Statement of Problem

Price sensitive customer is looking for a very low cost Antispam solution for two domains.

Challenges

Customer wants the lowest cost solution including hardware and software. They have two options with PerfectMail:

1. PerfectMail Free edition costs $0 but only supports 1 domain
2. PerfectMail Small Business edition costs $499 and supports up to 10 domains

Background

I always recommend people visit http://www.perfectmail.com/pricing to find out more about PerfectMail editions, capabilities and prices. Be aware that commercial editions include features and benefits not included in the Free version of PerfectMail - including scalability, deployment, support and disaster recovery friendly features and functions.

Option 1 - PerfectMail Small Business Edition

Our lowest price commercial edition (PerfectMail Small Business) will permit 10 different Domains. This price is only $499.

If you use any commercial edition, you would:

1. Build a PerfectMail machine and configure it to act as your primary e-mail gateway device (by putting it on the Internet or by forwarding e-mail from your firewall directly to PM)
2. Add both domains to your PM appliance and point them at your back end mail server
3. Use your PM box as your outbound ESMTP relay

Benefits

• Only one PerfectMail appliance to build, install, administer, etc
• Up to 10 domains supported
• Simple inbound mail flow from Internet -> Firewall -> PerfectMail -> Mail Server
• Simple outbound mail flow from Mail Server -> PerfectMail -> Firewall -> Internet
• Self-service tools available (so users can manage their own quarantine, resend blocked or accidently deleted e-mail, etc.)

Option 2 - PerfectMail Free Edition

Use the Free edition of PerfectMail to eliminate license costs. Because two domains are required, and PerfectMail Free only supports one domain, they would need to:

1. Install PerfectMail Free edition into 2 separate machines
2. Give each machine an IP address on the Internet or port forward mail ports on two separate IPs assigned to their firewall to each PerfectMail appliance
3. Arrange for DOMAIN1 to forward e-mail to the 1^st PerfectMail box and DOMAIN2 to forward e-mail to the 2^nd PerfectMail box
4. Configure each PerfectMail appliance to forward e-mail to the same back end server
5. Configure your mail server to use one of the PM appliances as your outbound e-mail gateway (I’d recommend the PM box handling e-mail for your active domain

Benefits

• No PerfectMail licensing fees
• Aged or spare PCs can be configured to run PerfectMail (so hardware costs are minimized/eliminated)
• Two or more domains can be supported in this configuration

Challenges

• Each domain would require a separate Internet facing IP address
• Multiple PerfectMail machines would need to be built (taking time, using more hardware and requiring additional support)
• No user self-service tools are provided in the Free edition of PerfectMail so e-mail quarantine releases or resends would need to be done by the administrator
• All e-mail will be tagged with 'My mail server is protected by Free PerfectMail' which cannot be changed in the Free edition.