SmarterMail 11.x BETA Now Available

January 24, 2013 by 1 Comment

We’re excited to announce the BETA of the next version of our popular Windows mail server: SmarterMail 11.x. Over the last few major releases we focused on providing an incredibly powerful and user friendly Web interface that users would enjoy.  With this latest release, we kept the same look and appearance but rewrote the underlying architecture with the latest Internet technologies to dramatically improve the speed, reduce the size and increase compatibility with all the latest Internet browsers and tablets.

In addition, SmarterMail 11.x brings several new features, server side optimizations and fixes that continues to make SmarterMail compatible with the latest Internet trends.  As with all releases, we worked closely with customers and partners and while we couldn’t incorporate everyone’s ideas into this release, we prioritized our users’ wants to create a new version of SmarterMail that we think you’ll really like.

So let’s take a look at what’s new…

Tremendous Performance Increases

We spent a great deal of time benchmarking SmarterMail and then making changes to increase the level of performance across the board. In many instances we’ve seen increases of 70% or more in the speed and responsiveness of the SmarterMail 11.x interface. We’ve also seen huge decreases in memory and CPU usage, even under extremely heavy loads. All of this means that the product runs much quicker and much more efficiently than previous versions. Some of the changes we’ve made include:

  • Re-factored and completely re-wrote many areas of the web interface to reduce the amount of JavaScript code, CSS and HTML, making the entire web interface much faster, much more responsive and much lighter weight.
  • CSS files have been converted to LESS, making stylesheets much smaller and more efficient.
  • The button bars were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The context menus were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The date pickers were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • The tree view controls were re-factored to be lighter weight controls.
  • Greatly increased the performance of the Web interface.
  • Replaced the message editor control with a more lightweight control.
  • SmarterMail Service memory has been drastically reduced using SpamAssasin.

As we mentioned in a blog post late last year, we feel efficiency IS a product feature, and SmarterMail 11.x really proves that point.

Simple Customization of the Webmail Interface

personalizationSmarterMail 11.x introduces a much simpler way for users to customize the look and feel of their webmail experience. Now, rather than having to access system files to create custom styles, users can simply override existing SmarterMail styles with their own variables or, more simply, by modifying the overall color scheme of the primary, secondary and hyperlink colors. Users can even drastically revise the look of the webmail interface. For example, by moving the navigation icons to a horizontal position versus their default vertical position. Of course, if the Domain Admin prefers the defaults, customization at the user level can be disabled, thereby preserving branding and corporate identity.

Significant Improvements to Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

Note-2-Calendar_smCustomers using the Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) add-on enjoy the industry standard in syncing technologies for all mobile devices and will be ready for the next version of Microsoft Outlook for Windows that’s coming in Office 2013. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve made some significant changes in how SmarterMail integrates EAS, including better handling of the most popular devices from Samsung, the Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note II, and seamless integration with their native email clients.

Changes to how SmarterTools products work with add-ons are often only available with major upgrades due to the agreements we have with our vendors and partners. Customers who stay current with Upgrade Protection are able to take full advantage of these changes and modifications, not to mention receive full version upgrades at no additional cost. In addition, with SmarterTools, you can reinstate your Upgrade Protection at any time and still receive a discount. And unlike our competitors, SmarterTools doesn’t force customers to purchase each incremental upgrade that’s available when reinstating Upgrade Protection.

IPv6 Now Available

With the dwindling availability of IPv4 addresses, more and more hosting companies and service providers are moving towards utilizing IPv6 addresses. In addition, there will come a point where businesses of all shapes and sizes need to begin using IPv6 addresses as well. SmarterMail 11.x is here to help ease that transition. In fact, implementation of IPv6 with SmarterMail 11.x is just as simple as IPv4 – there’s no learning curve, no hassles and essentially the same functionality is available for IPv6 addresses as for legacy IPs. End users won’t even be able to tell the difference!

Greater Calendar Control

new_calendar In SmarterMail 10.x we greatly increased the functionality of our calendaring, and with SmarterMail 11.x we’re continuing that trend. In this latest version, users can not only set the default view for their calendars in the Web interface (either daily, weekly, monthly or all appointment views) but users can also automatically clean out old calendar entries. Domain or System Administrators can also default the auto-clean feature for calendars, making it an ideal solution for those admins who want to keep their mail servers manageable and running as smoothly as possible.

spell_checker

Improved Spell Checking

No one likes to send emails with spelling errors. With SmarterMail 11.x we completely revised how spell checking works, greatly increasing the accuracy and adding in grammar support. In addition, the new spell checking ignores things like URLs and email addresses and users can select an option to force spell checking before their email is actually sent, which should help with those awkward misspellings and grammar mistakes. You can also add your own words to your own dictionary to further customize and simplify your communications.

contact_pictures

Personalize Your Contacts

With the growth in popularity of social networks, people are used to see whom they’re talking to when typing up messages. SmarterMail 11.x allows users to add pictures to their contacts, thereby putting a face to a name, as it were, when typing up emails or using the included live chat. Contact pictures will even carry over to third-party live chat clients like Adium or Pidgin so users always see the person they’re communicating with, regardless of medium. In addition, ActiveSync and CardDAV will synchronize contacts with your choice of Third-party applications.

New Features for System Administrators

As if the incredible performance increases won’t make their jobs easier enough, we’ve also included several new features, tools and improvements for System Administrators. Some of these include the ability to utilize an abuse detection rule that allows blocking of IP addresses that exceed a set number of authentication failures over a variety of protocols, the ability to delete IP address that no longer exist right from the IP address bindings page and the implementation of the UIDPlus extension for IMAP. System administrators can even search log files written to the MRS\App_Data\Logs folder from within the management interface and much more.

17 Different Spell-check Dictionaries Included

In addition to the improved spell checking, SmarterMail also includes dictionaries for 17 different languages. The languages supported include:

  • English (US+UK Combined) – DEFAULT
  • English (US), (Australia), (Canada), (UK)
  • French
  • German/German (Switzerland)
  • Greek
  • Hungarian
  • Italian
  • Norwegian
  • Polish
  • Portuguese/Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Russian
  • Spanish

Greater Support for International Customers

SmarterMail is a truly international product. With customers in well over 120 different countries, support for languages other than English is a priority. In addition, as SmarterMail’s adoption across the globe continues to rise, support for non-Western character sets is also essential. With SmarterMail 11.x we’ve not only included support for right-to-left languages in our Web interface, but we’ve also gone through the entire product and greatly simplified our language strings to make things much easier for automated translations and for customers who create their own translation files.

Is that it?

Of course not! SmarterMail 11.x has many more features and improvements. You’ll find them in the release notes we’ll post in the SmarterMail 11.x BETA forum, but here are a few more that might be of interest:

  • A new content filter action was added for flagging messages and setting their priority.
  • Print preview now includes a list of attachments, perfect for regulatory compliance.
  • Users can now set start dates and end dates for their auto-responders.
  • Status messages and tip text now drops down from the top of the page and no longer disrupts page flow.
  • Language strings have been simplified so that they are much easier to translate.
  • In the webmail interface, the message grid now adds a color to the subject of unread messages to better distinguish them from messages that have already been read.
  • The ability for SmarterMail to detect missing attachments when they should be present. For example, when a message contains the word “attachment” but no files are attached or the subject is empty.

Getting started with the BETA

To get your hands on the BETA simply visit the SmarterTools BETA release forum, where you’ll see how to:

  • Sign up for the BETA
  • Get a special BETA license key
  • Download the latest BETA release (we update it regularly)
  • Communicate with other BETA testers and the SmarterTools development team
  • Stay up-to-date on the latest release note and BETA news

Sign up for the BETA

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5 Ways to Avoid Being Blacklisted

December 10, 2012 by 1 Comment

As the developer of popular mail software, we get a LOT of questions asking for tips and tricks on how to best manage mail servers. We are constantly getting questions on how to configure anti-spam, what anti-spam measures work best, how to set up a mail system for X users and/or Y domains. We even get some pretty off-the-wall tickets from potential administrators who tell us that they want to set up the next Gmail or Hotmail to give the world free email, then turn around and ask ”But, how do I do that?”

Most mail administrators realize that the configuration of a mail server, much less the business rules around how email is managed, is really up to them – there’s only so much we can offer in terms of how to best manage and maintain a mail server. What we CAN do, however, is provide email administrators with a number of tools to help ease the entire process. This post will focus on a few of the features and tools within SmarterMail that can both ease an administrator’s management tasks as well as give them peace of mind when it comes to preventing their mail servers from becoming blacklisted.

Lock down users and mailboxes

Users. If they’re not using “abc123” for their passwords, they’re mass emailing cat videos to their friends and family. There are several things mail administrators can do to keep users from abusing their email privileges, not to mention keeping mailboxes, and entire mail servers, secured. SmarterTools makes these things extremely easy:

    • Set up password policy and perform password audits
      Administrators should set some guidelines for users so that they don’t gravitate towards the most commonly used passwords. In addition, periodical audits should be run and users notified if their passwords don’t meet requirements.
    • Require SMTP authentication and sender match authentication
      Spoofed emails can be a real problem, and now some compliancy agencies require mail servers to ensure emails can’t be spoofed. Therefore, mail admins should be sure to enforce SMTP authentication and then take the extra step of enabling sender match authentication, so that the mail server will ensure the sending address matches the SMTP authenticated address. Doing this will greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, senders spoofing mail accounts.

      • Throttle outgoing email
        Set up some simple throttling rules, either for users, for entire domains or even for particular features, like mailing lists. Throttling allows administrators to manage the amount of email that flows out of mail servers. Couple throttling rules with spam checks to achieve even better results.
      • Spam check outgoing email
        In addition to throttling, spam checking outbound mail can help keep mail servers running and can help prevent a single user from getting your entire server blacklisted. Administrators can spam check outgoing messages against any of the included spam lists that come with SmarterMail. Couple this with usage reports and system events to stay on top of potential issues.

Set up Abuse Detection

On top creating guidelines for users, mail administrators also have tools at their disposal that will alert them to potential issues way before they become problems.  Two tools come to mind for keeping the mail server secured and off of blacklists:

      1. Internal Spammer Notification- There are times that, no matter what other preventative measures an admin has in place, users try sending out mass emails. Most of the time these are legitimate attempts, but there are the occasional users who simply want to spam. Setting up a notification to fire off when a sender reaches a certain number of the same sized emails in a given time frame can help prevent a user from spamming, regardless of their intent.
      2. Bad SMTP Sessions - Keeping on top of bad SMTP sessions assists mail administrators with preventing email harvesting attacks against a mail server. Harvesting attacks can open a mail server up for address harvesting, and that can lead to your users getting spammed or even accounts getting hacked. Neither result is good for mail admins.

Use System Events!

System events are a great way for administrators to be notified when something happens on the server. Below are a few examples of the types of events that an admin can create. In terms of notifications, an email can be sent or a SMS can be sent as well so that admins are aware of issues almost immediately.

      1. Be notified when any abuse detection rules are tripped
      2. Keep an eye on system memory or spool count -
      3. Receive a notice if a message over a certain size is being sent
      4. Tie into throttling and get a notice when a user’s email is throttled

Lock down mailing lists

Mailing lists can be a big problem, especially if they’re set up improperly. As an example, recently New York University had an issue with a mailing list that was incorrectly set up and that allowed every NYU student  – all 26,000 of them – to post replies to the entire list. Lovingly labeled the “Reply-allpocalypse”, imagine the headaches had several hundred students reported the list to SORBs or SpamHaus? Therefore, it’s best to use these simple rules of thumb for mailing lists

      1. Only allow moderators to post to a list, unless the list is very small and/or very well managed
      2. Set mailing list email to lower priority
      3. Throttle your outgoing messages

Keep an eye on your reports

SmarterMail has a number or reports that admins can use to keep an eye on their server, their traffic, the spam that’s being caught and much more. Reports are a great way to spot trends and even identify the potential for trends, so that admins can head off issues well before they become full-scale problems. Some reports of particular interest are:

      1. SMTP Out usage
      2. SMTP Out Connections
      3. Outgoing spam reports
      4. Abuse Detection

So there you go. While we can’t set up your mail server for you, we can certainly provide the tools you need in order to ensure you’re running a safe, secure and reliable system once you DO get it up and running.

That being said, there is zero guarantee your servers won’t get blacklisted at some point. Therefore, one final piece of advice: use separate IP addresses for SMTP, so that you can change it from time-to-time. This gives you the ability to change IPs in the off chance one gets blacklisted, so that your mail server can quickly get back up and running while you work with the blacklist organization to resolve the issues.

So, do we have any email admins out there? What tips and tricks do you have for keeping your email systems, and your users, secure?

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What’s New in SmarterMail 9.x

September 19, 2011 by 49 Comments

SmarterMail 9 is on the horizon and we’re so excited about the features in it that we’re breaking from tradition and doing something a bit out of the ordinary.

Our normal course of action when we approach betas of a new product is as follows:

  1. Tim, SmarterTools’ CEO, becomes a bit more active in our public forums, dropping hints here and there about new features when we finalize them.
  2. We create a Beta Buzz Page that gives more details of the new features as well as formally announces the open beta.
  3. We create specific forums for beta participants to post bugs, impressions and discuss the new features and the product in general.

This time, however, I wanted to tease the new features ahead of time – transparently and a bit more openly. After all, as we bring SmarterMail new features and evolve the product, I felt it was time we also evolved how we communicate with customers. Thankfully, Tim agreed.

The Evolution of SmarterMail

9.x is going to be a pretty major evolutionary leap for SmarterMail, one that moves us more towards becoming a complete communications platform for end users. What that means is that we are starting to integrate additional methods of communication into the product beyond simply email.

Sure, email is the primary focus of SmarterMail, and it always will be. However, the mail server is also the perfect tool to bring other forms of communication to end users. In fact, one the biggest issues internally at SmarterTools is the ability to communicate with all our employees live, in real-time, wherever they are: at home, at work or on the road. Email is a great form of communication, but it’s never going to be as instantaneous as something like instant messaging.

Instant Messaging Comes to SmarterMail

Therefore, in SmarterMail 9.x, we are excited to announce that we will be integrating a Jabber server into SmarterMail. That means you will be able to use any Jabber-enabled instant messaging (IM) client like Adium, Digsby or countless others, without having to have a separate chat server and without having to use an outside service like Google Talk, Live Messenger, Yahoo! or others. All of your chats will be internal to a specific domain, giving you full access and control, both from an administrative AND a regulatory compliance standpoint. In addition, all users in SmarterMail will be automatically available for IM through the Global Address List (GAL), which means less overhead and management for system admins, Human Resources, etc.

A Word (or 10) About MAPI and Exchange Web Services (EWS)

Another solution we were looking for as an organization was to make both Mac and Windows versions of Microsoft Outlook integrate as seamlessly with SmarterMail as it does with Microsoft Exchange. As a result, last year we put a lot of time and effort looking into MAPI. We even let people in the forums know we were making good progress and we even sent some employees to the Microsoft campus in Redmond for testing and verification of our progress. However, we quickly realized that Microsoft’s future is in Exchange Web Services (EWS). MAPI is essentially being deprecated by Microsoft as it is extremely inefficient and its internal security requirements weren’t compatible with other platforms such as Mac. EWS is the future; it is up-to-date and a very efficient method of synchronizing mail, calendars, contacts, notes, etc. We believe Microsoft is betting on EWS as the future, and so are we.

Therefore, we are very excited that we will have EWS integration with SmarterMail 9.x. Already, Microsoft supports EWS in Microsoft Outlook 2011 for Mac. In addition, EWS will be supported in the new version of Microsoft Office 2012. This also means that SmarterTools will be one of the first mail servers, in addition to Exchange, to support Exchange Web Services and will put SmarterMail well ahead of our competition…once again. The integration and usability is going to be outstanding!

And There’s More…

If these two major features weren’t enough, SmarterMail 9.x will have a completely updated interface that is ten times faster than SmarterMail 8.x (and it blows versions previous to 8.x out of the water) and, just as with SmarterTrack, the web interface will be able to be used on tablets such as the iPad, on Samsung/Acer or other Android tablets and even on the upcoming (and great-looking) Windows 8 and the Metro interface. Although users normally configure their iPads and tablets to use Exchange ActiveSync or iCal and CardDav, when you’re using a communal iPad or picking up a friend’s tablet you will now have complete web interface functionality at your fingertips!

Finally, SmarterMail 9.x has been Alpha tested for some time internally here at SmarterTools – we run a number of different email clients, IM clients, tablets, operating systems and phones so we are a perfect test bed for our own products. As such, SmarterMail 9.x will be one of our most tried and tested releases prior to Beta release, focusing not only on major features but all the minor and little things that users and administrators appreciate from SmarterTools products!

So that’s a quick look at what’s coming up. What are your thoughts?

This post was written by Derek C., vice president of marketing and communications for SmarterTools. If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the SmarterTools Blog so you don’t miss an update.

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Taking Email to Five Nines Spam Protection: Why Commtouch with SmarterMail?

July 10, 2009 by

Since the SmarterMail 6.x BETA announcement, we have received a lot of interest regarding the coming ability  to include Commtouch Anti-Spam as a premium spam protection add-on to SmarterMail. After all, SmarterMail currently achieves up to 97% spam protection out-of-the-box. Where do you go from there?

The answer lies in the prevalence of spam and the constantly evolving threat that spammers represent. Recent statistics suggest that 90.4% of all email traffic (by count) is spam—a staggering number to be sure. In most businesses, achieving 97% performance might be seen as a big success—and actually, it is.

Email has become a mission-critical application that directly impacts productivity and—at the same time—is a very personal, almost intimate, method of communication. If a user receives 20 real or “wanted” messages per day, his mailbox is being hit with about 180 spam messages per day. Blocking 97% of spam means that you are stopping 174.6 of the “unwanted” emails. Unfortunately, what the user sees is a mailbox with 20 “good” messages and 5 to 6 “bad” ones. In the eyes of that end user (or, more to the point, your CEO), more than 20% of the received mail is spam.

So, for every 1% improvement in total spam prevention, the end user will actually perceive that improvement to be near 7%. This can make all the difference to busy executives and demanding hosting customers. If companies like SmarterTools and Commtouch can work together to keep at least 99.5% of spam out of inboxes—which our testing suggests can be achieved—that extra 2 to 3% of spam caught will result in the perception that spam protection is approaching five nines.

SmarterMail 5.x already incorporates more than a dozen antispam measures, including:

  • SpamAssassin
  • Greylisting
  • Sender Policy Framework (SPF)
  • DomainKeys
  • Custom Headers
  • Bayesian Filtering
  • Reverse Domain Name Server (DNS)
  • Real-Time Blacklist (RBL)
  • Blacklist/Whitelist
  • SMTP Blocking
  • Per-user Spam Weighting

The new SmarterMail 6.x—now in full BETA test—builds upon this solid base with a new proprietary pattern-matching engine based upon SpamAssassin technology, enhancements to greylisting, DKIM, and more. These improvements will undoubtedly increase SmarterMail’s already impressive performance, but SmarterTools decided that we could do more to help users keep spam out of their inboxes.

Choosing a Spam Protection Partner

Late last year, we set out to evaluate the possible addition of new and/or third-party technology to allow for even better spam protection for our customers.  We had some basic criteria:

  • The proposed technology had to show real, measurable improvements that delivered value
  • The licensing model had to be flexible and able to accommodate our existing licensing model for SmarterMail
  • The technology should be complimentary—meaning that spam solutions that duplicated or mirrored one or several of our existing antispam measures should be avoided

SmarterTools evaluated more than a half dozen technologies before deciding on Commtouch. Many were solid enough, but had antispam measures very similar to the sets that were currently in SmarterMail out-of-the-box. Others relied too much on visitor scoring, which can be unreliable, spotty, and at times conflicted (sometimes one man’s spam is another man’s valuable news).

Why We Chose Commtouch

Commtouch uses a world-wide network of detection devices to identify spam threats in real time based upon their internal analytics. This method of distributed collection, sometimes referred to as sniffing, allows the Commtouch technology to identify spam with a very high degree of certainty when spam outbreaks are in the earliest stages. Commtouch then processes these messages to quickly distinguish spam from newsletters, feeds, and “wanted” advertisements. For customers that  purchase the Commtouch add-on, SmarterMail is alerted to the specific spam threat in real time. In many cases, the Commtouch spam identification is learned and scored before the first spam message has even been read by an user. This type of remote sniffing technology seemed to be the best fit.

Commtouch did a good job of matching their licensing and terms to fit our customer base and product levels. They are also a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: CTCH) with a solid history and reputation. They have a proven model, reliable metrics, and a history of being able to manage the loads of both large hosting companies and small to medium sized businesses (SMBs). In a nutshell, Commtouch:

  • Is a good technology fit
  • Has a good reputation
  • Offers a proven protection model
  • Worked with SmarterTools to develop a flexible licensing model

Now in BETA

Want to try the Commtouch premium spam protection and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync add-ons for 30 days?  Then sign up for the free BETA test of SmarterMail 6.xtoday.  The trial add-ons  can be activated from within the software during the BETA period. For more information about SmarterTools’ BETA program, please refer to theBETA Release FAQs.

This post was written by Tiffany D., a marketing and technical communications specialist for SmarterTools. If you liked this post, please consider subscribing to the SmarterTools Blog so you don’t miss an update.

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