Initial thoughts and questions...
Posted: Thu Apr 27, 2006 6:52 am
Hi,
I have been evaling Scalix for use with my (soon to be) ASP/HSP business. My company will focus on hosting turn-key services including web CMS, email, and possibly Voip & Accounting. This usage basically set my requirements: reasonable licensing costs, easy backend configuration/setup of new domains/services, and leading edge functionality. With this in mind, I narrowed my webmail choices down to:
I almost didn't eval Scalix - I'm building my shop on Debian, and Postfix has always been my MTA of choice. Finally, I wanted to run DSPAM for spam filtering. Scalix seemed pretty 'rigid' in not liking any of these. Two things convinced me to give it a whirl. The first was what appears to be unrivaled end-user functionality. Transparent Outlook support will be a BIG selling feature for me in the SOHO market. The second, full backend administrative capabilities, was a huge win for me. Eventually, I'd like to be able to fully provision a client from LDAP. Scalix's LDAP base seemed to allow for that, while the SAC tools would allow me to work efficiently till the provisioning stuff is written.
So far, I've been impressed with Scalix. However, I read in these forums that generic hosting/multi-domain stuff isn't slated to hit till the next major release. I was just wondering how far off that might be? I will have a couple of months of ramp up time before I expect business to get busy, but if its going to be later then that I'll probably have to re-visit Horde/IMP.
Also, will the next release provide any billing/invoicing 'hooks' ? Some from of 'Account' or 'Customer Number' tracking would be great. For instance, some way to indicate that 'these 4 email addresses should all be billed to client 12345' ? Basica reporting on a 'client'/'account' basis would be nice too - "Total number of mailboxes by client" or "Total disk usage by client"
Finally, will some sort of 'ISP/ASP' pricing be offered or would this be done thru the 'Enterprise' pricing? If so, can the 'Enterprise' package be purchased for a small number of initial users and increased as I grow?
I have been evaling Scalix for use with my (soon to be) ASP/HSP business. My company will focus on hosting turn-key services including web CMS, email, and possibly Voip & Accounting. This usage basically set my requirements: reasonable licensing costs, easy backend configuration/setup of new domains/services, and leading edge functionality. With this in mind, I narrowed my webmail choices down to:
Horde/Imp was the frontrunner - tested, flexible, decent feature set.
Zimbra looked interesting but the interface was ugly and the cost was fairly high.
RoundCube looked good, but provided very minimal feature set
Scalix ....
I almost didn't eval Scalix - I'm building my shop on Debian, and Postfix has always been my MTA of choice. Finally, I wanted to run DSPAM for spam filtering. Scalix seemed pretty 'rigid' in not liking any of these. Two things convinced me to give it a whirl. The first was what appears to be unrivaled end-user functionality. Transparent Outlook support will be a BIG selling feature for me in the SOHO market. The second, full backend administrative capabilities, was a huge win for me. Eventually, I'd like to be able to fully provision a client from LDAP. Scalix's LDAP base seemed to allow for that, while the SAC tools would allow me to work efficiently till the provisioning stuff is written.
So far, I've been impressed with Scalix. However, I read in these forums that generic hosting/multi-domain stuff isn't slated to hit till the next major release. I was just wondering how far off that might be? I will have a couple of months of ramp up time before I expect business to get busy, but if its going to be later then that I'll probably have to re-visit Horde/IMP.
Also, will the next release provide any billing/invoicing 'hooks' ? Some from of 'Account' or 'Customer Number' tracking would be great. For instance, some way to indicate that 'these 4 email addresses should all be billed to client 12345' ? Basica reporting on a 'client'/'account' basis would be nice too - "Total number of mailboxes by client" or "Total disk usage by client"
Finally, will some sort of 'ISP/ASP' pricing be offered or would this be done thru the 'Enterprise' pricing? If so, can the 'Enterprise' package be purchased for a small number of initial users and increased as I grow?