Set Up a Mail Server in Ten Minutes

hMailServer is an Open Source email server for Windows. It supports all the
common email protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP. In addition, it provides
antivirus protection, spam protection, DNS blacklists, logging, distribution
lists, aliases, virtual domains, etc. It ships with a light version of the MySQL
database. If you don't have a database server installed, hMailServer installs
this light MySQL edition automatically. In this article we will help you set up
your own mail server using hMailServer.

Pre-requisites

First, get a domain name of your choice. Open the configuration page of your
domain on the website from where you registered. In the 'A record' provide the
Public IP address of the machine in which you are going to configure the mail
server. Now in 'MX record' specify the domain name, as done in the A record.
Next, change the host name of your system to same as that of the domain name.
For this go to start>run, type c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts and press
enter. Select notepad from the 'open with dialog box'. Find the line including
'127.0.0.1 localhost'. Replace 'localhost' with your domain name and save the
file. The hardware requirement basically depends on the number of users. So,
take any machine which fits your requirement for the mail server. For instance,
in case of 25 users you can even go for a standard P4 machine with 512 MB RAM,
80 GB HDD and Windows XP. Take the hMailServer from this month's PCQXtreme DVD
or download it from the link mentioned in the specs box. Installation is pretty
straightforward and takes a few minutes.

Configuration

On starting hMailServer, an 'hMailServer administrator-connect' dialog box
appears, which connects you to its different services. Click on the 'Connect'
button. You are now connected to the hMailServer instance running on local host.
Then it asks for a password-enter the one you provided during the installation
process. A get started screen appears. Here click on 'Add domain' button, enter
the domain name you've registered and click on save. On the left side of the
hMailServer admin interface, a node is created with your domain name.

In SMTP setting Provider the host name so that the server knows its public on the Internet

The next step is to create user accounts on the email server. For this expand
the domain node and click on 'your domain name'. Then click on 'Add account'.
Here specify the user name, let's say 'xyz', and add it to the account address,
with this you get 'xyz@your domain'. Now specify the user password and click on
the 'save' button. Next specify the public host name to your server by going to
Settings>Protocols>SMTP on the left-side tree. To the right in the SMTP setting,
click on the 'Delivery of email' tab and under the host name enter the public
host name of the computer where hMailServer is running. And with it your email
server is all set and ready to send/receive emails.