I am looking into setting up my e-mails through a Microsoft Exchange server and am currently looking through possible hosts. However, I am looking for a way to set up the exchange mail login to be a URL on my site (https://mail.mysite.com/) as opposed to logging in from a 3rd party site or through my providers site. I'm not sure if anybody has ever used Exchange Mail before, but if anybody could offer some recommendations on companies that would be greatly appreciated!
By default Exchange url is https://some.site.url.com/exchange. But you can change it: You must also change host header value: In such a way your url will be https://mail.mysite.com/
Well I don't have an IIS server I am running Apache, and it's not locally hosted I'm going through HostGator. I'm sure I could figure it out if I was running my own Exchange Server, but sadly I'm not... do you know if it would be easy to configure my own exchange server from home even though my hosting is through a different company?
This is not difficult. Your site www.yorsite.com A record points for example to 10.10.10.10 You must make one more A record for mail.yoursite.com and point to your home ip 20.20.20.20 Than, make a MX record and point to mail.yoursite.com. Your ISP should not block outgoing port 25. ISPs also have a smart host if they blocking 25.
Ok that makes sense how I would do that in cPanel, in fact I'm looking at how to set that up right now However I'm unsure of how to find my home IP? Is that Start -> Run -> CMD -> ipconfig? I see a ton of IP addresses, so I just don't want to get the wrong one...
If you are operating an Exchange server at your home and want to use that as your main email server it will be much better if you had a dedicated IP address for your home connection. There are services that provide dynamic DNS redirection for connections on dynamic IP addresses (e.g. http://www.dyndns.com/), but ideally you would be better off with a static IP address.
Well I think I would need to pay extra for a static IP at home, and I don't even really understand how to run an Exchange Server very well anyways... I may just check online for a hosting account just for exchange mail and see if I can get something goin. Thanks a ton for your help!
Are you sure you really need your email operating on Exchange? Exchange is a great email server but it is expensive to licence and operate and requires skilled staff to maintain it correctly. Some of what were unique features to Exchange are now readily available on other email platforms and you might get all the features you want with most hosting accounts. I'd have a think about the reasons for wanting to use Exchange, and see if these needs are met by other email servers...you might be surprised at the functionality other email systems provide. In particular, you might want to look at Smartermail from www.smartertools.com (another Windows-based email server) which has a lot of excellent features including MS ActiveSync for push emails, and superb anti-spam features. They even have a free version for a single domain and upto 10 user accounts.
I do have to say, the screenshots for the webmail interface look very nice. I may check out their pricing and compare it to what I can get for exchange hosting.
You're right, the web mail interface is very nice. The other thing about Smartermail is that many windows-based hosting providers use it, so you'd have access to most of the features (web mail included) with a standard hosting account - just check whether they are using the Standard or Enterprise version of the software because it's the Enterprise version that has a lot of the nice features like collaboration tools. MS active-sync is an additional cost option but there are free tools that provide similar functionality. We've run Smartermail for a number of years and its a very stable piece of software. If you have a server download the free version and have a play with it.
Well the ActiveSync isn't all that important to me, but being able to log into my e-mail on my own personal domain from any computer is really the big ticket. And I do have a small Windows Server 2003 set up in my spare room just for testing and messing around, so if I can figure out how to do it I may download this bugger and install it to see what kinda results I can get I really appreciate the recommendation, definitely helped me on my search for my internet mail software.
Maybe not just now, but when you think about what it offers then it might be a good thing. If you have a Smartphone then activesync will allow you to keep your email, contacts, calendar, tasks and notes that you have within Outlook (I'm assuming you are using that since you are using Windows) completely synchronized with your email server and smartphone - and have it all done automatically. So, no matter where you are - at home, on the move, viewing you web mail client in another location - all your important information is up-to-date and completely synchronized between all these different bits of hardware. Update your smartphone on the move, and it will update your local Outlook and Webmail information at the same time. NICE bit of functionality. The Smartermail installation instructions are very good. Just follow them to the letter and you shouldn't have any problems. IF you do, just let me know and I'll try to help.