I need a mail service (not local software nor equipment) that captures all my mail (based on MX records) and sends it to one of two exchange servers, based on the e-mail address. I know this could have been configured through exchange, but that is not an option in my case.
Can anyone recommend a service for this based on personal experience?
I have Customers using the following three third-party services. All of the Customers had the arrangements in place before I began contracting for them, so I don't have any experience initiating the service. All three Customers are happy with the service being offered (spam, virus filtering, blocking unknown recipients, optionally scanning outgoing mail and adding disclaimer lines).
MXLogic: Servicing a Customer with nearly 200 mailboxes on Exchange 2007 and providing secondary MX service, virus and spam filtering.
MessageLabs: Servicing a Fortune 1000 Customer with nearly 2,500 mailboxes on Exchange 2003 and providing secondary MX service, virus and spam filtering, and outgoing SMTP relaying.
Google Postini: Servicing a Customer with 250 mailboxes on Exchange 2007 and providing secondary MX service, virus and spam filtering, outgoing SMTP relaying, message archiving (inbound and outbound), and disclaimer stamping on outgoing email.
All three of the services above work by being your "primary MX" to the Internet, and then delivering to your SMTP server (which is, ideally, refusing incoming SMTP requests from all other servers besides the third-party filtering host).
The last time I looked only Google Postini, of those three, published their prices w/o requiring you to contact a salesperson. That was an immediate "sell" to me. We're going to be putting at least 2 more Customers up on Postini because of the low price and effectiveness of their service. For many small companies the cost of third-party filtering is a fraction of the cost to purchase hardware and an operating system (amortized over the warranty lifetime of the gear), maintain that operating system, and obtain a subscription for filtering software (or, in the case of open source filtering software, maintain a relationship with a service provider to provide upkeep for the filtering software). I really prefer having filtering on a server in-house, but the cost numbers don't always make sense.
Microsoft has their own filtering service, Exchange Hosted Services does anti-spam and anti-virus filtering on incoming mail, and it also queues mail for you when your server is down. Here's MS's information page:
http://www.microsoft.com/online/exchange-hosted-services.mspx
When we first signed up for this service, it was before MS had bought them out and the company was Frontbridge. At that time (a couple years ago), they said they could deliver email to one of two email servers based on the email address, but I don't know if they'll still do that.
Service no, but it's a fairly standard bit of LDAP based mail routing, postfix on Linux (or AIX, *BSD) can easily do that.
If it's only for a test thing perhaps the extra mail routing features of "Google Apps for your domain" might be enough.
Try SAFENTRIX at http://www.safentrix.com. Both paid and free models are available and it si very easy to setup with near zero maintenance.
To add to Ward, if hosting your Exchange isn't in the cards, their ForeFront product also has a hosted version. It just filters your mail and sends the clean feed to the servers on your own network. We're using it, and it works.
We use Softscan for all our domains, it has been a painless and very pleasant experience.
Highly recommended!
I used and can recommend Appriver for an Internet MX record and virus and spam filtering that were handed off to Exchange. It was relatively inexpensive, though I don't recall the specific price. Support was good and the interface and functionality were simple and hands-off for me.
