Dedicated email servers are quickly becoming a standard part of a companies IT infrastructure. There are a number of competing approaches in handling this issue including software that runs standard operating systems, open source solutions, and dedicated email appliances. Each approach has merit depending on your mail volume, intended use and budgetary constraints.

In the past many companies have added email services to and existing corporate server since email normally had minimal processing requirements and was primarily a disk intensive function. As companies have expanded the role of their email servers to add client communication, newsletters and protected them from viruses and Spam, the need for a dedicated email server has increased.

If you have minimal email needs, you should look into using standard server and email server software along with integrated virus and spam detection. You should only consider an open source solution if you have adequate IT staff to handle problems and are willing to risk possible attacks against the server. If you use you mail server to communicate with customers, you should certainly consider a dedicated email appliance such as Ironport. These servers handle all aspects of bulk mailing from list management to bounce handling and customer subscriptions to your marketing material and communications. The dedicated email appliance is considerably more expensive than other email servers, but you might find that overall it is an excellent investment.