMTP message transfer to and from our e-mail test domain.
Rich Management Interface
The richness of the user interface is the first clue that NT Mail is different from many other mail servers. NT Mail 5 is administered nearly entirely using a Web-based interface, utilizing JavaScript to dynamically build a tab-formatted GUI within a Web browser.
We found this interface to be one of the most thoughtfully designed for a commercial mail server; it was easy to find configuration items, make changes and even view the application's online help, which pops up...