Hosted E-Mail Service Leaves Windows for Linux

Webmail.us, which provides hosted e-mail service for small and medium-size businesses, will announce next week a raft of improvements to its service, including a major migration of its core e-mail platform from Microsoft Windows to an open-source platform.

Webmail.us is an outsourced e-mail service aimed at companies that have between 5 and 500 employees. Its parent company, Excedent Technologies in Blacksburg, Virginia, launched Webmail.us about a year ago. The subsidiary sells the service directly to customers and already has about 3500 companies as clients.

From a platform based on Windows running in-house applications, Webmail.us has moved to Red Hat's Linux operating system with open-source e-mail applications such as PostFix, SquirrelMail, Courier, and Clam A/V. Coupled with infrastructure enhancements to its data center, Webmail.us now offers clients a guaranteed uptime of 99.99 percent, Matthews said. Webmail.us also supports IMAP4 (Internet Message Access Protocol Version 4) and POP3 (Post Office Protocol 3) and features antivirus protection.

"Using open source software allows us to tap into the open source community and move faster than with commercial manufacturers," said Patrick Matthews, co-founder and chief executive officer of Webmail.us and Excedent. "It helps us with long-term scalability, which is important because we're growing rapidly."

Webmail.us also has a new Web mail interface designed to resemble Microsoft's familiar Outlook; options for larger mailboxes (100 megabytes or 1 gigabyte); a message-preview pane; improved search capabilities; an advanced HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) editor; multilingual support for the spelling checker; expanded ability for importing and exporting addresses; and an auto-complete address feature.

The site also offers a control panel for clients to manage their accounts, add and delete mailboxes, change passwords, view statistics, and configure spam filter settings.