HMailServer explained

hMailServer
Developer:	Martin Knafve
Discontinued:	yes
Latest Release Version:	5.6.8 (Build 2574)^[1]
Programming Language:	C++, C#
Operating System:	Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10, Windows Server 2016
Genre:	Mail transfer agent
License:	AGPL

hMailServer was a free email server for Windows created by Martin Knafve. It ran as a Windows service and includes administration tools for management and backup. It had support for IMAP, POP3, and SMTP email protocols. It could use external database engines such as MySQL, MS SQL or PostgreSQL, or an internal MS SQL Compact Edition engine to store configuration and index data. The actual email messages were stored on disk in a raw MIME format. As of January 15th, 2022, active support and development were officially halted,^[2] although version 5.6 will continue to receive updates for critical bugs.

Common features such as multiple-domain support, aliases, catch-all and basic mailing lists were present. Users could be authenticated both against the local hMailServer user system and against an external Active Directory.

AntiSpam

hMailServer offered a number of different AntiSpam mechanisms:

Host based DNS Blacklisting (DNSBL)
URL based DNS blacklisting (SURBL)
Greylisting (must retry sending for the message to succeed)
SPF
Built in SpamAssassin integration
DKIM (in version 5.1)

AntiVirus

hMailServer had built in support for ClamWin/ClamAV. It's possible to execute any command line virus scanner.

Other features

Domain and account signatures (for legal and advertising footers)
Server side rules (rules for individual accounts available in v5)
Retrieval of messages from external POP3 accounts
Quotas on domain, mailbox, and individual message sizes
Plus addressing (using + to make a virtual alias for an account specific to a task, as seen in Gmail)
Attachment blocking (based on attachment extension)
Custom SMTP routes for specific domains (can be used to set up MX backup, forwarding and more)
API (it's possible to write hMailServer scripts using VBScript and JScript)
Built-in support for SSL

Integration

ClamAV anti-virus software
SquirrelMail for webmail, (requires IIS or Apache); spell-checking available
Roundcube for webmail, also requires auxiliary database provider such as mySQL to operate
SpamAssassin spam filtering

History

The hMailServer project was started in 2003. Up until 2008 and version 4, the project was licensed under the GPL. Versions 5.0 to 5.3 were proprietary.^[3] ^[4] Since version 5.4, hMailServer is licensed under the GNU AGPL 3.^[5] ^[6]

The latest version of hMailServer appears to be open source again.^[7] This is also noted on the hMailServer home page.^[8]

External links

- An illustrated guide to installing and setting up hMailServer from scratch

Notes and References

Web site: Free open source email server for Microsoft Windows . Martin . Knafve . hMailServer . 2022-07-26.
Web site: State of hMailServer . 2023-09-30 . www.hmailserver.com.
Web site: Functionality . hMailServer . 2012-03-05 . hMailServer 4 and earlier versions are licensed as open source under the GPL license. Later versions of hMailServer (version 5 and later) are still free of charge but closed source..
Web site: A few different reasons.. [why version 5 is closed source] |first=Martin |last=Knafve |date=2007-08-02 |website=hMailserver-forums |access-date=2012-03-05].
Web site: Free open source email server for Microsoft Windows . Martin . Knafve . hMailServer . 2016-04-21.
Web site: GNU AGPL, Version 3 . 19 November 2007 . hMailServer . https://web.archive.org/web/20140226161931/http://hmailserver.com:60951/svn/hms/trunk/installation/License.rtf . February 26, 2014 . dead . February 20, 2014.
Web site: hMailserver . GitHub.com . 2016-04-21.
Web site: Free open source email server for Microsoft Windows . Martin . Knafve . hMailServer . 2016-04-21.