Is Zimbra right for us?

Hi all.

I'm in my final year at college studying business management and we have now got the task of developing a business that will be accessible our local SME sector and I am wanting to know a few things.

(First off I am not the techy one, I am just doing some research so bare with me!)

1. Would Zimbra Server be ok to use if we wanted to setup a hosted mail exchange where people can pay for mail boxes?

2. The "seat package". Is this what is known as a "Client Access Licence" - 25 seat package is 25 mail boxes which no more than 25 people can access at once? Each seat is $35 which would total $875?

3. Is there software like Modernbill that can be used for user registration and automatic billing/setup of mailboxes?

Thanks :)

Welcome to the forums,

Yup, there are already Zimbra certified partners: Both Hosting Providers (List of Hosting Providers) & VARs (List of VARs) who do this.
-So yes it's viable for a school assignment/project

Pricing depends on the features you desire.
Typically starting at $25-35/person for the Network Edition, then dramatically goes down from there the more you purchase.
seat=person=account mailbox
(Of course this has nothing to do with aliases - main account: user@domain.com alias: first.last@domain.com alias: nickname@domain.com)

Or you could even build a business using the free -yes it's hard to believe but free- Open Source Edition, it's purely up to you.
(Doing so there's certain restrictions of course, ie: Zimbra/Zimbra powered logos & copyright notices intact etc)

Great, thanks for a decent reply.

Only thing I am still wondering is about billing software, is there any available we could use in conjunction with Zimbra Server?

This has been something we've been interested in.

Zimbra works wonderfully with Salesforce CRM via our Zimlets.

For that you'd have to ask some of the hosting providers.
Look at their pricing schemes, most don't charge for bandwidth, but instead base it off of storage & features.
Everything can be scripted somehow, they all have their own methods of automatic billing, account management & payment portals etc. Anything from salesforce to sugar. There's a billion ways to keep track of it & they've each gone down different paths.

Ok and thank again, I will show this site to the guys in the morning and see what they think :D

Oh by the way, how come there isn't a Windows version?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alj

Oh by the way, how come there isn't a Windows version?

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Zimbra tightly integrates with postfix. Postfix only runs on *nix platforms.

If there were Postfix version that ran on windows, we might look at a windows version. .but to date, from what I hear, the developers of Postfix don't want a windows version.