Best web server software and e-mail server in OSX?

alcimedesalcimedes
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Ok, although i'm busy ripping on OSX in another thread, i'm here to ask what the best e-mail server and web server is for Mac OSX. (i do like that stability, and this machine needs to be rock solid)



our current web and e-mail server is going to be shut down in the next two months. we can either move all of our web and e-mail over to university accounts, or move everything in-house.



we were already planning on bringing our web page inhouse, and have purchased WebStar Server Suite to handle the web stuff. (i'm looking into the OSX version as we speak).



what i would like to know is whether or not that application is decent under OSX, and if the e-mail server aspect is usable.



we're talking about 50-100 e-mail accounts, and approx. 2,000 active pages, and only transferring about 40 Megs a day worth of data. no huge flash files, nothing fancy, just a research oriented website.



anyone out there have any suggestions?



-alcimedes

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    torifiletorifile Posts: 4,024member
    Is cost a factor? Regardless of that, your best bet for server software is Apache, already installed on your Mac. There are steps that can be taken to make it more secure and some modifications that you can make to it to make it better, but you can't beat it. Webstar? Don't know a thing about it except that it costs money.



    As for email software, there are a lot of people who are using postfix as their email server. I've been able to get it working in the past (pre OS X 10.1) but for some reason I can't get it to work right with 10.1 :confused: Anyway, if you can get it working, there's a vast community of support and it's widely accepted as a better sendmail. There's also qmail from qualcomm. If you're not averse to spending money, communigate pro seems to be pretty good and configurable. I've been using the trial version on my server for some time. However, the documentation sucks and I can't figure out some things that I would like to do. It'll be uninstalled as soon as I get the time to figure out how to fix postfix.



    Some links:



    <a href="http://www.apache.org"; target="_blank">Apache</a>



    <a href="http://www.postfix.org/"; target="_blank">Postfix</a>



    <a href="http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/2001-10-11.01.html"; target="_blank">Building Apache with PHP</a>



    <a href="http://www.stepwise.com/Articles/Workbench/eart.index.html"; target="_blank">Email Server with OS X</a> (pre 10.1)



    <a href="http://www.qmail.org/top.html"; target="_blank">Qmail</a>



    <a href="http://www.stalker.com/"; target="_blank">Communigate Pro</a>



    That ought to get you started. HTH



    [ 04-08-2002: Message edited by: torifile ]</p>
  • Reply 2 of 5
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Hate to say it, but Sendmail configured right is the best mail server...the only problem is it's a beech to configure...
  • Reply 3 of 5
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    cool. money isn't much of a factor. i can get money for anything under $750. these people love their e-mail. i just need something that i can have set up properly once, and then it will run itself. if something horrible goes wrong, i need to be able to have a new user reboot the machine and have everything up and running again.



    i can make a writeup to explain how create new users etc. then (hopefully) let the server run itself from then on.



    i'll check out those links tomorrow while i'm at work so i can get paid to browse.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    othelloothello Posts: 1,054member
    apache is the best webserver



    for email, why not set-up your own IMAP server. then you can get your email from anywhere...
  • Reply 5 of 5
    running with scissorsrunning with scissors Posts: 1,124member
    $$ webstar is great. very easy to use (nice gui and admin tools) and fast as hell on osX. the only down side is that they haven't developed the mail server functionallity for v5 yet.



    apache is nice because it is free. good speeds on osX, but can be somewhat intimidating to those not comfortable working without a gui.



    never used sendmail or any of the others.



    $$ quickmail server is pretty nice. nice gui and admin tools. very easy to use and fairly flexiable. they had some problems way back when but they have done a pretty could job of making a solid mail platform. the down side with them is they may or may not be around much longer from what i can tell. nto many people know about them and they're loosing money left and right for last couple of years.



    -rws
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