CommuniGate Pro provides flexibility and broad e-mail functionality for ISPs and other businesses with anywhere from 50 users to over a million.

by Jeff Goldman [June 30, 2004]

Stalker Software was founded in 1993. The company's first e-mail solution was released only for Macintosh, but was replaced in 1998 with CommuniGate Pro, which now supports 30 different OS/hardware combinations. "We saw the need for e-mail, as it was scaling over the years," says Ali Liptrot, the company's Director of Sales & Marketing.

Although CommuniGate Pro is targeted primarily at ISPs and telcos, Liptrot says it's always been available with a 50-user license for enterprises as well. "It's so full-featured that we didn't want to lose the enterprise market," she says. "So it's for both, but we have the proven history in the telco space, and the high performance and reliability."

CommuniGate Pro — Stalker Software (800) 262-4722 sales@stalker.com

Stalker Software now has over 8,000 customers worldwide. "One of the reasons we developed our webmail solution to incorporate calendaring and other groupware functionality was that our enterprise market and our web hosting clients were asking for those features, so they could have value adds for their customer base," Liptrot says.

According to Josh Olson, Sales Engineer for Stalker, CommuniGate Pro's efficiency is a key selling point. "We can handle 30,000 accounts on a single server," he says. "With Exchange, it's going to take you 10 to 15 servers to be able to handle that load. And we can run on multiple systems in a truly dynamic cluster where no accounts are assigned to any one cluster member—that's also a great advantage."

The product's flexibility, Liptrot says, is another strength. "When two companies are merging together, they're able to put CommuniGate Pro in the server room and keep everybody happy," she says. "Everybody's client will work, and they can grow and use any operating system. There's just a lot of flexibility in it."

Webmail functionality
While CommuniGate Pro's webmail interface began as a simple tool for accessing e-mail, it's grown significantly over the past few years. "We've added a whole bunch more functionality to it, to include calendaring, task management, folder sharing, that type of thing—the features that Outlook users are used to," Olson says.

An Outlook plug-in allows CommuniGate Pro to mimic Exchange functionality, enabling users to run Microsoft Outlook on the client side with CommuniGate Pro running on the back end. "Normally, that function is only available to users if they're using an Exchange server," Olson says. "And what we did at the same time is we allowed all of that functionality to happen via the webmail interface."

In addition, CommuniGate Pro's webmail interface can be customized extensively for ISPs. "Any HTML editor or text editor can be used to modify the skin files that are used to make up the webmail interface," Olson says.

Because CommuniGate Pro is a complete mail system, it's not possible to separate the webmail interface from the rest of the offering, or to use it with different MTAs. "It's an SMTP server, a POP server, an IMAP server, an LDAP server, and we also have a built-in webmail interface—everything is linked together," Olson says.

Anti-spam and anti-virus plugins are available for CommuniGate Pro through partnerships with Network Associates, Sophos, and Mailshell. Pricing starts at $499 for a 50-user license or $1,999 for a 1,000-user license. "If they're a beginning ISP, they can start with a 1,000-user license," Liptrot says. "Then they can upgrade in increments when they have that need."

Seeking flexibility
Hal Lightwood is Supervisor at TBayTel Internet, a division of Thunder Bay Telephone, Canada's largest independent telephone company, founded in 1902. TBayTel Internet serves northwestern Ontario, providing dialup, DSL, and wireless to residential, business, and corporate customers.

TBayTel first sought a webmail solution in 2000 in response to growing customer demand. "Northwestern Ontario is a geographically huge area, and our customers roam extensively throughout it," Lightwood says. "Having web access to e-mail provides a convenient and fast way for our customers to check their e-mail on any computer with Internet access."

The company chose CommuniGate Pro largely because of its flexibility. "The software simply had everything we wanted, from basic POP3 access to advanced webmail capabilities, all easily customizable to operate exactly how we required," Lightwood says. "CommuniGate was also able to run on just about any operating system we chose, not locking us in to staying with one particular platform in the future."

TBayTel's experience with the product, Lightwood says, has been excellent. "Any technical questions or problem we have encountered has been quickly resolved through their online support or a short phone call," he says. "The continuous development and improvement of CommuniGate gives us a great feeling that they will continue to meet our needs, and the needs of our customers, in the future."

— End

Related articles:
	[June 11, 2004]	Stalker Software Provides Potential Weapon Against Terrorists
	[June 19, 2002]	Choosing a Windows Mail Server
	[April 22, 2002]	Case Study From Stalker Software

Online resource:
	Webmail Directory