MDaemon promotion extended Are you an MDaemon user with an old expired licence? Would you benefit from better performance, two way synchronisation of any mobile device, a fast "desktop-like" Webmail client and more? Upgrade to MDaemon Pro version 13.0 this month and we'll provide you with all of this, upgrade protection for another 12 months and free technical support, for 50% less than it would ordinarily cost! If you're an existing business user you'd be crazy to miss out on this great saving and it's really simple to take advantage of...

If you're looking to build a new home for your MDaemon server software, there are a few factors to be considered when deciding on a specification. I'm often asked by customers for some advice on which areas are best to invest in, so in this post I'll take a look at the main ones, which I hope will provide a good basis for building the right platform to meet your needs.

Up until quite recently I've always recommend that if you're an Android mobile user who needs access to your email, calendar and contacts, the best method was to use IMAP to synchronise your email and ActiveSync for the calendar and contacts. This two account approach works well but I've always been aware it could be simpler to set up. Thankfully, ActiveSync 'push' email was added to MDaemon in version 12, so you're now able to enjoy full synchronisation of both your email accounts, calendar and contacts with just a single ActiveSync account.

If you use our email server software, MDaemon Messaging Server, and you've ever called our support team with issues relating to being unable to send emails, you may have noticed that we often perform a spam blacklist check. To perform these checks we use just one of a range of useful tools over at the mxtoolbox.com website. We've been using this site for several years as in addition to the blacklist checking you can also do things like query a domain's Mail DNS and SPF records, check whether the SMTP port is answering and even obtain an explanation of message header information. An essential tool to add to your favorites if you are a mail administrator!

MD 13 home pageJust a quick note to let you know the latest major release of MDaemon went live right on schedule last night, so it's now available on our Web site ready for download here. What's in it? There's a short PDF walkthrough of the new features and enhancements available on our blog here, or you can view the official product update log here.

The guys in Support have been busy pulling together the documentation that'll help you find your way around the new features in the soon to be released version 13 of MDaemon. Don't forget, you can find step by step guides and helpful articles across all of our products in the knowledge base area of our Web site for when they're needed. For now, please see below for a list of the new guides specific to MDaemon.

The last of my posts is going to be short and sweet as this fairly minor feature is more of a visual one. Simple traffic graphs are now visible in the WebAdmin iterface to allow administrators to see a graphical overview of the load on the mail server. Choosing "Traffic" or "Mailbox" within the Status Menu of WebAdmin now shows a graphical view of basic email patterns, top users and other key statistics. This information can be exported as an image or PDF file via the Export button:

As the name suggests, this simple feature allows MDaemon's IMAP server to honour the IMAP compression mode which significantly decreases the amount of data that needs to be transferred during a client to server IMAP session. Typical compression ranges from 50-90% depending on the data being transmitted but the overall increase in performance is undoubtedly beneficial. Unfortunately, not all IMAP clients support IMAP compression so be sure to check your specific client for details. The native Outlook IMAP session doesn't in fact, however ALT-N have addressed this by adding support in the Outlook Connector Client.

Alt-N idea enginesThose of you already familiar with MDaemon and Texas-based developer Alt-N Technologies, will know that feedback from customers has always played a pivotal role in the way their products evolve. The MDaemon beta community has been fundamental to this process but as we look towards the future and the imminent release of version 13, they're opening this up and making it simple for anyone to contribute ideas and suggestions via their Idea Engine.

In this next MDaemon 13 Beta post I want to look at one completely new feature and another that's more of an enhancement to an existing feature. Lets start with the new feature...

Document sharing

If you're a WorldClient user who often sends out the same set of files, product brochures and price lists for example - keeping a local copy on every PC you use can be a chore.