If you want to run an in-house mail server, Irish Domains recommend the award-winning MDaemon software. Get a market-leading fully featured mail server from as little as €79* (for six users).

MDaemon is a Windows based email server designed for any organisation that wants more control over their email coupled with increased functionality and reduced costs. Hosting your own mail server within your own local network allows all your organisation's email to be received and then redistributed to local user accounts that you retain complete management over. Internal email is kept internal, ISP costs and bandwidth usage are reduced while powerful security features such as centralised antivirus/antispam control are introduced. MDaemon's massive feature set coupled with simple administration, low cost of ownership and increased logging of activity means that IT administrators will quickly enhance email usage across the organisation.

If you have a broadband connection and two or more PC's that need to receive email, then you should consider running an in-house mail server. The main benefits are:

• Speed - Near instant receipt of emails
• Control - All administration done locally
• Enhanced Security - Internal email never leaves your network
• Safety - Easily integrated with Anti-Virus software
• Productivity - SPAM controls eliminate wading through unwanted advertising

What few people realise is that direct SMTP receipt of email is actually cheaper than most other methods. Email is routed directly from sender to your machine without having to pass through your ISP's bottlenecked mailservers. All you need is a domain name, a breadband connection with fixed IP address, some Mail Server software for your local machine, and a backup SMTP mailserver that acts as a temporary store should your broadband connection go down or should your own mailserver ever be unavailable.

Backup Mailserver €99* per year.
Switch from your existing ISP and you could save €100's

Traditional dialup SMTP feeds are expensive, as they normally require fixed IP addresses. This ties your business to a single ISP, and makes changing connectivity provider or premises quite difficult. Often SMTP feeds are only supplied bundled with other value added services. A typical ISP dialup SMTP feed costs from €800 to over €1000 depending on the ISP and bundled services.

Irish Domains' On-Demand Mail Relay (ODMR) service frees you from the fixed IP requirement, and allows you to connect to the internet using almost any available type of connection. This means that you can change ISP (or premises) as often as you like without difficulty. ODMR is supported by modern email software such as MDaemon and Microsoft Exchange Server.

Only €299* per year.
Switch from your existing ISP and you could save €100's

Regular POP3 based email pickup works very well for individuals and smaller businesses where there is not a great turnover of staff. However POP3 email does have several weaknesses, as it is was originally designed as a simple mailbox system for individual addresses. Email routing information (the "envelope") is not always completely preserved when routed to a POP3 mailbox, especially when the recipient is a member of a mailing list. Also, when there are many PC's within an organisation all dialling out independently, it becomes very diffcult to keep phone costs under control.

An SMTP email feed routes the raw email stream directly to a local email server within the organisation. All routing (envelope) information is preserved. The local email server is responsible for distributing the messages internally, and collecting messages for delivery back to the outside world. Adding and deleting users, and administration of mailing lists is done locally, without the need to refer to the service provider. As only a single local machine needs to be able to connect to the internet, it is much easier to regulate the duration and frequency of the internet connection, and therefore phone costs may be controlled.

*Prices quoted are subject to VAT at 21%