Axigen Free Mail Server
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Looks Interesting. Anyone ever use it?
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The install looks pretty straight forward:
https://www.axigen.com/documentation/index.php/Installing_Axigen_-_Admin_Manual
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The Axigen Free Mail Server is a great alternative to open source.
Why would someone want that? There is no scenario where you don't prefer your source to be open. They seem to be basing their product entirely off of the assumption that their users are confused and not looking for a good product, just unsure what open source means. That doesn't mean closed source software is always bad, it is always just a negative to have the source closed.
It is only free for ten users. What's the upside to it versus truly free, unlimited, open source, enterprise class systems? I've run some free ones and they were not that hard.
Since hosted enterprise email systems are as low as $1/user/mo and this can only go up to ten, it's a $10/month maximum that it competes against from Rackspace or RS resellers. You would need to host this somewhere, presumably it could run on a $5/mo hosted instance but that would leave you without backups and between the effort and time you are getting pretty little for a maximum savings of $5/mo for ten users.
And that's if you run it on Linux which seems to defeat their underlying selling point of "open source is bad."
So just looking at it from a high level, it seems to fit into a "what's the value" category. If enterprise class, totally free, unlimited, open source products didn't exist, then this would be potentially really interesting. But since they do, that this is closed source, unpopular, non-enterprise and not freely unlimited seems to make it a non-starter.
In this day and age, there is very little space for non-hosted email systems. Of the remaining non-hosted space, Exchange is a unique offering and commands the majority of on premises deployments because people want specific non-email functionality. Of what is left, Zimbra is the dominant player that is considered enterprise class and is fully open source.
So whether you need to save money, get experience for business class support or need to run a niche model for a business it is Zimbra, I would think, that would be the choice here.
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Unlike normal software purchases which are instantaneous, Axigen takes one to two days to deliver you your software license. That's nuts. There are humans doing the purchase management and not, you know, software? As a software company, that's pretty bad.
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The web client does look attractive, but Zimbra's is really nice too. Outlook Web Access is pretty decent these days as well.
