IceWarp MERAK

Pros: Easy install, very full featured, Strong anti-spam and anti-virus features,highly professional approach,
Cons: no calender, web mail does not auto-create internal groups

I downloaded and installed this mail server to look at it's integrated WEB front end. What I found was a state-of-the-art SMTP server. I've worked with many different mail servers from Notes to GroupWise to Exchange, Sendmail, Ipswitch, Qmail, and...

Pros: Competitively priced. Average performance.
Cons: Worst customer service.

I downloaded and installed the Merak Mail Server, while the server was pretty ordinary, and the price competitive, the customer service was the worst I've ever experienced. The program is apparently created in Czechoslovakia and it's creators have done a good job, but the company in America, Merak Mail, is understaffed, rude and failed to get me an extended key before it timed out. Then, removing the product left the MS Mail Server inoperable.

When I asked the owner of Merak Mail what their relationship was with "Ice Warp" the creator, he told me they were a marketing organization, then he was a consultant, then a partner, and finally the developer said they (Merak) was just a reseller. I am nervous when I don't know who I'm doing business. Who do you call when they go belly up? I had that problem with Gordano (formerly NT Mail) .. never again.

BTW, the corporation is hiding behind a Delaware corporation even though they are located in Virginia.

Pros: Easy to use.
Cons: The people answering phones and email at the company are misleading and worse than non-responsive.

Merak's customer service is worse than non-existent. They've told me they'd respond and failed to do so. Offered discounts and failed to honor them. The product might be decent, but dealing with the company is the worst pain in the world. Don't buy into that snow job of a comment they have on their site about the importance of honesty. It doesn't reflect at all on the company. I sent seven emails and waited a month. The last four they didn't even respond to.

Pros: Great product features, built-in anti-spam and anti-virus, good price.
Cons: Poorly managed development, non-existent product support and customer service, sub-standard and unreliable WebMail interface.

We've been using Merak for 3 years. Early versions were VERY impressive - a lot of features, competitive pricing, great beta testing program and customer support. However, in the last 12 months the product has become extremely unstable and unreliable, full of bugs, and there's virtually no customer support. Development is too focused on new "gadgets" and new releases, and fails to fix bugs and problems in the existing production versions. New features are added to the non-reliable base code, introducing more bugs and problems because of poor pre-release testing. We constantly experience slow or no response to support requests.