Low-cost, high-functionality LAN Suite rivals Exchange on a small scale

Enterprise IT managers just nod their heads sadly when confronted with Microsoft server package price tags, but small-business owners or managers with tight departmental budgets tend to shout things like, “Exchange 2000 for $7,000?” A recent shouting of similar sentences, followed by more epithets and a coffee mug hurled at my head, prompted me to look around for "something else."

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Trouble is, on the Windows platform, Microsoft tends to rule. But just as prospects looked bleak, I stumbled across a gem tucked outside the shrink-wrap world and buried deep in shareware land. Software 602’s LAN Suite is more than just an e-mail server, but for $59.95, I’m not quibbling about focus. This package contains a Windows-based, secure e-mail server, a fax server, a firewall, and an Internet-sharing and proxy server.

Installation is performed via your usual and confidence-inspiring InstallShield, followed by some additional setting questions. You can configure e-mail, fax, and anti-virus in just under an hour -- using up only about 25MB. (The e-mail server will use more for message storage, of course.)

I was pretty impressed with LAN Suite from an e-mail-server perspective. No, you’re not going to get Exchange Server’s collaboration, scheduling, or content-filtering options. But you will get support for all secure protocols, as well as the ability to create blacklists. For a small business or basic remote-site e-mail system, LAN Suite can do the job, no problem.

Software 602 has taken some pains to integrate into an existing AD (Active Directory) structure, which I found impressive. You define users and their privileges, for example, within LAN Suite. But you also bundle them to LDAP server, which any existing AD scheme (or even AD-aware apps, such as Outlook) can access. Darn cool for 60 bucks. You can even assign users personal Web page space via LAN Suite’s Web server, although this is probably handier for an intranet-style scenario than an Internet publishing scheme. As a nice Web extension, LAN Suite allows users to view their mail via the Web, approximating Exchange’s WebMail. 

I’m still a Symantec lemming when it comes to anti-virus. But for the money, LAN Suite’s anti-virus system is worth exploring. In addition to anti-virus signature detection, this tool will identify and quarantine spam or virus-infected messages. This will tack some cost to the basic license, but it’s well worth the relatively few dollars.

On the surface, the firewall resembles a personal firewall, simply because it can be set to vague levels, including high, medium, and low. Dig a bit deeper and you’ll find the ability to filter based on specific traffic or certain ports -- plenty of functionality for the typical small business. 

Internet sharing is allowable via LAN Suite, including the seemingly ubiquitous DHCP and NAT services. Although this worked fine in testing, I’m still a fan of keeping such functionality in hardware somewhere, rather than being dependent upon an application like LAN Suite. And frankly, LAN Suite has enough going for it without adding this type of functionality, which is available in so many other products.

You can administer LAN Suite via a browser, but it does offer the added feature of multiple security levels, meaning you can marry security levels and specific tasks.

Viewed simply from a functional standpoint, LAN Suite is no match for Microsoft’s server packages. But keeping its price point in mind and aiming it at users with simple requirements can mean saving many thousands of dollars with no loss in expected functionality. If you’re tired of rolling eyes when it comes time to talk bucks, check this one out.