Mercury Mail Transport System Overview

Mercury Mail Transport System, Overview

The Mercury Mail Transport System is a Mail Server - a program that sends and receives mail on behalf of a group of users on a machine or local area network. Mail from the outside world is received by Mercury and placed in the addressee's mailbox, where the user can access it at any later point. Messages sent by local users to the outside world are passed to Mercury, which then takes whatever steps are necessary to deliver them, removing the burden from the user's workstation and allowing him to continue with other work.

The principal advantages of using a mail server to handle your mail are:

Centralization All mail services can be centrally managed and controlled
Efficient use of resources If you connect using a dialup connection, then only the mail server needs to be able to access that connection. Your workstations do not need their own modems or Internet accounts.
Continual availability The mail server can continue processing mail even when the client workstations are turned off, allowing functions that depend on a continuously available service, such as automatic replies and autoforwarding.

Mercury exists in two versions, one written as a set of Novell NLMs designed to run on Novell NetWare 3.x, 4.x, 5.x or 6.x file servers, the other written as a Win32 application designed to run on Windows 98, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista or Windows Server 2003 (XP or Server 2003 are recommended). Both versions have similar feature sets, and both have special support for Novell NetWare local area networks - the Win32 version can act as a mail server for either NetWare or non-NetWare LANs.

Although integrated tightly with Pegasus Mail, Mercury is a fully independent product and can provide mail services to other mail programs, such as Eudora or Microsoft Outlook. Both versions of Mercury are highly modular, allowing you to install support for differing mixes of Internet protocols as required.

Mercury is extremely standards-compliant, supporting the all major Internet mail-related protocols. The Win32 version has special features designed for use in dialup environments. Both versions are extremely feature rich, with especially powerful support for managed mailing lists. Like any server product, Mercury is slightly more complex to install than a simple mail client, but only moderate experience with connecting to the Internet is required. Mercury is intended to be largely unobtrusive and needs little ongoing maintenance.

Mercury is free for non-commercial use. Commercial users may evaluate the program free of charge for 60 days, after which they should purchase a reasonably-priced license for the program if they wish to continue using it.

Mercury Mail Transport System, NLM version for NetWare Servers - Features
Mercury Mail Transport System, Windows 98/NT4/2000/XP/Vista version - Features

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