I recently installed Windows Server R2 2012 Essentials on a slightly improved EX490. I still have to sort a few things out, but in general the server is running fine.
I reserved a 350GB partition for the system drive, which gives me enough extra room to install some extra software.

I would like to try to install an e-mail server. I'm not interested in Exchange or Office 365 integration, this is just a hobby project, some way to setup e-mail on the family domainname for the family members
I played around with Axigen Mail Server on my WHSv1 server, but I never got it running reliably. Mostly due to the fact that my previous internet provider did not allow mailservers. The current one does.

Axigen might still be a good option, but I'm wondering if there are any beter options available.

Thanks,

Bert-Jan

I played with Axigen myself for a while and the only issue I encountered is that some email providers will not send email to consumer IP Addresses one of which was Hotmail not called Outlook by MS. The communication would only work one way and I forget which direction would work. Most other email providers worked well in both directions send/receive but I believe the issue arose from when email was being sent by a residential email IP but not with email being received.

Just wanted to give you a heads up this so that regardless of which email server software you chose to run what you may encounter.

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Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

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~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

There's smartermail I've toyed around with installing it but never got around to it.

As Comp1962 has said, you can build/setup a email server, but most other ISP will flag it (inbound) as spam and it will not go thru. You would be able to receive, but outbound would be stopped most places.

I actually wanted to do this, then found out why it's not as easy as you would think. Well, it's fairly easy to setup something, but it just won't work.

If you could somehow redirect inbound and outbound email thru a isp email account, you might be able to do something. But it might be just a easy and fairly cheap to buy some hosting that comes with a email server.

Can't play with the big boys like back in the good old days.

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Fear the Cloud

oh well, plan scrapped. Not a big issue, Im sure other plans will pop up.

Thanks to you all for saving me time and frustrations

Bert-Jan

Well you can get chicagovps is like 30 a year and install zimbra mail server. You can add freepbx server so you can make cheap calls . vpn server .

I run exchange 2010 switching to 2013 soon and I have ips that block mail port so I have chicago vps and I run postfix relay that redirects all incoming mail from standard port to non standard port and to my exchange server and all mail is send using my postfix relay server. There are services that will relay your mail and redirect to different port if your isp blocks port 25